[private] ive never fallen from quite this high | aegean

[Pteron]

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

Overhead, the sky grows dark. Pteron’s journey continues, and he loses count of the steps he has taken and the ridges he has climbed. He could be halfway to the Hyaline lake or nearly there; the trail is not a familiar one and he has no way to measure distance on foot. He has never been limited in this way before. It is strange, but it allows the dun stallion time to think.

Taiga falls further from his thoughts, and with it the offer of the rough-faced mare and the curious swell to Lilliana’s sides. Those things are unimportant.

Blue fades to red in the sky overhead, and later still sunset bleeds into blackness. Distant stars blink overhead, and Pteron pauses now and then to look up at them. Many are familiar, though placed differently than he’s grown used to seeing this time of year. The moon is little more than a crescent, and Pteron is grateful that the promise of snow was a delicate flurry rather than a winter storm. The wind died with the sun, and so the flakes drift down slowly. By dawn they will blanket the forest floor, but tonight they only add a glimmer to the path along which Pteron travels.

The glitter a little more brightly, and it takes him a moment to realize it. The moment he does, stars crash to the earth around him, a shattering illusion. Pteron blinks his olive eyes against the brightness. When he does, Aegean is standing in front of him.

This time, for the first time, the antlered stallion is just as Pteron remembers him. Aegean is as perfect as at their last meeting, pristine and ethereal in the soft glow of his own light. Pteron smiles, and it is as relieved as it is joyful. The amethyst-eyed stallion is unharmed; his worry had been in vain. Unharmed, but is he happy? Pteron had wished that for him despite their last conversation a year ago, and his olive gaze flicker across the familiar face in an effort to find it.

“It’s me,” he answers pointlessly, too busy drinking in the sight of Aegean unharmed to think of something clever. “I missed you,” he says instead of something charming.

@[aegean]

-- pteron --