"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
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
He opens his eyes slowly against the brightness of the morning sun. Though the branches overhead are numerous they are winter bare and provide little shade, save the Norway spruce that they rest directly under. Pteron does his best to remain still, not wishing to disturb the pale head that rests across his back. There are few positions comfortable for them both at this stage of Aegean’s pregnancy, but Pteron does not hesitate to offer himself as a pillow even if that means his own sleep is more fitful. He is not the one growing a child, not the one kicked from the insides by many strong little feet.
Pteron hopes there are twins, though he’s not yet admitted this to Aegean. Even one child is a heavy responsibility; wishing for two seems like wishing for the moon.
He did get the moon though, Pteron thinks with a sleepy smile. Moving carefully, he touches his lips to his lover’s glowing white neck, tucks away a lock of the impossibly pale hair behind the base of strong brown antlers. He smiles as he presses one last kiss to Aegean’s cheek, and then turns to lift his face to the weak warmth of the rising sun.
He waits until he feels the other stallion shift against him before he moves again, having lost track of how long that might have been, dozing off himself.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” He says warmly but without drawing closer, allowing Aegean the space to stretch however he might wish. Sometimes the child shifts within him while he sleeps, Pteron knows, and wonders once more how long it might be before it arrives. He is eager, and turns so that he might press his forehead against the other’s wide belly. “You though, stay asleep. Let your Dad have some rest.” Smiling, he meets Aegean’s amethyst eyes, marveling at the way they sparkle in the sunlight.
“I think we should go to the West,” says the dun pegasus. “It’s warm, and I heard your mothers are in Tephra,” he continues, “Or at least so your Uncle says.” The thought of Svedka elicits an amused smile that Pteron doesn’t hide. “We could settle down,” he says teasingly, “let the little one meet its grandmothers.”
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean does not question the magic that makes this possible. He has never questioned such things. He was born into the world, sheltered and ushered by dreams. He was given a death sentence and then the immortality to outweigh it and, later, when the word began to form into concrete reality around him, he was gifted the ability to bend it to his whim. That his conjurings are merely illusions painted against that concrete matters little to him. They are his truth and he lives within the whimsy of them daily.
So the fact that the world has once again bent to dreams, giving him back Pteron and then providing him with the option of carrying their children, does not surprise him in the least.
It is the natural evolution of his life.
He stirs gently when he feels Pteron’s lips against the curve of his neck and his own lips tilt upward in the corner. It is a dreamy smile, Aegean still trapped within the gossamer of his imaginings, and he does not yet open his purple eyes to pull himself from it completely. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat as he stretches slightly, feeling the weight of their children sink deep within him. It is uncomfortable, but not so much that he regrets it. After all, it is just a temporary discomfort before so much joy.
“Good morning,” he finally responds, his voice deeper than usual, unsticking from his throat like honey. When he does open his eyes, they are clear and soft as they take in the handsome lines of Pteron. He traces over the angles and curves gently, studying them as he does every morning. “You know that I would follow you anywhere.” Aegean has never truly anchored himself anywhere, even in his youth. He has had ties to places—more so to the people there—but he has never found himself a perfect home.
“My mothers?” There is surprise that breaks through the question and it clears some of the sleep from his voice, but he doesn’t make a move to right himself or stand once more. He just inclines his antlered head slightly. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen them.” In his dreams, he sees them often, and he has been known to conjure their likening, but not their true selves. He was just a boy when he had.
But his thoughts are interrupted once more.
His lips press together in thought and his eyes warm at the amused smile that curls Pteron’s lips. “My uncle? Have you met him? I haven’t.” He has so much family out there, he knows, and he has only barely scratched the surface. Perhaps there was a drawback to living so much in his own head.
“I couldn’t imaging something that would make my mothers more happy than that.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
05-19-2020, 10:58 PM (This post was last modified: 05-20-2020, 07:19 AM by kahzie.)
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Pteron smiles while he waits for Aegean to meet his eyes. It always takes a moment, but he enjoys the time it gives him. He spends it imagining his lover standing in the everwarm sea, shaded by the strangely naked trees that Aquaria says are called palms. I would follow you anywhere, Aegean says, breaking through the pleasant daydream.
“I will do my best to ensure you do not regret saying that,” Pteron replies with a soft huff, “I will find us a place to sleep that is as far from the volcano as we can manage. Wouldn’t want to lose a child after all this effort.” He’s stepped closer while speaking, and once more rests his muzzle just a hair above Aegean’s side. Is the child within an Asena or an Aureus, he wonders? They had chosen the names together, and Pteron likes to think he’s gotten away with naming them both after Aegean with their alliteration. Just as he says ‘effort’, he presses a very gentle touch to the soft hair and pulls away with a fond smile.
