[EXP] the not-so-quiet waves

[Ipomoea]

rose-colored boy

There was a restlessness stirring inside of him a deep-set ache that kept hammering away inside of his head, telling him to run, to fly, to go. It had set in ever since Messalina had come bursting through his doors in the middle of the night, since he had seen the paleness of her face and the blood dripping from her cuts. It had only intensified when he’d heard of the murders, when he’d posted the letter that closed the borders, when Somnus called a meeting of the Regime.

It hadn’t stoped. It had only grown, eating away inside of him, gnawing at his heart.

But he couldn’t fly; his wings weren’t big enough for that. Nor could he run; that would be improper of the Regent, he had duties to tend to. He couldn’t escape, because the borders were closed and he  needed to be here. But as the days passed, each one as tense as the one before, the need to get away intensified.

“I won’t go far,” he promised Odet, who fluttered nervously around him. “I just need some fresh air.”

So the steller’s jay followed him, albeit at a distance, always keeping an eye on his bonded. Times weren’t safe, after all; even a day at the beach could go wrong if he was alone.

The sky is a cascade of colors overhead, blue fading into the wonderful pinks and golds of twilight, and it comforts him. The sea breeze fills his lungs, the squawking of seagulls greeting his ears, and just for a moment he can pretend that everything is as it should be. As the grass gives way to sand underhoof, and he loses sight of the capitol behind him, Ipomoea has a reckless desire to gallop; to kick his heels up and run headlong down the beach, where no one is around to see him pretending that he could fly.

And he’s about to - the desire is nearly overwhelming inside of him - when he spots a figure wandering the beach. For a moment he’s almost disappointed that he has company, but then he catches himself and brushes the unkind thought from his mind. ”No company is bad company,” he verbally reminds himself, and wills his legs to take him closer to the silhouette. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new today.”

With every step the figure grows a little more clearer, her pale form taking shape and solidifying. It doesn’t take long for him to recognize her.

“Eulalie!” he calls, lifting up into a trot that carried him closer.  It doesn’t cross his mind that maybe, just maybe, she had wanted to be alone.

“I guess you wanted to get away, too?”

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy




@eulalie ! here we aree
”here am i!“

empluvie art

[Eulalie]

and, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
and she would mark the opening skies,
i saw no Heaven—but in her eyes

There is something peaceful about the sea. Something reassuring in the fact that it is always there, in the way it draws away from the shore but comes rushing back again, again, again. Eulalie listens to its breaking waves like a heartbeat, watches the way the sunset paints it in twilight. Behind her on the far eastern horizon the sky grows dark, the first stars blinking into the oncoming night. But ahead of her there is color, bright and warm and dazzling.

She stands with her hooves in the sand, letting the water wash up around her, gently caressing. The breeze tugs on her golden hair, brighter, gilded by the hour, by the slanting light of the sun. Behind her stands Tabbris, her bonded ever as vigilant and faithful. “You should not be out alone,” his voice breaks through her wondering, though she doesn’t look at him, “I’m not alone,” she responds, and cannot help the mischievous smile that turns up her lips. She can almost sense his serious, all-business expression.

“Do not worry, Tabbris. We’ve no evidence the beast even would come so far from the forest. Besides, I can take care of myself, and I’ve got you don’t I?” The ivory woman won’t admit her fears, not even to her bondmate. In truth, they are no closer to discovering what had killed their friends and it bothers her greatly. She is convinced the perpetrator is an it and not a who, for she cannot imagine any sort of equine that could do what had been done to them. Still, the images of their gruesome death imprints in her mind. She cannot forget.

“I really think we should go back to the court before it gets dark,” the gryphon continued, his tail lashing behind him, his dark eyes trained on his bondmate’s back even as his ears tuned into the world around them. Eulalie took a few more moments to watch the sun on its descent to the horizon and then sighed, “Perhaps you’re right, after all,” she concedes. But when she turns to face Tabbris, she hears her name called.

