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

[Pteron]

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

There is quite a bit of wordless bewilderment between them – Pteron’s at the idea of Desire’s illusions and Desire’s at Pteron’s lack of understanding. There are a great many things that the dun stallion doesn’t understand, and while this might be the first time that someone younger considers him clueless, there is little chance that it will be the last. At least she does explain, telling him that she can cast the illusion of who or what someone might what. Pteron frowns – in consideration and thought, not dislike – and puzzles over the idea of her gift.

“How do you know if it works?” He asks curiously. “Do you see yourself as others see you?”

She asks what Taiga is like, if it is like the forest around them, and Pteron shakes his head with a laugh.

“Only in that there are trees,” the stallion tells her, “In every other way it is different. The trees are all redwoods, wider than many horses nose to tail. The trunks are red, like the soil of Loess. You can hardly see the sky for the branches, but there are meadows too, and we have two shorelines. In summer and fall, its warm enough to swim, but any other season it feels like you might as well swim off Icicle Isle.”

Pteron has lived in Taiga for most of his life, he realizes. It’s a strange feeling, he thinks, and pulls his wings unconsciously more closely to his sides. They are not of much use in the trees, after all.

That she hasn’t seen her mother in ‘a while’ seems strange to him, but perhaps the fact that he has lived with his parents for nearly all his life would seem equally odd to Desire. It’s not as if he knows where Wolfbane or Lepis are either, other than that they are not in Taiga anymore. But then, he is nearly seven years old, and she is still quite small. The black-eyed filly does not seem very inclined to help him help her, and he does emit a quiet sigh of frustration.

-- pteron --

@[Desire]