The anticipation is bright in his eyes, and spreads to the rest of his face as the surprise of hearing about his mothers wakes Aegean fully. Pteron nods at the other’s disbelief, shaking loose a bit of his teal forelock.
“I wonder if Oriash knows they have returned,” Pteron muses aloud as he presses his muzzle against the high crest of the white stallion’s neck. The muscle here – the trapezius, his father’s voice says – holds much of the weight of the impressive antlers his lover wears. He does his best to massage it with the edge of his chin, drawing back as Aegean speaks. Kagerus and Solace will be excited to meet the little one, Aegean says. A knot of worry that Pteron hadn’t realized he was hold falls away. He’d not given a name to what he shares with Aegean when he’d spoken to Svedka. He’d not known what to call this thing between them that that gives rise to something that races through his veins so vigorously that he is always surprised that Aegean is the only one of them that glows. He still doesn’t, but that no longer bothers him as it once might have.
It occurs to Pteron that Aegean might have multiple uncles as soon as he says it, but somehow it seems that the other man knows exactly which one he means, so perhaps there is only one after all. Svedka had spoken of a closeness with his twin that would surely have entered into tales that Solace told her children even they’d never been able to meet him.
“The two of you would get along well,” Pteron replies with smile and a soft touch to Aegean’s shoulder. “You share many fine qualities. Such as your splendid taste in men.” It’s very hard to keep a straight face, but Pteron is very sure he manages it (he does not), but the amusement fades somewhat when Aegean speaks of making his mothers happy.
“It would make you happy too.” The dun replies, and though he phrases it as though he is confident, there is a question in his olive eyes. Pteron is not so fragile that he requires constant reassurance of Aegean’s affection (there are few things more binding than the child they’ve created), but he does sometimes like to be certain, to check in. He’d sworn to make up for sending Aegean away in Taiga rather than making the more difficult choice, and he finds comfort in doing just that. Ensuring that Aegean is as happy as Pteron can make him is the best way to do so. “Settling down would truly make you happy?”
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
All of the aches that settle into his bones and strain his muscles dissolve at Pteron’s touch. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, a sigh as he curves against the pressure of the chin against his neck, and his lips pull into a dreamy smile. “My sister knows everything, I feel,” he murmurs, thinking of his illusionist little sister. Their paths had not crossed as much as he would have liked—after all, Aegean spent so much of his time following the trails of his own making—but he had always been impressed with her. It would not surprise him at all if Oriash had already learned of his mother’s return.
But the conversation does not linger here. Instead, it winds away and Aegean happily follows. His own laugh is rich and deep at Pteron’s teasing of Svedka’s taste and there is no jealousy to make it bitter. Aegean has never been one to believe in the taming of love. He has little desire to rein in Pteron’s heart or to claim it as his own. He finds deep pleasure in watching him wander—in seeing him gift his affections to those he comes across—and he reaches out to breathe a kiss against his cheek as if in confirmation.
“You will find that our taste in men is not a rare quality, I am afraid.” After all, who would not find themselves enamored with the pegasus by his side? Who would not want to bask in the warmth of his sunshine? Aegean could hardly blame those who were drawn to him like honeysuckle. “I would very much like to meet him.” He dreams of all of the different family members out there who he would be able to meet one day. All of the new siblings, and cousins, and those connected to him like branches shooting out from the same base. How magnificent to be connected to such a growing, living entity.
The question, as confident as it is stated, does snag his attention though and with great effort, Aegean clears his gaze to look at Pteron more fully. He searches his face for a moment, wondering at what lies beneath the surface—the scars that he buries beneath the smiles, the insecurities beneath the flirtation. For a second, he grazes his lips over the places where he know scars have been, the places he does not push for answers about. He can only imagine the things that Pteron has lived through in his years.
“I cannot imagine that we will ever truly settle, my love,” he whispers. With the statement, the ground around them becomes alive with vivid splashes of color. They spring up like sound waves around them, swelling as they splash against the trees, leaving traces of mauve and lilac and indigo in their wake. They arc over them both and then disappear into the soil, they crawl up the branches and begin to paint the sky in their supernatural brilliance. Smiling against the display, Aegean brings his gaze back down.
“But whatever we do, I am going to be happy so long as you are there. You know this.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Pteron smiles at the rumble of Aegean’s laughter, feeling it against his cheek as the other kisses him there. “You flatter me,” he replies with a display of false demureness, as if he does not know exactly how charming he can be. Pteron still marvels that he had managed to capture Aegean’s affections, feeling at times as though the other man is more like the moon than Pteron had dreamed on that night he had first compared them. That the glowing creature had chosen him, still chooses him, feels at times as unlikely as the moon itself following Pteron around the night sky.
At yet he’s here, standing in front of Pteron, and the child that Aegean grows is their child, a living embodiment of the love between them.
Excitement, anticipation, enjoying these last few moments that only the two of them will share. This is what having a child should be like, Pteron has learned. Though the realization that Aegean was pregnant had been a surprise, it was the sort of surprise that has kept him smiling all these months.
