On beaks, kissing, and performing jazz.
There came a small, wet shlick as Gallus and Silverstream pulled their beaks apart, and Gallus exhaled sharply out of his nose. His talons stroked his friend’s neck tenderly, his knuckles rubbing into the skin under the feathers.
Half a metre away, Smolder squinted at the exchange before she sat back. And then leaned forward again to study Gallus and Silverstream’s beaks closely.
The Treehouse’s walls let the late morning daylight in perfectly, and the sounds of nature coming in from the Everfree drifted softly in from the windows and balconies. It was an idyllic scene, with Smolder, Gallus and Silverstream sitting on couch cushions that had been haphazardly laid out on the floor.
“Wait, so…” Smolder clicked her tongue as her claws scratched lightly against the cushion fabric underneath her. “Hold on…”
Gallus slipped a foreleg around Silverstream’s neck and pulled her into his collarbone. She cooed softly, accepting his unworded offer for cuddles as he looked to Smolder with a raised brow. “What’s so hard to understand?”
“That can’t possibly be comfortable,” Smolder said.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re beaks!” Smolder exclaimed, gesturing back and forth between the beaks in front of her with her index and middle digits. “They’re hard and sharp. They’re made for pecking creatures eyes out. Or like, cracking open seeds.”
“Right, but they’re not.” Silverstream giggled.
“What does that mean?” Smolder asked.
“Beaks are…” Gallus trailed off. “Beaks are confusing.”
Smolder, who was hearing this for the third time that day, began to rub her eyelids vigorously. “Can you please just use your words to explain to me how—”
“What are you talking about?” Sandbar asked, trotting in.
“Sandbar!” Silverstream cheered. “Did you get class off?”
Sandbar nodded, trotting in to sit on a cushion between Smolder and Gallus and Silverstream, creating a cute little semi-circle.
“Sandy?” Gallus said.
“Yeah?”
“C’mere and kiss me.”
“Okay!”
Sandbar did as he was told. He leaned over, meeting Gallus halfway, and their noses touched, making both of them giggle. As was Gallus’s trademark, he reached a talon up to scritch at Sandbar’s neck as they nuzzled closely, talking with nothing but their bodies.
How was your day? A nip at an ear.
I missed you, came the response. A kiss on the cheek.
You’re one of my best friends and I love you, as their lips finally met.
Sandbar couldn’t help a small yelp of pleasure as Gallus’s grip on his neck grew firm, drawing him into the griffon. Warmth blossomed throughout his body, starting at his head and trickling down to his back and the middle of his chest. Gallus tasted like toothpaste and milk chocolate, and as Sandbar breathed in through his nose he could smell his own fruit-scented shampoo on the griffon, tinted with a hint of masculine salt that could only belong to Gallus.
Then he smelled a sort of candied red fruit—the smell of rubies crunched up—and he noticed that in the corner of his eye there was Smolder, and she was looking at them like one would look at a chemistry experiment; the kind where different beakers of neon liquid were poured into the same glass to make a tiny explosion.
Sandbar pulled away from the sweet silk that was Gallus’s beak, to the griffon’s whining, and he turned to his friend with a nervous smile.
“Uh,” he blurted out. “What’s up?”
“Beaks.” Smolder squinted.
“Smolder thinks they’re weird!” chirped Silverstream.
“Why?” asked Sandbar. “They’re just beaks.”
“They’re predatory! They’re—”
“Not hard,” Gallus said. “Tell her, Sandbar.”
Sandbar laughed. “You think beaks are hard?”
Suddenly, Silverstream leaned in. “You’ve been to the jazz band shows before. How do you think I play the sax?”
“I don’t know,” Smolder said. “Magic?”
“How would I maintain my embouchure?”
“I don’t know! Maybe you didn’t need to!”
“But then that would mean all I’d have to do to play the sax was like, blow air into it. And then there’d be no difference between the saxophone and the tuba, and—”
“They feel like beaks,” Sandbar explained, interrupting the hippogriff. “But they also don’t.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to tell her,” said Gallus.
“You can’t blame me in thinking that that’s way too vague,” Smolder protested.
“I can’t, no,” Gallus said. “Which is why I asked Sandbar to talk about it while my sweet beak’s fresh in his mind.”
Sandbar blushed and nearly protested, but he would have been lying if he said that Gallus wasn’t correct. He smacked his lips, thinking of the right words to describe the griffon’s second-best appendage. “Well...um, okay...Gallus’s beak is—ugh.”
“Beautiful,” Smolder snarked. “I’ve never heard such an accurate description of something.”
“Shh!” Gallus hissed.
