09-11-2020, 09:32 PM
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The soft shaking of his head stops immediately, and it rises so that he might more squarely meet Aquaria’s gaze more squarely. His olive eyes grow dark beneath his furrowing brow, but it is not with disappointment. Pteron is confused, and his inability to fathom the why of her decision is of far more concern than the decision itself. (There is no use in dwelling on the choices made in the long distant past, Pteron knows all too well.)
Despite having teased her in their youth about the egg-laying capabilities of nereids, Pteron had never considered the genuine possibility of such a feat. When Aquaria compares it to sharks as if Pteron has any idea what a shark egg is he does his very best to act as though it’s an understandable analogy. Their worlds are very different, and Pteron has always known this. Yet there is no time to ask more, not that he ever would. What he had been told of his firstborn’s arrival, combined with a brief inquiry about the origins of his young twins has resulted in Pteron vowing to himself to never again ask about where babies come from. It’s like magic, he’d decided; he’ll never really understand how it works.
He doesn’t understand how a great many things, but one skill he has mastered is listening. He is attentive as she speaks, the furrow of his earlier frown having faded away into careful neutrality.
After she speaks, he is quiet for a long while.
“I would have stayed.” He finally says to the waves and the thin line of light at the horizon that is the last of the daylight. “And I do wish you’d told me.” As soon as he says the words he regrets them, and he is silent for a moment as he waits to see what his slip of the tongue might have cost them. Nothing, it seems after a long pause; they’re safe.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to come back.” Pteron suspects now that he was very wrong in that assumption, but he wants to be sure that she knows his intentions. “And I thought you deserved better than me, even if you did want me to come back.”
He thought he’d been doing the right thing at the time. Or at least, the closest thing to right that he could manage. (He will live forever with the guilt of leaving Halcyon without explanation).
“You still do,” he adds, even as he reaches slowly toward her, just to gently brush her cheek. “But I would like to be friends again, at the very least. Just friends even, if that is what it takes to keep seeing you.” They had been just friends before, after all, even if it had been brief. He would like more than that, of course, but he has asked too much of Aquaria before. He is more careful now, more cautious than he had been in his youth. He had been reckless with a great many things, and not the least of them had been the feelings of the mare in front of him.
“I’ve missed you,” he tells her. “And I’m sorry. For everything.”
@[Aquaria]
-- pteron --