“Perhaps when we are old,” he counters warmly, pressing a kiss on the edge of his lover’s jaw, “When I have grown so wrinkled only you could love me, and you so blind I must lead you to fresh grazing. Perhaps then we might.” That there is so much life to occur in the time until then is an unspoken truth. Pteron will forever heal from any touch of aging, and it cannot reach the glowing stallion in front of them at all. A miracle, he thinks, that he has found Aegean so soon in this eternal life of theirs.
“I do know,” he answers, and any chagrin that might be in his voice is drowned out by the contentment that is surely there. He rests his cheek against Aegean’s and watches as his beloved colors the winter grey world around them in more colors than Pteron has names for. “I love you.”
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean still cannot help but look at Pteron and see the sun staring back at him. There is something so permanent about the man before him—Aegean cannot imagine a time before him and certainly cannot imagine a time after him. He is as forever as anything that he has ever known and it never occurs to him that something as small as mortality could ever touch him. The world simply could not continue to spin without Pteron being there. There was no way for the world to continue—the gravity would never work.
Still, such dark thoughts do not color Aegean’s mind and he gladly lets himself sink into the moment. The warmth of it, the sheer joy that radiates from him, sinks into his very bones. “You will look so handsome with your wrinkles,” he thinks, knowing full well that such things will never touch them. He has been protected from death when it came calling for him at birth and he certainly will not let it catch him now. “And I will love counting each and every one—for you will be all the more precious to me for it.”
Laughing under his breath at the thought, he touches Pteron’s cheek again and then closes his eyes on a sigh. It never seemed to matter how much sleep he got these days. The exhaustion was always around the corner, slipping underneath the surface and pulling him back into the lull of sleep. He hums lightly as the lights continue to dance around them, arching and then diving below the forest floor. “I love you too,” he whispers and wonders that he never grows tired of saying it—never tires of letting Pteron know.
“Almost as much as I will love this child of ours.”
It feels like a miracle, although a miracle that he never thinks question (it is not strange to bring a child into the world by magic when it had been his birth right himself). “What do you think they will be like?”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The way that Pteron glows is less obvious than Aegean’s, but under his lover’s gentle touch and compliments glow he does.
He hums wordlessly in contentment, pressing back affectionately against the other stallion’s touch, his olive eyes contentedly closed. This moment is a perfect one, as they all seem to be with Aegean, and Pteron smiles to himself.
At the sigh though, he opens his eyes. He knows that carrying a child weighs on him, and though he does worry this might be harder on Aegean than on a mare, Pteron trusts that the magic used to bring them such a miracle would not endanger the father-to-be. Pteron reassures himself – and not for the first time – that the magic had known what it was doing. It has given Aegean the task of carrying their child rather than Pteron, but that does not mean that on some days (days when Aegean seems especially weary) that Pteron does not wish that he could take this burden from him.
‘Almost as much as I will love this child of ours’, Aegean says, and Pteron’s teal smile widens fondly. The pegasus moves so he might better attend to the place just behind Aegean’s shoulder where he knows the muscles are often tense, pressing there as he muses over the question that Aegean poses.
What will they be like?
“I hope just like you,” Pteron says, “I assume you were as perfect as a child as you are now, and that will making raising them so much easier than if they are anything like me.” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, and if Aegean glances over his shoulder he will see the easy grin that has colored the words. “I went invisible right after I was born, my mother says. I would like to be able to find our child, at least while they are small.”
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
The colors around them grow muted then, the motions slowing from their initial joyful leaps to slow and deliberate. The colors turn pastel—soft shades of mauve and sage—and begin to spiral into the air and then shower down like supernatural drizzle. Aegean tips his head back to watch the display, feeling something like a deep-rooted joy spread through the very marrow of his bones.
So this was the other side of the coin.
This was the other side of the sorrow that he had felt for all of those months away from Pteron. The way that his heart had crumbled between his touch, leaving him feeling nothing but the emptiness in its wake.
He finds that he does not mind.
He would have felt that grief, that mourning, for years. Would have run himself ragged, torn himself asunder, just for the simple joy of curling next to the winged stallion and the life blooming in his belly.
“I was very much the same as a child as I am now,” he muses. He had never felt like childhood had truly transformed him. He had practically been born into this world fully formed. Perhaps simply the effect of the magic that had given him permission to live or simply because of the way that he is.
Regardless, he finds that he likes to imagine what Pteron must have been like.
“I hope that they are exactly like you,” he smiles as he turns his antlered head and brushes a kiss against the other’s mouth, tasting the sweetness there and lingering. “So that I may have the joy of learning what it is like to chase them as I have learned what it is like to spend my days chasing after you.”
A soft laugh as he stretches and feels the sun peek through to wash over them both.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
