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+---- Thread: in the darkest hour, the dead of night (/showthread.php?tid=28568)
in the darkest hour, the dead of night - Pteron - 12-26-2020
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Balancing on his hind legs, Pteron braces his knees against the thick bark of the trunk and stretches for the red apple that is just out of reach. He cannot reach it, and returns all four hooves to the earth as he stares up at it with a scowl. Then, with a sigh of exasperation as much at himself as at the apple, he knocks it from the tree with a well-aimed smack from his bicolored wings. It’s gone in a few quick bites, autumn sweet and delicious. A drink would go well with it, but he’s far from the creeks that crisscross the heart of the Meadow. He can smell water deeper in the trees, and eyes the Forest with wary olive eyes.
Pteron had gotten completely lost in there once before, when a few-hour jaunt looking for Aegean turned into a few months by the time he’d found the path out. Pteron has no desire for such a twisting of time again, so he ignores the allure of the water and his parched throat, and heads instead back into the more populated Meadow and the low-running creeks. Pteron’s wings are folded close to his sides as he passes near to other horses, and the tall grasses flick against the white and blue-green feathers as well as his striped legs and twitching blue tail. He is about ankle deep in the water when he feels the prickle of awareness at the back of his spine. It’s the sensation that often comes of being watched, but Pteron does little more than flick his blue-tipped ears toward the other as he continues to drink.
He’s aware of them, his posture indicates, but not certain enough that it’s worth interrupting his drink for. That he’s not gone invisible suggests that he is up for company, though he does not expect whomever this might be to be aware of his habit of literally disappearing when he does not want to be found.
@[rosebay]
-- pteron --
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - rosebay - 12-30-2020
Youth has never suited her—not truly.
It held a weak grasp on her, but she was never designed to be a child. Born of a monster and magic incarnate, she was always designed to be something more. She was pushed into maturity from the very first, her lips upon the cup of it, and nothing that happened since slowed it. Crowns had taken her past the brink of death and only barely brought her back. She had walked him to the edge in return.
The dark thrill of it laced through her and whatever innocence she might have had fled.
So as she rises up onto the horizon of her second year, there is little of childhood in her fine features. There is something disconcertingly adult in the tip of her almond eyes and the slant of her velvet mouth. Something comely and serious—as somber as the promise of death in the ivory that begins to creep over her lengthening limbs and across her narrow chest. Something dark and twisted and hungry.
It’s what gleams in her plain eyes as she walks through the meadow on this day, studying everyone with the slanted gaze of someone who does not look directly at all. It’s only when she sees him, a soldier if she had ever known one, that she pauses at all, her mouth pulling into a simpering smile. When his ears flick, something stirs in her belly and she walks near him, the faint sweet smell of oleander in her hair.
“It’s a beautiful day, don’t you think,” her silvery voice trills lightly as she comes to a stop by his side, dipping her mouth into the cool water to wet her tongue. When she lifts to look at him, she searches his gaze, testing the edges of her enthrallment with the stranger. “Isn’t it a fine day to make friends?”
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[Pteron]
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - Pteron - 01-01-2021
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
He meets her hungry gaze and immediately lifts a hoof to step back. The soft trill of her voice gives him pause, for it so different from what he’d seen in her eyes a moment before. Yet as he look into them now, they seem only warm and friendly, matching the easy smile that now grows on his.
“It is a beautiful day,” he repeats with a slow nod, as though his mind is thoughtful or perhaps slightly addled. “A fine day to make friends.”
The pegasus shakes his head, and some of the odd fuzziness that had grasped him for a moment dissipates. Strange, he thinks.
“I’m Pteron. And you?”
@[rosebay]
-- pteron --
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - rosebay - 01-02-2021
He is handsome, she decides, and he fights the enthrallment faster than most. It is frustrating to note, but also deeply thrilling, and she decides that she likes that challenge of it. Likes to see what it takes to play with different individuals—how some seem to welcome the commands and others resist them. Noting the way he looks at her so appreciatively, she wonders what will happen if she is to pretty it up.
So she does.
Her body shifts ever so slightly, her eyes growing slightly more doe-like, her smile more flirtatious than coy. It is a subtle change and one she is still mastering, but she feels confident in her ability to do so.
