Archonix's scraps and bits

by archonix

Adagio Tenerezza (prologue for "Adagio for Wings")

Author's Note:

Before you begin

This is something I've been muddling at for about six months and have gotten nowhere with. There's a chunk of a next chapter and a bunch of notes, but every time I look at it I just can't quite get the words down on paper. To say the least, it has been an exercise in frustration.

I want to write it - I think it's a cute story - but maybe I'm just not meant to.

Now lets play Guess Tavi's Lover. First prize is Octavia's disdainful glance.

Heat was the thing.

Oh not that heat. Not the ravenous week every few months that allegedly left mares swooning in dark corners and icy cellars, and stallions nursing stiff drinks in cold baths and dimly lit bars. So much nonsense anyway, a product of too many cheap romance novels and badly written talkies.

So much language was tied up in heat. Love ran hot. Anger burned. Joy shone like the sun. Lust inflamed passion, and passion consumed like a furnace. Heat spoke to every part of life, from comfort and care, to the dying embers of regret, to the warm comfort of peace and tranquility.

And even when the fires were spent and died down, there came the afterglow.

A trickle of sweat found its way down the side of Octavia's neck, tickling and dancing through her coat as it meandered toward the sheets, before finally losing itself in the line of her mane. She took a breath and could even smell the heat, or at least the result of it; the cloying, bittersweet musk of expended desire. Humid and close.

When she opened her eyes, she found the late afternoon sun streaming through the window. Its light fell across her lower body, adding its warmth to an already warm day that hung at the tail of a summer marked by endless, burning sunlight and sticky, humid nights without precedent in memory. She let her eyes close again and shifted, longing to scratch an itch low down on her back, and her movement disturbed the blanket of feathers draped across her barrel.

She would have been considerably less warm if not for that light grey wing, radiating its heat into the core of her body as if it were a piece the sun itself. A shade darker and it might have been her own – but that was idle fantasy, and if she were honest with herself she much preferred the wing to be where it was.

There had been days when Octavia wondered how she had come to this point. How had she taken this pegasus, or been taken by her? She was of the earth, for all her affectations of refinement and poise. Her bones were the granite of the mountains, her tendons the vines of the forest, her coat the grass of the fields, and her blood flowed with the very fires of the deep places, where the world was made anew. Or so said the old myths.

And this creature beside her? Pegasi were the clouds and the rain, the wind and the sun. Their hearts raced and their bodies burned with frantic energy. They were small and slender little things, compared to her own earth pony frame; even this one, who called herself chubby and ate too many sweets, was light as a flame and delicate as glass between Octavia's hooves. Her lover's body rose and fell with fast, deep breaths, and as it lay across her, it sunk its warmth into Octavia's own, and would warm her forever had she the choice.

For the moment this sweaty, sticky furnace in pony form was all she cared for. Soon that moment would pass, and she would have to rise to go about the remainder of the day, but for now Octavia was content to bask in the shining warmth of her lover's embrace, wrapped in her wings, nuzzled to her neck and snuffling at the ruffled fringe of her blond mane.

The curtains drifted in a breeze that soon found their bed, catching her lover's mane into the air for the briefest of moments, so that it rose like a wave of fire behind her head. Octavia felt her partner's already quick pulse catch and flare as she woke, and sighed quietly.

"How long?"

The voice at Octavia's ear was barely a whisper. She lay still for a while, contemplating the sound of it, and wondering why this pegasus of hers had never thought to join a choir. The question itself merited a short breath before she replied.

"Three hours." Another breath. Octavia closed her eyes and swallowed. "The train leaves Canterlot Central at five."

Her partner didn't reply, but instead tightened the curve of her wing around Octavia's body. As if that would change anything. She found herself burrowing deeper into the warmth, seeking out its core, as if she could somehow soak it all into herself. As if that act alone would let her stay forever in that single burning moment.

Without warning the wing was pulled away as her lover made to leave the bed. Octavia's legs all stretched out at once, grasping and holding as she pulled their bodies close again, and pressed their snouts together. Their lips briefly, tenderly, and her partner fell back into the embrace with a sensuous giggle. Yet still a moment later she made to rise, and this time Octavia held tight, anchoring her own body to the bed and the stone and earth beneath, and tethering this flighty creature in her grasp.

"Don't go," Octavia whispered, and her mouth shook as she spoke. She turned until she could see a single golden iris that stared at her from beneath a shock of blond; the other was still buried in their pillows. "Not yet."

"You've said that all year," her partner murmured. Her eye twisted, and a smile turned on her lips, and this time Octavia could only watch as her lover rolled and stumbled slowly from the bed, to stretch and yawn and flutter her wings.

As a cool breeze flowed over her neck and chest, Octavia nodded and closed her eyes.

"I'll never stop," she whispered.

Comments

[Pearple Prose]

:OOOOOOOOO

derptavia <3

[archonix]

4323534 ding ding!

[FanOfMostEverything]

I knew as soon as you mentioned wing color. Also, that series of metaphors about earth ponies was several kinds of awesome.

This is certainly an interesting ship. The relationship between two background ponies can take almost any form, depending on the author's interpretation of them. Given you, this could be something incredible. I'm sorry it didn't work out. Still, thanks for sharing what could have been.

[archonix]

4327397 It might still work out. Part of the problem is that I've got so many projects on the go, and I was spending a lot of time trying to work out the kinks in this and neglecting other things that I really should get finished. We'll see.