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

[Pteron]

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

His eyes are open, but Pteron is not really watching where he is going. His body moves on autopilot, climbing and descending the last of the Loessian foothills, dodging the forest that grows thicker around him. Looking north causes a guilty twist of his belly, and this travel east feels less corrupt than going west. There’s nothing in the forest for him to break, his legs seem to know, and they finally stop in the shadows of a budding elm.

Spring winds push the branches against each other in a series of clicks, and the sweet tang of sad and fresh growth fills his nostrils. The air here is cool and the water he can hear in the distance flows rather than gurgles. Pteron releases a sigh he hadn’t meant to hold. His tongue still tastes of smoke and ashes, and the memory of his most recent attack (because what else can he call the war she wages on him?) is still fresh in his mind, even with all this walking.

So when a soft voice says ‘Hello’, he jumps far higher than he might have.

Before the pegasus hits the ground again he is invisible, a primal instinct that presents itself when least expected. At least this means he can find the speaker before they can find him, he thinks with chagrin, but the flush of embarrassment that colors his invisible face is more than enough to drown his previous emotions entirely.

It’s a little girl (a young woman, he hears Celina’s voices in his head say, you need to be more respectful), one that looks like a night sky that Aegean had once painted him. The memory, though sweet, is followed by a rush of guilt, and Pteron shakes his head a bit as he gathers himself back together. Once he has, he reappears, a pale figure in the shadowy forest.

“Aren’t you a little young to be wandering around in the forest this late at night?” He asks, telling his internal Celina that he really is concerned. If what Aodhan has said about the dead returning is true, there could be far more things going bump in the night than there seemed. And the little girl looks very small, he decides, and not like she’d put up much of a fight against someone who wanted to spirit her away. He hadn’t come to the forest to play at being a white knight, but if the armor fits…

-- pteron --

@[Desire]