FM station on the outskirts | aegean

[Pteron]

and since you’re the only one that matters,----------------
----------------tell me: who do i run to?

The apple that he’d eaten earlier must’ve been bad, Pteron had decided; it sits uncomfortable and heavy in his belly as he draws to a halt. That’s the only thing he’d eaten that wasn’t familiar or recommended, anyway, and Pteron vows in this moment to never eat strange fruit again. Or at least, not strange fruit in the Common Lands. The worry he feels for his younger sibling is compounded by the darkness that has come permanently to their world, and his physiological unease feels rather small against that. He’d thought Gale would have come to visit by now, to talk about the last battle the way they had all the others. Yet days go by (or Pteron thinks they do?) and his brother has never arrived. (Pteron is unaware, of course, that the wings which once made Gale’s visits so easy are gone now)

Ahead of him stands Aegean, light by his ever-glow, and Pteron smiles without thought, delighted simply by his nearness. The other stallion paints the darkness between them with light, illuminating a watery path that Pteron follows without hesitation.

“Everything does,” he answers with a quiet sigh. Pteron presses his forehead against Aegean’s glowing shoulder, warm on this chilly winter’s night. “I am glad to see you,” he says against the familiar white skin, before turning his head to press his own cheek there, sidling so he might lean the length of his body against the other and wrap him close beneath a feathered wing. Glad to see you, he’d said, as if they’d not parted ways only hours before.

“I wonder how long it’ll last,” he muses, brushing against the earlier thoughts of the antlered stallion only by coincidence. Will the sky stay dark forever? Will it grow darker still? Is there a way to change it, perhaps, to force the moon back onto its path? Pteron has no idea, and the weight of his thoughts remains in the creased blue lines of his forehead even as he leans against Aegean.

@[aegean]

-- pteron --