"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
11-19-2019, 10:35 AM (This post was last modified: 11-22-2019, 06:41 PM by Pteron.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Slipping away after the larger seaside reunion is an easy thing.
A goodbye to new acquaintances and a murmured request to Aquaria, and soon the two of them are walking down the beach together. Perhaps it is only his imagination, but there is something that feels unsettled between them. The tobiano stallion does not enjoy fretting though, so he reaches out to the pale mare at his side. His blue mouth presses a kiss to her neck as he slows and then stops, sure that she will do the same. There had been some things that he could not say in their previous company, but alone he does not hesitate.
“I missed you,” he tells her, “It seems silly, I know; we’ve gone longer without seeing each other before.”
It’s easy to forget the rest of the world when he stands with her in paradise, and Pteron reaches forward to brush the pearlescent scales of her cheek. It is easy to forget that he is weak and broken when he sees himself in the mirror of her perfect eyes, it’s so easy to let himself believe that he is that reflected man. The pressing weight of the rest of the world crumbles into the sand and is blown away by the tropical breeze.
“I hear that kelp is your favorite food,” Pteron continues, lest he ruin this perfect afternoon with the confession that hovers at the edge of his tongue. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring any this trip, but I won’t return empty-handed next time.” Though his olive eyes dance and his blue mouth turns up in smile, he means this. The thought of her delight is intoxicating, and he leans closer for the joy of her nearness as well as to whisper: “Though you’ll probably have to show me exactly what a kelp is, first.”
The gathering is a pleasant one, all lighthearted banter and how d'you do's. It's easy to be happy when the company is so vibrant. Still she found her eyes drifting to him when she hoped he was looking the other way. What she was hoping to find, even the sea mare didn't know. Some sign or signal, some acknowledgment of what had transpired between them?
He acted as carefree as ever, though, and she began to feel guilty for not following suite so wholeheartedly. That was the problem though, wasn't it? She'd let him talk her into giving him everything. Body and soul, she longed for the pegasus, only to realize that her body might be all he wanted. She'd teased, told him not to fall in love with her. She only wished she'd know how easy that would be for him.
He called her away when the gathering dispersed, and she followed him without a second thought. She'd follow him anyway, if he asked sweetly enough. When they are far enough up the beach, his words fall like darts to her heart, each one a hopeful thing even as it draws blood.
He missed her. His kiss set fire to the skin it brushed, light as his feathers. So easy it was for him, to bring the world down into a focus of two. A magic more powerful than anything she herself wielded, it seemed. He'd shown her the stars, and she wanted to show him things equally beautiful. "I missed you too," she admitted, nuzzling the softness of his jaw despite herself.
He is her friend before all else, and she can see the worry hanging from him though he tries to brush it away. He seems unwilling to delve into it, however, and so she lets the subject spin to something lighter. She made a mental note to nip Aodhán next time they crossed paths, for where else would Pteron have gotten his information? But that would be later. The shifter and Eva had spilt off, clearly intent on their own piece of paradise.
A smile, soft and less certain than usual graced her lips. He is so considerate, so kind, and the thought of him pulling off the feat suggested really did lighten her heart. "I'll be very impressed if you manage that. It would mean you've gotten much better at swimming than I remember you being." Her throat tightened as he leaned closer, and almost instinctively she stepped away. The rejection is softened, she hoped, by her turning it into simply trotting before him, her original destination in mind.
"Do you... So do you want to see where I live? Not just Ischia, but my own piece of it when I'm ashore?" She asked, glancing back to see if he would follow. Many nights she preferred to sleep beneath the waves, nestled in a coral grotto that felt as safe as any place she could imagine on land. But some nights, many more since the winter, she had been laying out on the warm beach as the sun drifted beneath the horizon, and counted the stars as they emerged, the memory of him whispering their names into her ear as she drifted to sleep filling her mind.
11-19-2019, 12:51 PM (This post was last modified: 11-19-2019, 07:32 PM by Pteron.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
I missed you too, she tells him, and Pteron feels the last of his worry sink into the sand. He had not regretted their night together for a single moment. Yet he knows the guilt he had experienced after his first time, and only realizes now that he had feared Aquaria might feel the same. But she says she has missed him, and Pteron had not missed Reia for a single moment. Aquaria tucks the softness of her nose beneath his jaw, and Pteron hums contentedly, smiling against the fin beside her ear before she pulls away.