Both equine and gryphon turn toward the sound, and there in the distance is a familiar face. Ipomoea, headed toward them. Her eyes brighten and  she glances at her bondmate, “I can’t very well leave now, that would be rude Tabbris.” He only clicks his beak unhappily and follows as Eulalie makes her way closer to Ipomoea, smiling warmly at the younger man. “Ipomoea, what a pleasant surprise,” she greets, stopping once they have closed the gap between them, “And Odet, a pleasure.”

At his question something in her yawns open in memory. The reason she even had come to beaches, to stand and stare at the ocean in the fading light of day was to think, to clear her thoughts and allow her brain to do what her heart was holding it back from. But Eulalie knows well the feeling of being trapped; imprisoned. She remembers it like she remembers which stall in the market carries Regis’ favorite apples or which shelf in the library holds the books that Somnus seems to return to again and again. And when she looks upon Ipomoea, she understands what he is standing here for.

“Come, why don’t we walk together Ipomoea? Stretch our legs a little bit,” she turns and indicates for him to join her, “It’s a good thing you are here, Tabbris was beginning to worry we’d give Somnus heart failure if he found out we were out here alone. But now we’re together, and all is well.” She gives a wink to the gryphon, who pointedly does not look at her as he turns to follow them. Oh, his grudge will not last long. He is a softy at heart, after all, but she does understand his concern even if she has thrown some caution to the wind traveling outside the court walls by herself.

The ivory woman looks at Ipomoea and can sense his troubles, so instead she tries to distract him. “Do you fancy a race?” And if there is a mischievous sparkle to her earth brown eyes, made warmer by the golden hour, she does not hide it. The stretch of beach before them is empty, and in the distance looms a dark shape. Rocks, she thinks, perhaps. “To that point, down the shore,” and she lifts her nose to draw his attention to it, deftly shifting her weight. A smile stretches across her face of a different meaning this time as suddenly she takes off in a sprint, her laughter drifting back on the air. “Come on!” Tabbris takes to the skies to follow, his great wings casting a shadow on the sand below.

@Ipomoea <3

[Ipomoea]

rose-colored boy

Odet drifts alongside him as they approach, his lazy flight belying the nervousness that crashed in waves larger than the ocean through their mental bond. The songbird was a bundle of nerves, never still, never calm; and it did nothing to improve Ipomoea’s own state of mind.

But to anyone who did not know the jay, or who could not read his mind like a book, nothing might seem amiss. He always had been an active, twittering fellow, true to his species. Only his bonded could detect the change in his demeanor, subtle though it was. ”Relax,” he tells him, trying to keep his own thoughts steady. ”Nothing is going to happen.” But Odet doesn’t answer him, and they approach Eulalie and her bonded in near silence.

“It’s good to see you, Eulalie, Tabbris,” he says when they draw close enough for greetings. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t mention the monsters hiding in the forest, the way even the thought of it seems to darken the clouds in the sky. He flicks his tail, as if dismissing the thought.

“I would love to,” he turns down the beach alongside her, feeling the sand about his hooves. His laugh is light, if slightly higher than usual. “Odet was worrying the same,” he says, as the songbird flutters just overhead. “But now there’s the four of us, and all is well,” he agrees, but he isn’t sure if he’s trying to convince Odet or himself.

For a moment they lapse into silence, with only the beating of Odet’s wings and the crashing of the waves on the sand to fill the air. The appaloosa kicks at the sand with his hooves, his eyes downcast. ”Do you fancy a race?” He lifts his gaze to Eulalie, finding a mischievous sparkle in her warm brown eyes.

“A race?” he echoes. It feels like an eternity ago that he had considered sprinting down the shoreline himself - even though it had only been several minutes earlier. ”To that point, down the shore.” His gaze follows her’s, to the unfamiliar shadows that hover in the distance. He squints his eyes, trying to make out their shape, and fails.

”Come on!” Eulalie cries - and without thinking, without questioning it, Ipomoea throws all his previous caution to the wind and follows.

