[private] it's all gone with the wind

[Pteron]

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

With his large feathered wings, Pteron is not often found deep in the waters of Ischia. He prefers to wander the warm shallows and the open beaches when he has time, and in Ischia he always has time.

This morning he walks atop the white sand, a faint sheen of sweat all but dried from the pale and white of his skin. As is habit, the broad white wings that he wears to either side of his tobiano figure are visually absent, hidden by the carefully practiced layer of invisibility that he lays over them. His blue-green mane hangs across his face as he meanders along the shore, though he tosses it behind one matching dun ear when he sees someone farther up the beach. Though Pteron no longer worries about things like guarding and patrolling, he does run (and walk) this perfectly straight section of beach nearly every day, and he has never before seen that foal down at the water or the mare that follows it.

Never seen her here he corrects the thought as he draws near, but the chestnut mare is not a stranger.

“Lilliana,” he replies with a polite smile, and then glances once more at the water near the boy to be sure it remains clear. Old habits die hard, even with children that are not his own, and the pale pegasus knows the dangers that once lurked in Ischian waters. The smile he wears is neutral, and it fades into something that settles just above benign, which when paired with the casual way he stands, suggested a sense of ease that has all but seeped into his bones. In Taiga, he had been ever-ready, ever-watchful, but there is none of that here.

“I came here a few years ago,” Pteron tells her, having lost count of the exact number (why bother keeping track, when time never truly seems to pass?). “Aquaria’s allowed me to train our sons and the other children of the island.” Pteron does not specify what he trains them in; they both know that of his few skills, his best is battle. His second best, he likes to think, is parenting.

The boy down at the water is Lilliana’s, but the other parent (if there even were one; all things are possible with magic) is not his own father, and Pteron wonder if it belongs to the Dragon King like her last two. He hopes so; Leilan has always seemed a rather cheerful fellow to Pteron, if perhaps a bit abrasive. The chestnut mare he remembers could do with a bit of cheering.

“Are you here to see the Dame?” The stallion asks, referring to the nereid he’d named earlier by her honorific. He’s never been quite sure how to refer to Aquaria to others, but he is ever proud of her and her capabilities, so he most often defaults to the title. That seems especially safe here, given the history of romantic and political entanglements. Still, Pteron adds: “Nash was here not terribly long ago. He looked tall.” He’d looked like an adult, Pteron thinks, but it feels strange to say as much. Sometimes Pteron himself does not feel wholly grown-up, for all that he’s nearly a score of years under his belt.

@[Lilliana]

-- pteron --