Pteron is still smiling fondly, though it soften at the lack of certainty in her own expression. Had he said something wrong, offering to bring her kelp? Aodhan had seemed genuine when sharing that it was her favorite, Pteron is sure. Why would Aquaria not want him to bring her gifts, to prove to her that she is special and important and valued? The worry rises up again from the sand, as rough and uncomfortable in his belly as real sand is. Her answer tells him that kelp can be found in the water, deeper than a land and sky dwelling creature than he might reach, but even that is not an answer.
The nereid is moving ahead before he can ask, trotting away with a twitch in her hips that sends her finned tail swaying. Is she throwing him off-kilter on purpose, he wonders? Making him doubtful, uncertain? No, no, that is not like Aquaria. He cannot imagine malice in her heart, or anywhere in her, for that matter. And he certainly does take a good look at her as she trots ahead of him, remembering her second promise, the one she’s not yet fulfilled to satisfaction.
She looks back – catching him staring, he is certain – but Pteron is already smiling at the memory, and he nods agreeably before he even really processes what she has offered. Once he has, the nod becomes more enthused. He has always pictured her beneath the waves when he is not present, especially after the way her bright scales had faded after time away from the sea. “I want to see every piece of you,” he tells her truthfully, picking up his own pace so he might move more evenly beside her. He reaches out toward her again without thought, thinking only of the salty-sweet taste of her, but his lips pause a breath away, and suddenly he pulls up short.
“Aquaria,” he says in the space that grows between them, space that he hopes will not continue to expand. “Have I done something?”
She should keep him at a distance. She knows this, yet it is so difficult to cling to when he stands so near. The scent of pine and cold mountain air lingers about him, and she could catch whisps of it every time he passed close. So different from the scents she had grown accustomed to on the island. The briny salt water air, the fruit and flowers and warm sand, odors she carried on her own skin. The sky and the sea, and she wanted to watch them combine.
She moves because she feels him in her bones. He's a hurricane, the way he moved her, and she a little fish in the sea. Afraid to dive deeper, afraid to rise and let the wind catch her. So she moved on, hearing him catch up and match his longer legs to her stride. He wants to see every piece of her, and she remembered the promises drawn from their lips beneath his trees. "And you shall, my nightingale." She replied, knowing she couldn't deny him.
She only made it a few paces beyond him. Hearing her name on his tongue was the most beautiful, heartbreaking music. Heartbreaking, because she realizes that she's hurt him, somehow. She had been trying so hard to keep herself out of harms way, to keep up appearances. She should have known better. He was her friend, after all, and she should have realized he would read her better than that.
"Oh Pteron," she circled back to his side, eyes a glossier than usual. "No, darling, you haven't done anything. I'm just distracted, is all." Her neck twined with his, her head tucked against his shoulder. He was warm and solid, her hurricane and her anchor. And she'd been so caught up in her self that she hadn't realized he might be dealing with his own weight.
She kisses a path along the muscle of his neck, burying her muzzle in the wind whipped tangles of his mane. "Follow me. And I'll make us both forget our woes." The fine blue hair that rimmed his ear tickled her lips, and she kissed there too. Every inch of him she would kiss until she had undone whatever sadness sat inside him. Maybe it would be enough to undo her own.
The path to her den was not hard trodden, a faint sandy trail that wound through the jungle. It was not a long walk, even if it wasn't direct. She glanced back every so often, watching the shadows slide over his face and back. He looked so perfect in the green filtered light. Like one of the many parrots that filled Ischia's skies.
At last the trees released them into her secret cove. Rocky arms stretched on both sides to encompass a minute cove, the sand a pale ribbon edging the clear water that lapped near. Her collection of treasures the ocean had given her dotted the sand in swirling patterns. "Well. This is it." She shrugged, smiling back at the winged stallion she had brought here. This was her sanctuary, her safe harbor. The water beckoned and she answered, walking until the warm brine stroked her belly. "Come here." It was a softly spoken command, but a command nonetheless.
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Her use of an endearment adds another layer to his concern, one that is not assuaged by the glossiness of her violet eyes or the reassurance that she is just distracted. She calls him darling, and that helps a little, as does the way she tucks herself against him. It’s the kisses that finally push it from his mind. Not just the thrill of them (though that is in no short supply, thrumming through his veins) but rather that she gives them freely, a reassurance that it is not truly his touch that she flinches away from. He reads into her words – and her lack of them – far more than is wise, attempting to draw logic from the kisses she presses against his neck and face. He almost has the message, he thinks.
And then she promises to make them forget their woes and he is tossed once more back into uncertain seas. Their woes? Hers? But she’d just said she was distracted, not upset. Aquaria seems determined to deny him a real answer, but she moves to lead him away, and rather than press the issue he follows willingly. It is not in his nature to leave things entirely alone though, and he lets his shoulder brush against her hip now and again as they walk, meeting her eyes squarely when she looks back with an innocence so pure as to be practiced.
