05-23-2020, 08:13 AM
----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Still, there are many things that he might teach the boy. He even finds himself considering them. Had Aquaria let Halcyon keep the skeleton that he’d pieced together? Bones were strangely plentiful on the isle of Ischia, bleached by the sun and salt so that their age was impossible to tell. Pteron has convinced himself they were carried there from the Beach. The skeleton had uneven legs, but Pteron had still been impressed with what Halcyon had done. He’s brought the final few bits of the tail, little bones that he knows exist only because he’d watched them grow back together after a particularly nasty fall. Anatomy is the most important lesson.
Does he have the right to teach it to Halcyon?
The guilt returns when the tiger speaks again, and Pteron does not need an accusation to feel it.
But he cannot bring himself to dim the prideful smile on Halcyons’ face. In truth, Pteron is proud as well. Aquaria was excellent choice for a leader, and he is certain she does well. “Good for her,” he replies, “I am sure she is kept busy with that, so...” here he trails off, but there is a lightness in his tone, and a teasing glint in his olive eyes before he continues, “perhaps you are in need of a mentor after all. I have little else on my plate.” He is smiling readily by the end, nearly eager to tell the boy of Aegean and the children, ensure that they too are welcome, when Halcyon tells him who Cormorant was.
His little brother? Born to Aquaria?
In his youth, Pteron had been jealous of Halcyon. Jealous of him and of his unknown father. Jealous until Aquaria told him that the cub was a founding, a gift from the ocean. That Aquaria had taken another lover had felt wrong, even though he knew the emotion was irrational. Pteron’s time with the nereid was spent without his wife’s knowledge; he had no right to jealously. As he has grown older, he has come to terms with that emotion, has learned from his moonglow lover that jealously has no place in love. He’s even put that into practice, dallying now and again with lovers that know their time is fleeting and will last no longer than the night. No jealousy.
And yet. Jealously is easier than the possibility that Cormorant is his, that Aquaria might have borne him a child and never even told him. She would never do that. Who had she been with, he wonders, and so soon after she had sent him away?! Had that lover played tag with Halcyon too, used his wings to give the fish in the water a false sense of safety so that the tiger might more easily catch them in the shallows? He clearly hadn’t offered to teach Halcyon to fight, and that at least soothes some of the envy. It is different, he finds, the jealously of sharing a lover a pain far less than having missed out on Halcyon’s life.
Pteron hadn’t realized until this very moment how much he considers the boy his son, regardless of the blood they do not share.
“Of course I will,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. He smiles still though, proud and paternal, and reaches out for another embrace. “Nothing would make me happier.”
@Halcyon]
-- pteron --