02-08-2020, 03:44 PM
----------------kiss me until i can't speak
“Taiga is not my home anymore.” The calmness in his response to her irate snarl is not unusual, but the words surely are. He has always made an effort to distract her in the past, to soothe her displeasure before it erupts. Pteron had bent over backwards to keep his wife happy in the past, keeping his promise to be faithful, ensuring the safety of his former lovers by cutting them off entirely, being as good a father as he knows how, staying in Taiga.
Yet it had never been enough for Reia. It never would.
The day he had realized that was the day he left Taiga, the very last day of autumn. That certainty had solidified like the ice that winter, and Pteron’s regard for his marriage and the needs of his wife grow smaller as spring grows warmer. Ischia is far preferable to Taiga, and while his wife exaggerates her claim that he spends more time away, he does wish it were true. Aquaria tells him he must face his dragons at every visit, but it has been so much simpler to avoid Reia instead.
How long might he have continued, playing leader and husband and father in Taiga and only truly being himself in Ischia?
There is no way of knowing, and there will never be. This chance encounter, after the one the day before with Aten, has finally put an end to it.
“We’re done.” Just two words, but saying them aloud feels like shaking the weight of the Mountain off his shoulders. She threatens to hunt them down; hunt Aquaria down, he suspects, for it is the scent of her embrace that has soaked so deeply into his skewbald skin. Pteron takes a breath, watching the sneer distort her otherwise beautiful face. Pteron catches himself marveling, once again, at how well the monster hides within. Once more, he glances to the woods, but there is no one else nearby. This is what he had asked Aten for, he reminds himself. Time to deal with his wife.
“I have resigned leadership of Taiga. I will be gone by nightfall, and I will not be returning.” Short, firm, to the point. He’s practiced a dozen times. He’d even briefly woken Halcyon with his quiet mutterings the night before, but Pteron had soothed the boy back to sleep. “I would like to take Adarra with me, but if you will not allow that I would like at least to be able to visit her.” The demands he makes will be unacceptable to her, he suspects, just like most of the things that he has done, but he makes them anyway.
“What will that take?” He finishes, knowing that it is well past time to brace himself for her fury and instead forcing himself to be still. Destroying him is probably what it will take, Pteron knows, but they are both aware that doing so permanently is impossible, at least for Reia.
-- pteron --
@[Reia]