They move away from the beach, and the trail she leads them down is not one that Pteron would even recognize as a path. His olive eyes are drawn by the foliage, deep greens and emeralds, with flowers that he thinks might take even Noah by surprise. They’d surely wilt if he plucked one, the tobiano thinks, but he will have to tell the roan woman – who he thinks of like an aunt – about these hidden jewels in the Ischian jungle. When the trees open up at last, it is to another beach, this one far narrower than the bright white sands they have left behind.
A semi-circle of stones encircle the water, and he wonders if they are the cause of the smaller waves here than on the other beach. Pteron knows very little about the ocean other than that it is where Aquaria belongs, but he has no doubt that these designs on the beach are made of treasures from below the waves. He has no name for most of them, but the swirl of the designs is pleasing to the eye, and he finds that he is smiling as he looks at them without really knowing why. He glances up to tell Aquaria this, but the pale mare is not where he had last seen her. Instead she is out in the water, as pale and delicate as though she is a sculpture of sand come to life.
Pteron realizes as he stands on the shore at looks out at her that he’s never seen her like this: himself on dry land and her out in her element. ‘Come here,’ she commands, and Pteron obeys. Sunlight glitters on the water and on her bright scales, and the dun stallion’s eyes flick down the shimmering cascade of the fins that make up her mane and tail. She is a glorious thing, beauty and the sea combined.
“I like when you call me ‘darling’,” he tells her as he comes near enough to touch. But he doesn’t reach out, even though Pteron fears she might see him vibrate from the restraint it requires. “But I like it more when you are honest with me.” He inches closer in the water, unable to resist the lure that he is not even sure she means to draw him in with.
“I want you to be happy, little fish, not just distracted.” Coming closer was a mistake, because now he can see the glitter of each individual scale and he worries that perhaps he has forgotten how they feel. Just a little reminder, he lets himself think as he touches her cheek gently. But that leads to another thing, and another, and then he is pressing a kiss just below her scarlet starfish and asking: “Tell me what I can do to make you happy.”
He is beautiful on her shore. The way the sunlight strikes him brings rich color from his blue dun marks, makes his feathers and coat like polished stone. His little smile on his lips is a sweet one as he takes in the myriad patterns she'd spent so many days laying into the sand. She wants to remember him, just like this. Looking so very much like he belonged where he stood.
The spell breaks when his eyes moved to her, where the water laps at her belly in a meditative rhythm. He is more than a figment of her imagination, more than a passing stranger to smile at and move on from by the next day. He's Pteron, and her traitorous heart couldn't build walls high enough to keep him out. That stupid promise they had made, it had seemed like the safest bet at the time. Idiot girl, she hadn't realized just how alive his touch would make her, just how much like drowning it was to have him gone.
That was what it felt like to watch him heed her call. Drowning in the thin air. She wanted to give him what she knew was expected. To uphold her part of the deal. It was what she'd intended every moment from the moment they'd parted in Taiga to that one they were suspended in now. But now. Now he was too close, and she realized that to touch him would hurt as much as it healed.
She could have laughed it off, if he had stopped talking. If he hadn't asked for her honesty. It was the one thing that she knew would ruin all. The space between them dwindled, filled with his tender, well meaning words. And a kiss, one that ties her insides in knots when he presses it to her skin. Silent tear tracks glitter on her cheeks, and she quivered with need and want and every unspoken thing.
"I'm sorry," she whispers at last, leaning into the warmth of his touch as if it might be the last time. "I've broken a promise, you see." She gave a hiccuping laugh, a wet bubbling thing. "I thought it would be easy to keep, but you're so damn wonderful, Pteron. I guess I should have known better than to hope a bird could love a fish... or to think that I could keep myself from loving you." She bit off the last part, knowing it was the real betrayal. She wanted him, and she wanted him to want her in the same way. It was a stupid game she'd agreed to play and she'd been playing for higher stakes than originally planned.
A hard swallow pushed through her throat, as she addressed him while looking at the sea. "Can we just pretend. Just for a little while. That you love me like I love you. I won't ask anything of you again." She blinked rapidly, fighting against the misery at war inside her. There was no way to win that she could see. More than anything, she wanted him to hold her, to tell her she hadn't ruined everything. But perhaps it was too much it ask.
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Pteron asks her to be honest. He knows that doing so makes him a hypocrite, and foolishly thinks that he is prepared for the weight of that. And he might have been, were it not for what she confesses.
