[private] i've never fallen from quite this high; aten

[Pteron]

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

Pteron does not know that Aten suspects him of violence. If he had, if he had any idea that the champagne stallion thinks him capable of harming children, the conversation that he intends to have would have been far different. In much the same way, Aten does not know that Pteron’s body is a literal shield between his wife and the rest of Beqanna, and that to Pteron the idea of inflicting even a fraction of the harm that he absorbs daily into his magically regenerating flesh makes him sick to his stomach. This morning the only sign of that is a mostly healed burn along his right flank. The wound itself it healed, but the dragon fire had been hot enough to sear him to the bone. It will take several more hours before the scar tissue smooths itself flat and hair begins to regrow, as it always eventually does. This is far from the worst he’s received.

What he has to say to Aten is very clearly not what the roan had expected, and Pteron waits out the inquisitive look and the questions that he had known would follow.

“It’s not sudden,” the dun stallion says, knowing quite well the full count of days since he had first seen the tell-tale rounding of his now wife’s belly. A full year he has waited, four seasons come and gone while the child he had not ever wanted grew ever-more independent from her mother. The arrival of spring has marked the surety that Reia will not be bearing him the son she desired, and the winged stallion is more determined now than he had been in the autumn, as well as far less distracted.

“I wish that what I am dealing with were as simple as raising a foal.” Pteron replies, and despite the seriousness of the topic, he cannot keep a smile from tugging at the edge of his mouth. He’s been successful at hiding it, Aten’s words tell him, the rest of Taiga is unaware of the monster that Pteron has saddled them with or the one that lurks in their woods. If he is successful, Pteron thinks, they never will. The relief of knowing he’s kept them safe from Reia and Wolfbane this long is short-lived though, and he soon turns back to the matter at hand.

“There is no one else I could trust Taiga with,” Pteron tells him. “And at the same time, I cannot promise Castile will approve. He might wish to make further changes to the leadership, but I do not have the time to ask him.” For the first time, the urgency of this very-long delayed meeting appears in Pteron’s words. For a moment it is there in his face too, a brief flash of concern, and then it is gone again. “Will you take the leadership, or not?”

-- pteron --

@[Aten]