“Hello, Pteron,” she murmurs, letting her silvery voice grow just a touch breathy, lingering on the syllables of his name as her gaze falls over him, not bothering to hide her discernment. When she comes back to his eyes, she maintains the eye contact. “My name is Rosebay,” glad of the feminine way that the name curls on her tongue, the way she can hold onto the last sound of it before she breathes it out.
That cloying scent of oleander reaches her noise and she remembers the blossoms tucked into her mane. She arches her neck slightly so that they are more prominent as she returns to that eye contact, her gaze just a touch too intense, too intimate for having just met him. “The flowers are beautiful, aren’t they?”
A pause and a silvery laugh, as if she had asked if she was the beautiful one.
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[Pteron]
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - Pteron - 01-07-2021
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
He’d not come here for a dalliance, but he does enjoy pleasant surprises.
The sound of distant thunder pulls at his attention, and though he turns his blue-green muzzle toward the slow-travelling storm, he finds it difficult to do so. It is as though he didn’t want to look away from the ruddy mare, and he finds that the fuzziness in his mind fades away as his full attention returns to her. That feels better, somehow, though he cannot quite put a feather on why.
He doesn’t even bother to try, really, not when she’s showing him the heady smelling flowers.
“I’d ask for a taste,” he says with a good-humored raise of his brow, “but I learned my lesson as a boy that the sweetness of flowers is more often in their appearance.” He’d tried a hibiscus once, and the brilliantly orange flower had tasted of the finest red Loessian dust mixed with a rotten lime. (He’s not had a rotten lime, but he’s fairly sure they taste greener than rotten lemons)
@[rosebay]
-- pteron --
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - rosebay - 01-16-2021
She frowns, just slightly, when he looks away toward the storm and wishes that her gift was strong enough to pull his attention back by force. Instead she has to rely on her appeal alone, and she softens just in time before he looks back, glancing up from beneath her lashes and fitting him with a sweet smile. If she is obvious in her flirting, she does not mind. He looks like one who expects to be flirted with, who invites it, and she is glad to play the role for him now—coy and admiring as she studies him openly.
At the quirk of his brow, she laughs, a silvery, tinkling sound as she shakes her neck so that the flowers ruffle in her mane. “They are quite sweet,” she lies, taking a step closer to him—emboldened by his attention. “I do not much like the taste of anything but,” her gaze dips to his mouth for a moment, lingering there for a moment too long before they slide back to find the olive of his eyes.
The implication is clear, and she does not elaborate further.
Rosebay soaks in the heady feeling of control as she holds his gaze, looking for that core and that grip. When she finds it, she pushes her enthrallment forward quite forcefully, knowing that she would need to exhaust nearly all of her gift. “You should take a bite,” she twists the command until it sounds more like a suggestion, her brown lips tilting up in the corners. “I promise that you will,” her voice drops off as she lets the silence stretch for just a moment longer before continuing, “enjoy it quite a bit.”
She isn’t sure if her enthrallment is strong enough to convince him he likes the taste of the bitter flower, but she’s willing to try. And as she watches his handsome face, she nearly feels a pang of regret.
Nearly.
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[Pteron]
RE: in the darkest hour, the dead of night - Pteron - 01-27-2021
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The petals of the flower are soft on his tongue, and the sharp tang of the sap lingers at the back of his throat even after he has swallowed. It is far from the best flower he’s had, but Rosebay does not break her promise, and Pteron does enjoy it quite a bit. The irregular heartbeat and disorientation are to be expected so near the bay mare, and even the way her face blurs in his vision does not strike him as entirely wrong. He’s not pulled away, and though he slides his blue-green muzzle along the arch of the mare’s bay neck, he stumbles when he must side-step to reach farther.
Pteron grows still, the haze of oleander and enthrallment making balance difficult. The disorientation turns to dizziness, and Pteron immediately regrets looking up to try and find Rosebay. The world is spinning around him, twisting left and right and left and then…
It settles.
His healing has won out – for now – isolating the poison from the flower where it cannot affect him. The smell of the oleander remains strong in the air, and as Pteron regains his balance, he searches through the dark meadow in a vain attempt to find the bay mare.
@[Rosebay]
-- pteron --