Unrequited love, she admits and Pteron watches his wide-eyed reflection in her tear-filled violet eyes without a word. Aquaria had made him promise, he realizes, but had not promised the same thing herself. She’d only sworn to not ask him to settle down. Her answer cements his earlier fear, the fear that their night together has changed the way she thinks of them. It had changed Pteron’s view as well, but his own battered heart is carved so deeply with another’s name that it has never even been involved. Aquaria had gone from a friend - a best friend - to something far more intimate. A lover, he thinks, but one that he does not love.
Guilt – he has ruined them – rises quicker than he expects.
It sours his chest, and he whispers “I’m sorry,” over and over, and tentatively brushes the tears from her pale cheeks. He has done this, he is why Aquaria cries. His fault. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I didn’t mean…” But it doesn’t matter that he hadn’t meant to do this, and he should have known better the night she came to Taiga. Yet even as Pteron berates himself, he feels the warmth of her pearly cheek beneath his careful lips. His blood is still hot for her, even as she cries in front of him, and the realization sickens him nearly worse than the guilt. She cries, and he thinks of himself.
Pteron draws back, the still water grown choppy with the abruptness of his movements. Space between them, he is thinking, she deserves space. But that is not what she asks for. Aquaria requests the very opposite, and he cannot hide turbulence that writhes within him. His raised head, lips still damp with her tears, shakes slowly back and forth. The right answer is no. He knows that. Aquaria knows it too. It is, without a doubt, best for them to face the reality of what has become of their friendship.
And yet…
The stallion moves closer. He kisses her on the mouth, as sweet and gentle as their first time. She tastes even more like the ocean here in her element, and he closes his eyes, bending his head so that their heads touch, poll to nose down the whole length of them.
“My heart is not mine to give,” he tells her, barely loud enough to be heard over the waves. But anything else you ask of me,” A second tender kiss comes as he tilts his head away, followed by a quiet murmur against her ear, “Anything at all, is yours. You are beautiful,” a third kiss on the bridge of her nose, “and clever,” a fourth between her eyes. “And my very dearest little fish. I will do anything to make you happy.”
Emotion clamors for attention behind her beast bone, her heart pounding viciously. That seems so wrong for her heart to be thundering when it feels as though it should be laying shattered beneath his hooves. Not enough not enough not enough, that's all it says, over and over until her head spins with the mantra.
And he seemed so clueless, so utterly unaware. That she felt anything deeper than friendship seemed to have taken him by surprise, when she felt that her own deeper feelings had been sitting beneath translucent skin, for anyone to see. He had taken her innocence and her heart all at once, and now she felt herself reeling at the loss. His stammered apology falls on ears that can hardly process the words, that can't make sense of what he's trying to apologize for.
The sky toned stallion pressed close at her bidding, and she wished his kisses were enough to erase the tears still streaming from her. Little drops of the sea, it felt like, the salt a reminder of who she was when nothing else made sense.
She is hurting, cut to the depths of her soul, and yet she hated to see anything like pain in his beautiful eyes. If only she could lose herself in his kisses as she has before. There is something tickling at the back of her mind, the knowledge of why he can't love her. There's someone else. His heart isn't his to give because it's already been given, and not to her.
The selfish piece of her mind wants to not care, to take what he offers and to try and let it be enough. To be happy with what she was given because it was all she would get. But that was not love. She could bear her feelings for him if they stayed inside, she could bear touch and physical affection if there was no deep emotion behind it. But to have both with Pteron, and to have it all mean nothing to him. That she couldn't stand.
His touch was soft and full of regret, and she let him do it because it helped him. At the last kiss, she pulled away, tears drying on the scales of her cheeks but no longer being replaced by fresh ones. Her head shook, and the words she knew needed saying sat heavy on her tongue. "Please. Please don't say that, Pteron. If I'm not the one for you... Please don't offer me the rope to hang myself by. You love someone else. They are the luckiest horse alive, and I dearly hope they know that."
Her girlish dreams, half born, lay in fragments all around her. She had shared her heart and felt his words like a cruel consolation prize in return. They'd gone too far, hadn't they? Too far to get back to the way they'd been before the winter had seen them together. She had felt special, adored. Now all that remained was a sickening sense of being used, and that he was regretting using up a favorite toy.
She stepped a little deeper into the suddenly turbulent water, wanting nothing more than to dive beneath the waves and lick her wounds. But she couldn't leave things the way they were. It would be a cruelty she found too harsh to inflict. "I am thankful, that I got even a piece of you. Your friendship has been a treasure to me." The cool water embraced her as she swayed lightly in its hold. The ocean wouldn't let her drown.