The sky stretches overhead, the sand below, and it feels as if he’s racing the wind as much as he’s racing Eulalie. The waves turn to roars of delight, punctuating her laughter that drifts behind her like smoke: every crash is a cheer, egging him on. His wings flatten against his angles, wind whipping through feathers and hair alike. Gradually his stride steadies and evens out, lengthening as he stretches, kicking up sand behind him that sparkles like gold in the sunlight.

He stretches his dark muzzle out before him, nearly even with Eulalie now. They gallop along the beach side-by-side; one of them is dark, the other golden, but they’re one and the same. Wild laughter tears free from his lips, stolen from him by the wind, banishing the fears from before from his mind.

The dark shapes are growing larger, gaining clarity as they approach, forming craggy limbs that raise like outstretched arms into the sky. There’s a triangle of them, 3 in total; dark stone fingers that rise into the air and meet at the top.

Ipomoea skids to a stop as he circles around the formation, spinning to face Eulalie with a smile on his face. Laughter is still tittering breathlessly from his open mouth, as he stops and struggles to catch his breath. “I haven’t run like that since-“ ”since you were a kid,” Odet answers for him in his mind, perching atop the stones. “In a long time.”

He’s still walking, blood rushing through his limbs, unable to stand still. Ipomoea cranes his head back to inspect the rocks that tower over his head. There’s enough room to stand between them all, in their center, but he doesn’t. “Kind of neat, aren’t they?” he asks Eulalie, circling around them.

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy




@eulalie !
”here am i!“

empluvie art

[Eulalie]

and, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
and she would mark the opening skies,
i saw no Heaven—but in her eyes

They are racing along the beach with the sunset at their left and the wind in their face, kicking up dampened sand and, for the time being, forgetting the heaviness in the world. Their laughter is a soundtrack to the dying light, wild and free, cascading from their lips like a waterfall. And the waves crashing against the shore are their heartbeats, budding and blooming and singing, soaring toward the skies.

Eulalie turns to look behind her and sees Ipomoea coming up beside her, pressing closer and closer, until they are side-by-side. The ivory and gold woman pushes herself, stretching her legs farther, faster, and the joy of Ipomoea’s laugh fills her heart. To know that, at least for this moment he isn’t focusing on the dark things hiding in their home, means that she is doing some good. When she glances above them she can see Tabbris gliding far overhead on his large eagle wings, almost effortlessly, and precious Odet following along with them.

The shapes in the distance are no longer dark shadows on the horizon, but great stones reaching high, high into the air. They are looming and black and look sharp, as though they could simply rip through the sky with one touch. When they finally stop running, Eulalie’s chest heaves as it tries to calm her racing heart and fill her lungs with breath.

She catches on his words as they fumble, slightly, and she wonders what he was going to say. “I haven’t run like that since I left Solterra. It’s much more pleasant when you aren’t doing it for your life, but doing it for enjoyment,” and Eulalie says like she is talking about the weather, her dark brown eyes too busy looking at the place where the stones meet at the top, where Odet as perched and Tabbris soars over a few times before lazily circling down toward the ground. She can tell he is still sour about her being out as he looks sharply toward the distant shadow of the forest to the right.

Her gaze slips to Ipomoea again as he circles the stone formation, tipping his head back to look all the way to the top. “I wonder where they came from,” she says idly, walking closer now that her breathing has eased. She pauses just before one of the spaces between two of them and peers within. “It’s quite strange, isn’t it?” They appear to almost lean into one another, their peaks intertwining like fingers. She wonders how far into the ground they must go to be stable in the sand like this.

“Tabbris why don’t you take a break from being the big bad bodyguard and come look at this,” Eulalie says, backing out from the rocks and looking toward her bonded. Tabbris flicks his feline tail, but she can see his ears twisting back toward her. She thinks he might ignore her, until he finally turns away from the dark twisting trees on the horizon and toward the rocks. “Fine, but if we get eaten this is all your fault,” he says, but she can see the shine in his eyes that says he’s not mad at her any longer.

