you wear me out, pteron

[Pteron]

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

The green-eyed Pteron is appropriately wary of danger. Or at least, he usually is, and today he had made a mistake. How dearly will he pay for this, the pegasus wonders? There is surely fire behind that mouthful of sharp teeth, blue-white flames that would easily sear away the flesh of his piebald side, split him down to the bone in a heartbeat. The lack of eyes distracted him, naïve curiosity fostered by the general ease he experiences after a night with Aquaria.

The stranger answers him, describing a way of navigation Pteron had never considered. Sometimes he can find his nestmate by the warmth they radiate, but that is nothing like what he images this boy must see. What does heat look like? Is it white like fire? Or orange-red-yellow like fire? Maybe it is a nothing color, maybe it is like the shimmer of the horizon on a Loessian summer day. Letting his mind wander is safest in times like these, the boy has found. Letting his mind wander and staying very still. Ghaul’s scales are hard like Reia’s, and his breath is hot behind those many teeth, and he too has little care for Pteron’s personal space.

The dun takes a deep breath to hold while he stands immobile beneath the buckskin’s questing mouth, and realizes this is a mistake nearly immediately. Ghaul’s spread wings and talons elicit the proper response, Pteron’s own white wings halt their unfurling in a visible display of his hesitation and uncertainty. Interacting with a predator he does not know is far more difficult than Pteron would have ever anticipated. Does he try to appease him? Apologize? Surrender and hope the mauling is a quick one? Reia likes to be offered sex sometimes, but that’s certainly not happening with Ghaul.

Playing dead seems much more tolerable, even with the seemingly endless pain that so comes along with it. Maybe it will be a quick rip of the jugular, Pteron lets himself think, and as he empties his mind in an effort to prepare himself, his olive-eyes catch for the first time on the markings along his face. They remind him of a cold night with the universe wrapped tight around him. “I like your stars,” he tells Ghaul with a soft smile. It won’t be so bad to die thinking about those stars.

@[ghaul] 

-- pteron --