[private] i've never fallen from quite this high; Ruthless

[Pteron]

finger trips across my cheek----------------
----------------kiss me until i can't speak

Pteron knows that there are some Taigans who live in the deep woods, who keep to the shadows and out of conversation with anyone but their own kind. He sees them occasionally, most often from a distance, and so coming across a stranger who lives within his redwood home is not as disturbing as it might be in another land. But this girl is bright and cheerful and apologetic, rather unlike the Shades, who are as dark as the shadows of the thickest woods.

She’s new, the golden girl tells him; she’s only been here a few months.

Has he really been so distracted that someone new has come to the woods and he’s not come across them for months? The possibility is an uncomfortable one, but it is difficult to frown in the presence of such youthful enthusiasm, and Pteron finds himself smiling despite himself.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he tells her, “I just couldn’t see you through the mist.”

Now that he can see her, the dun stallion’s olive eyes flick curiously across her wings, categorizing her as young and healthy and already beginning to smell more of Taiga than anywhere else. A few months she’s been here, Ruthless had said, and though she is a child she’s older than that – so she wasn’t born here. Pteron knows that Izora Lethia is fond of bringing in foundlings, and wonders if perhaps that is how young Ruthless had come to live among the trees.

“I’m Pteron,” the stallion adds, and then asks: “And how have you liked living here so far?”

-- pteron --

@[Ruthless]