“It’s hard,” Sandbar continued. “Like a bird’s beak, right? But then it touches you and it’s not hard all of a sudden, or maybe it just doesn’t seem as hard when it’s showing you how much it loves you. The firmness kinda...melts? No, that sounds gross. It kinda just turns soft without getting soft and—I hate this!” Sandbar suddenly cried out, putting his hooves to his face. “This is like when I tried to describe how I can hold things with my hooves to you guys when we first met!”
“In the end, we just learned that it had to do with magic and not to ask questions,” Smolder said. “Are you saying that Gallus and Silverstream just have magic beaks?”
“That’s probably not completely wrong,” Gallus said. “We came more obviously from animals, right? Like, ponies have always been in the world, or at least, they’ve been here longer than griffons and hippogriffs. There are animals that look almost exactly like us. So maybe one day, a long time ago, magic just got into some birds and cats and griffons were made. Or something.”
“But, like, I don’t know. I’ve felt roc beaks on my scales, dude,” Smolder said with a shiver of unrestrained fear that almost made her friends gasp, for she rarely showed such vulnerability. “They suck.”
“Griffons aren’t rocs,” Sandbar said, creeping towards her so he could nuzzle her neck. “Neither are hippogriffs.”
Smolder rolled her eyes, but accepted the affection. “I know that. I’m not stupid,” she looked to Gallus and Silverstream. “But, I don’t know. It’s just weird. I’ve been wondering about it for a while.”
Silverstream blinked, her eyes growing wet suddenly. “You’re not...scared of us, are you?”
Smolder shook her head. “No. No! Never, I promise, but—”
“Is that why you—” Silverstream began.
“Yes,” Smolder said, “that’s why I’ve only ever hooked up with Ocellus and Sandbar and Yona and November Rain and—”
“Wait,” Gallus said, “you hooked up with November Rain?”
Smolder raised a brow. “Well, yeah but—”
“He told me he was scared of meat-eating creatures!”
“Dragons don’t eat meat, dude,” Sandbar explained.
“Seriously?” Gallus said.
“Yeah, I mean I’ve tried fish and that’s great, but chicken?” Smolder stuck her tongue out. “That stuff’s gross.”
And suddenly Silverstream head was on Smolder’s lap, and she was looking up at her with exuberant, singing eyes. Her digits traced the scales on Smolder’s legs, making the dragon tense up, before they seized her claws.
Working purely on instinct, Smolder closed her claws around Silverstream’s talons, watching as Silverstream rose slowly upwards until her beak was just under Smolder’s neck.
Then she felt a kiss under her neck, and it wasn’t from something hard or sharp.
“Do you wanna find out what beaks feel like?” Silverstream asked, her voice husky and low but still sounding like the way a squirrel in spring would bound happily up a tree. “You don’t have to, but I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
Smolder heard Gallus chuckle somewhere off to the side, but it was a tiny, pathetic sound in the face of the pounding of her heartbeat.
“I—I, uh,” Smolder stammered.
Silverstream smiled, and it was a small miracle that she managed not to make Smolder feel small or stupid or patronized, but safe and warm. So she nodded, a blush tinting her cheeks. “Okay.”
Smolder held her breath as Silverstream’s head rose until they were at eye level.
“I love you,” whispered Silverstream.
“I—you too,” Smolder said lamely.
Then Smolder felt a beak on her lips, and Sandbar turned out to be completely right for once. Silverstream’s beak was warm, not cold, and it melded quite nicely with her lips. It was different than kissing someone without a beak, but the same, too. And Silverstream—
Smolder let out a soft moan as Silverstream wrapped both her forelegs around her waist and tugged her close, deepening the kiss. Her maw opened for the hippogriffs tongue, and their tongues danced and embraced like old friends after years of absence.
It was corny, but Smolder thought of jazz as Silverstream kissed her. The kind of jazz that was slow and brooding, but not dark. Something that was perfect for walking home alone at night, lost in thoughts that were tender and intimate. A patient, kind, mature sort of saxophone heavy piece that would pair well with a warm glass of apple cider.
Then Silverstream pulled back, and for a second Smolder’s mind was pure fear; it was true cruelty to take that beak away from her lips.
“I think you have the gigglies,” Silverstream teased.
Smolder giggled, on cue. “Shut up. Come here.”
They kissed again, quicker this time, and when Smolder was satisfied, she was the one to pull away.
“You see now?” Gallus asked.
“How Silverstream maintains embouchure?” Smolder said, laughing. “Yeah, but I still think I need some trial time with beaks before I fully warm up to them.”
Smolder pet Silverstream affectionately as she turned to Gallus with a devious smile. “Care to help?”
Gallus blushed, then nodded. “Anything to help a friend.”
