Pitch was frequently mystified by Sandy. While in many ways his friend did share the habits of his kind - a love of good music, fine wine, and vulgar dancing - there were just as many ways in which he didn't fit in.
Sandy didn't talk, and quite possibly couldn't talk.
His horns had never matured beyond the bony nubs usually associated with satyr teens.
Most significantly, to Pitch at least, Sandy would rather spend his time with a grim-natured, dark-haired centaur than chasing after nymphs.
.
Pitch had accepted his lot in life before Sandy came along. Pitch knew a bird-like nose, grey-skinned torso, and coal-black flanks meant he would never be as popular or desirable as his rainbow-coloured siblings. Pitch watched orange stallions pair off with pink fillies, blues with greens, and chose to find himself a comfortable dwelling by a nearby river where hanging branches protected him from prying eyes. The few words he deigned to share with the world were all ascerbic, a guard against those who came to mock him, or worse, pity him.
Then the water nymphs moved into his river. And where nymphs moved, gods and godlings soon followed.
Once Pitch made it clear his shelter was not for sharing, least of all with creatures who intended to have sex in it, the raucous crowd left him to enjoy his own company again.
All except one.
.
Sandy was an odd little creature, shorter and fatter than his kin, but shining as golden bright as if Apollo himself had blessed him. He was obnoxiously difficult to upset, and his love for life was infectious. It didn't seem to matter how many times Pitch pushed him away, physically or with words; Sandy kept returning and bit by bit, Sandy's joy rubbed off on Pitch, until he caught himself looking forward to the visits.
Sandy finally lured Pitch outside his shelter one sunny afternoon, scratching at the floor with his hooves until Pitch lay down, and grinned before pulling out several flasks and a brush from the nearby reeds.
Pitch hadn't drunk in a long time, and was decidedly giggly by the time Sandy decided to brush his flanks. Had anyone else so much as touched his sides, Pitch would have risen to his feet, reared up, and kicked them in the face, but he trusted Sandy. Gods help him, he even liked his miniature satyr.
Sandy brushed and brushed to his heart's content, occasionally petting over the areas he'd finished, until Pitch felt boneless and blissed-out from all the attention.
When Sandy patted him on the rump, Pitch looked back at the satyr, at Sandy's bright grin and wicked eyebrow-waggle, and tried to remember how it felt to dislike touch.
"Filthy creature," Pitch said with absolutely no heat.
"Baah," Sandy bleated back, leaning over and biting Pitch's backside.
.
It never seemed to matter that they could not communicate equally through speech. Sandy could scratch shapes into the river bank's mud, teaching Pitch his name and drawing his favourite foods, but he didn't care about words much. He liked to hear Pitch talk - laughed when Pitch told stories, blushed deliciously when Pitch complimented him - but their language was primarily one of touches and breath. Pitch knew when a tug on his hair meant "no", or a gasp meant "keep going", just as Sandy knew the difference between guiding hands to a destination and snatching them away from their intended path.
It was a language that worked for them, and Pitch was strangely proud of it.
.
Pitch never intended to return to the meadows of his youth, his memories of lush green fields and fruit-heavy trees tainted by how he'd never had someone to share them with, but when galloping one day with Sandy clinging to his back, he kept going - away from his shelter, feeling braver than he had been in years.
The meadows were beautiful, plagued only by a handful of brightly coloured foals who quickly learned to keep their distance when Pitch snarled, and when Pitch settled beneath a tree that damn near groaned with the weight of its plum-bearing branches, he felt warm in places the sun would never reach.
Sandy scrambled up into the tree, picking out the ripest and plumpest fruits with nimble fingers before dropping back down to share them, and Pitch smiled at his big-hearted satyr between plum-sweetened kisses and bites of fruit.
They could return to the river later, where there was always music to cover the sounds they made together.
Pitch simply intended to rewrite his childhood memories first.
If a few foals were scarred for life in the process, all the better.