"Whoever holds your heart? I hope they've given you theirs in turn. This is not a feeling I would wish on anyone. You least of all." She smiled joylessly. The day that had started with such promise now felt drained of any beauty it had held. Stormclouds seemed more fitting to her mood.
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
There are no fresh tears on her face when she draws back to look at him, and Pteron meets her violet gaze steadily, even if with uncertainty. She does not cry, but he has said the wrong thing again. This time, his words have not made her cry, but the weariness in her expression is no better. The pleading in her eyes when she tells him not to offer what she has just asked of him, it twists all up into knots. Whatever he does, it is wrong. How have they come to this? A week ago – an hour even – the thought of her had filled him with joy, and now there is guilt, and regret, and sadness.
She tells him that the one who holds his heart is the luckiest horse alive, and Pteron doesn’t hide the flinch.
Aquaria is not done yet though; thanks him for his friendship like it is a thing that has ended. Pteron doesn’t realize he is closing the space between them that she has put there, nor that he follow her into waters that lap at his chest now rather than his belly. She can’t mean to end them like this, she can’t. Pteron can’t let her. A piece of him, that is what she thinks he has given her, and she is not wrong. There are many pieces to him these days, shattered, broken little bits. Aquaria had gotten the least battered of them, the one that laughs and smiles and can forget that he is not loved the way he wants to be.
He had used her, the boy realizes, he had let her love him in the way that he knows Aegean would not. And he had loved her back, not in the way she wanted but in the only way he really could. She deserves better, just like Aegean does. They all deserve something better than what he can offer them, and the realization is only made more bitter.
“They have not.” Pteron says, his dark eyes tracing the smile that does not nearly reach her eyes. “They have not, but I am able to forget that here, with you.” The boy reaches out, presses his cheek against hers with affection. Not with hunger, or with desire, but just to touch, to remind himself that she is real and here and hurting – and that he has done it because he is too weak to face reality. “You make everything better, and I have been selfish. So selfish, to use our friendship like this.” The words are easier to say here, where he does not have to watch her reaction. That, too, is unfair of him, and he pulls back to meet her gaze.
She is so lovely; he forgets this every time that he looks away and back again. His breath catches in throat, and he traces the lines of her face. Beneath that glamour is Aquaria, he knows, the girl who had come to find him in the woods. That night, he’d taken something that was not his to take, and the aftermath has made a wreck of them. He should regret it, he knows, and some part of him does writhe with guilt. But there is more than remorse at the memory, and when she had asked him to pretend, one last time, he had begun to think that perhaps there was more than regret for her as well.
“I don’t want you to hang yourself with it,” he says, referring to the rope that she said he offers her, “But I swear I mean it. Tell me what you want. Tell me how to fix this.”
He reacts to her words unexpectedly, as if she had drawn darts of her own against him. The horizon is a blue on blue line, the water as blue as his feathers where it touched the sky. The water between them ripples, pushes lightly against her shoulder and hip. It's a precursor to the body she knows rests inches away and coming closer.
What effect she's had on him she isn't certain. More so she is afraid to look and see. They had done nothing but disappoint each other, it seemed, and she was tired of the distress weighing both of them down. This wasn't who they were, was it? This was not the freedom they both loved. How much of that was her fault?
She is about to let her emotions carry her away. Or the ocean, more the the point. When she is stopped by the lightest touch. His cheek against hers, asking nothing of her except that she be there. Her neck twisted to face her friend, eyes meeting his.
So they knew the same pain, then. They were on the same side of a terrible game and neither of them seemed to be winning it. Their pieces didn't match, but they were playing together. And then she hears what she feels like might be enough, or close enough. That he has been made aware of what's changed between them and his own part in it. She is still his little fish.
He draws back, and it is then she realizes that she has it in her to miss the space he fills. It would be easy to hate anyone else, but Pteron is not just anyone. He's her best friend and her confidant and yes, her sometimes lover. And she cannot let that space stand empty. Maybe she is weak too. It does not stop her from closing the space between, and fitting her body against his.
The water sloshes against their sides, and with a quiet wanting, she lets it rise over them in a thin dome over their heads. "I want to forget hurting. And I want you to forget your hurt." She smiled softly, earnest and aching. The nereid moved toward the horizon, and with her moves their spinning orb of salt water. "Come on. I've been promising you this since we met." She invited, nodding toward the open sea past the stony harbor of her cove.
Her lips fell to the curve of his nose, her silent forgiveness. "Right now?" A trace of her reckless grin resurfaced. "Right now, I want you to trust me with everything you have. Let me show you my world." She kissed his cheek, hoping that for the day at least, they could put this behind them. If it was in her power to give him happiness, it would forever be beyond her to deny him.
