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


The storm has spent itself overnight, and as Pteron picks his way over fallen branches and downed greenery in the pre-dawn light the only sign of the storm is in the destruction that it had left behind. His usually clear path to water is obstructed by a dozen hurdles, and he must hold his wings tightly to his sides as he slides between hanging vines and thick mossy trunks. Minor nicks and scrapes along his legs and belly go ignored, and by the time he has finished drinking, they are fully healed and leave behind flawless blue-green, white, and creamy grey hide. As he makes his way back along the path, he pushes the worst of the debris to the side, the sharp branches that might draw blood on an unsuspecting passerby or a round log that might trip an unalert child. It feels good to be useful, and he continues in this manner until he reaches the beach.

The usually pristine shores are littered with the bounty of the sea.

The tide will take back the display in time, Pteron knows, drawing much of this back into the depths. The pegasus makes his careful way through the seaweed, wood, and shells. Now and then he pauses to look more closely at what’s come up. He flips a peach-colored conch with a dark hoof, and finding it occupied by an irritable crab, promptly flips it right back again.

The dawn light comes slowly to the western side of the island, and Pteron enjoys the leisurely start to the day. He continues down the beach, watching both the sea and the shore with his curious olive eyes, and remains aware of the distantly circling osprey, through which he suspects his far-away brother keeps watch.

@[anyone]

-- pteron --

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


A large piece of driftwood looms ahead: grey and still dripping from the gnarled tips, the dead tree still draws his attention. Drying barnacles and bits of juvenile coral cling to the wood. It’s been displaced from the sea floor here in the tropics, Pteron decides, and nibbles gently at the coral. It is disappointingly salty and very hard, and he spits it out just in time to see movement at the edge of his olive eyes.

There are few pegasi on Ischia, and none of them up this early or prone to morning flights over this beach.

He nearly brushes it away – greeting visitors to the tropical isle is a responsibility he neither has nor wants – but then the distant shape circles back, and soon it becomes clear they’ve spotted him and mean to land.

In the dim morning light, with the wind in their favor, Pteron is only able to eliminate possibilities of who this might be. It’s too small and pale to be Gale and Eyas never visits. He nearly decides its Nashua before the horse lands. She is not too far in color from the half-lit sand and his feet, and Pteron recognizes the dun mare with a bright laugh.

“Vastra!” He calls out, lifting a wing in greeting, and then making quick work of the distance between them.

How long has it been, he wonders? Time has an odd way of passing here on the islands, Pteron has found. Quickly, but gently, not at all like the way the Forest had felt when it took a year from him. That gentle sensation has only added to the quiet sense of inevitability that Pteron experiences as a creature away of his own immortality, and it seems perfectly serendipitous that Vastra would arrive now when he very least expects it. Fate, he thinks as his smile turns bittersweet for just a moment.

She asks how he has been, and the question doesn’t elicit the sadness he has nearly come to expect. The loss of his parents had been anticipated, but still it had struck him far harder than he had expected. The damage of his own hurricane still lingers, but perhaps interaction with others will be the tides that slowly work to smooth away the damage.

“I have been worse,” Pteron answers, and though he sounds quite light-hearted, there is a edge of weariness to his voice, and he hears it as soon as the words touch the morning ear. Unaware how closely her thoughts mirror his own, Pteron falls back on old habits, deflecting attention from himself and taking comfort in familiar interactions. “You, though, seem to look better each time we meet. Have you found a Fountain of Youth where I might get my own glow?”

@[Vastra]

-- pteron --

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

His compliment had landed somewhere tender, Pteron realizes, which puzzles Pteron for the brief moment before she explains.

Pregnant, she says, and willing to trade places.

Pteron is shaking his head before he realizes it. He’d seen the little seahorses, and he’s no desire to ever experience a child popping out of his chest. Though he’s not entirely sure Vastra has the ability to make that happen, it is better to be safe than sorry. She’s kidding though, he sees, and tosses his forelock from his eyes as though that’d been the intent of his head shaking the whole time.

“I do too,” he replies with a grin of his own, a roll of his eyes suggesting that he’s aware of his own folly, and even amused by it. “Though in my case, I’ve never been anything but the father, and would prefer to keep it that way.”

@[Vastra]

-- pteron --