[private] you've set my heart on fire, pteron

[Pteron]

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

It’s not really his place to answer that flippant question, Pteron decides. The things that go bump in the night – and the day – are not a lesson that he is responsible for, and Pteron is suddenly quite grateful. Grateful, yes, but also reminded that he will be responsible for teaching someone that. Reia is unlikely to teach their child an appropriate respect of danger; Pteron often doubts the golden dragon feels fear at all. But that is a worry for the future, Pteron reminds himself, today he is free of anything but the warmth of his recent memories and the small burden that is this young child who he needs to escort home.

Illusions are her talent, the star-girl tells him, and Pteron’s blue head nods slowly. He does know about illusions, enough that he is smiling at the reminder of his favorite weaver, but that slips away at the addendum of love.

“Love illusions?” he repeats, both intrigued by that ability as well as reluctant to hear more detail about whatever it is that Stave can do. He decides, in the space of a heartbeat, that he’d rather not meet this Stave. Her matter-of-fact assessment of him leaves Pteron blinking quietly a moment, feeling both somehow accused as well as impressed. She is from Pangea, she says, and how fitting. Surely a child of Carnage then, knowing a creature that can manipulate the dead, living among monsters. He’s still dubious she can protect herself with love illusions, whatever those are, but at least she is sure to have someone looking out for her, who would notice if she were missing or in danger.

“I’m from Taiga,” he tells her, and then: “Does your mother know you’re out wandering this late at night?” Children are prone to distraction, he knows, to skirting around trouble. But despite his reluctance to actually name what dangers might lurk in the woods at night, he is still unwilling to just leave her to them.

-- pteron --

@[Desire]