sweet meat in the heat; pteron

[wander]

-WANDER-

Wander has been in limbo - -
That’s what it feels like to her. A vast lingering and using up air but doing absolutely nothing, besides the bare necessities to keep herself alive. Failing that quest had changed something in her, left her a bit jagged around the edges and a bit more disillusioned than she’d ever been before.

The pale apricot girl could have found solace in her family. But her mother and father were likely off canoodling somewhere after making the latest Mandist-baby. She’d tried to visit her brother on the silver shores of some unfamiliar cove but word has spread - he rules now, sort of. Even in her corner of brilliant grassy limbo, this word has reached her little ears. 

So she thinks instead, to happier times. The kind that were ever so carefree. The kind that had him in them, usually invisible so she couldn’t see his face but she’d know him anywhere just by the sound of his voice and his grassy-colt smell. He’d always smelled of sunshine and pampas, and a little bit of what she imagined a cloud might smell like. 

Even just that little bit of remembering could bring a wistful smile to her face. But maybe today is the day to do a little less remembering and a lot more of something. Like finding him, and visiting for old times’ sake. Wander thought even a limbo-lost girl like her could probably manage that. Even if she knows they’re both a lot more grown - he’s grown and she’s grown. Less the children that they were.

This time, she decides it is perhaps appropriate that she seeks him out. Especially since his scent has faded quite a bit over the last year from the Pampas. But it’s a trail that she can still follow and so she does, right to the main kingdom that had overseen but usually left their brilliant little nook alone. She’s never been here before, at least she doesn’t think she has.

It’s hilly and green, with springs running everywhere she looked. No wonder he spent more time here, it was pretty! Her horned head bobbed in time to the rhythm of her walk, and she actually felt hopeful and a bit happier to be out of her self-imposed limbo. “Pteron,” she yelled, loud but merrily and knowing he’d know exactly who she was despite all the time that’s passed.

it feels good to be lost in the right direction

@[Pteron] just because ❤️

[Pteron]

With his parents and younger sister returned, all is right with Pteron’s world. The tobiano no longer watches the southern horizon in anticipation of their arrival. He’d not even realized how much he’d done it until he’d found himself with time to spare at the end of the day. He spends some of that time with his mother and younger sister, but Marni is still very young and Lepis grows more short-tempered the wider her belly gets. He follows his father sometimes too, learning what he can. Other times – like this afternoon – he spends alone, soaring across the hilly kingdom.

His habit is to fly until he sees something interesting that would be best explored on foot, and then descend and do so. Today is no different, though what catches his attention is not a deep canyon or an oddly shaped tree, but rather an apricot filly with a pair of familiar horns. Pteron banks sharply, changing the angle of his flight so that he can land atop of a spire of stone that he’d first meant to soar over.

“Wander!” He calls down to her, and then: “Wait there!”

He doubts that she’d have the sudden urge to climb up the rock face toward him, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. He had not folded his wings when he’d landed, and he now spreads them wide once more, jumping from the spire towards the earth. He glides to an elegant stop a few yards from Wander, grinning proudly at the perfect execution. He’d been far more clumsy the last time they’d met, and he humors the sudden desire to show off a bit.

“What brings you to Loess?” Asks the young stallion. He shakes his head a bit as he says it, clearing his olive green gaze of his flyway mane. Wander is still familiar – they’d spent too much time together as young children to be anything but – but she is also different in a myriad of ways. Taller (though still shorter than he, as she’d always been), and with a pair of horns that are no longer long and slender. They’re curling now and becoming ridged in an intriguing way, so he steps closer to touch them them with a curious muzzle.

“These are looking cool,” Pteron tells her as he draws back to meet her gaze with a smile. “Maybe they’ll be bigger than your Dad’s someday. ”

@[Wander]