Under normal circumstances she might have to fight the urge to laugh, but what he says strikes a sour note within her. Her eyes trace the far-off treeline for only a second before she’s facing Ipomoea with a curious look in her eyes and a smile on her face. “What do you make of them? Perhaps the are the remnants of some strange magic? Or maybe,” and her voice gets conspiratorial low, her eyes widening, “the hand of a gigantic beast?”

“A dragon? Maybe the rest of its body is just… waiting to be unearthed from this very spot.”

@Ipomoea <3

[Ipomoea]

rose-colored boy

The world feels lighter now, as he circles around the stone formation. The breeze coming in from the ocean is salty and crisp, the incoming twilight spreading in glorious blue, gold, and pink streaks across the sky. Ipomoea is bathed in light and color, his flowery crown thrown askew on his brow.

His legs are still restless, but not in the run-for-his-life way as before. Now he just wants to run for the sake of running, to dance for the joy of dancing. He can’t stand still, won’t stand still - not when there’s so much left to see and do.

Starting with the strange rocks.

His heart is still pounding, like a drum beating out a new and exciting rhythm. He circles the dark rocks, his head craned back to study their smooth surfaces. A flash of blue catches his eye overhead, as Odet peers down at him.

“I haven’t run like that since I left Solterra. It’s much more pleasant when you aren’t doing it for your life, but doing it for enjoyment,” Eulalie tells him, and he flicks one ear back to listen. “What were you running from?” his voice is subdued, his eyes full of carefully restrained curiosity as he looks back at her. He doesn’t know much of Eulalie’s history - a fact he’s more than a little ashamed to realize, given how long he’s known her, and how dear she is to Somnus.

But he brushes it off with the ocean spray. If she wanted to tell him, she would; it was not his place to press her.

“It is,” he breathes when he turns his gaze back to the rocks. Their surfaces were worn smooth from years beside the ocean, but when he looks closer, a slight irregularity catches his eye. He extends his muzzle, quivering ever so slightly, to run across the rock. Strange runes are carved into the rock, nearly invisible with age. Runes whose meanings were unknown to him, whose lines made no sense as he tried to decipher them. A language that has since fallen out of use - making it old indeed.

A slight frown tugs at his lips.

He breathes over the stone as Tabbris approaches, so engrossed in the mystery that he hardly notices their idle banter. His mind is at work, scouring through the many texts he’s read and memorized over the year, any clue that might tip off the stones’ origins. He feels as if he should remember them… but he can’t, and it’s maddening.

But as Eulalie steps closer, lowering her voice and speaking of dragons and magic and beasts, he can’t help the way his eyes widen and his breath catches.

“Do you think so?” he asks, turning quickly back to the stones. “What if these are ancient spells? Magic we’ve forgotten about?”

He traces the barely-visible runes with his eyes, and now his heart is racing for an entirely different reason.

“I wonder what they would say,” he says, and his eyes are bright as he turns back to Eulalie, as if begging for a story. A story more grand and exciting than their reality, one without a monster that hides in the forest at night.

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy




@eulalie !
”here am i!“

ponyglxy art

[Eulalie]

and, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
and she would mark the opening skies,
i saw no Heaven—but in her eyes

"A man," she says, glancing away from the stones to search Ipomoea's face, "and imprisonment." She assumes he can discern the rest, for knowledge of Solterra's nobility and their want and pleasure of having slaves is no secret, she's sure. Her scars no doubt tell a story, and a few years ago it was far worse than it is today. Eulalie feels no need to hide the painful horrors of her past, as much of a persistent stain as they are. What she has gone through has only made her who she is today.

To continue to love life, to thrive and to laugh and smile. That is how she shows him that despite all the things he has done to her, he has no control over her anymore.

Eulalie presses closer to the strange stones, watching as Ipomoea gently touches his muzzle to the rock. It draws her brown eyes to them, to look closer, where she sees the strange etchings in their surface that he does. She’s certain that Somnus would find them fascinating, and that he would probably spend many long nights attempting to decipher them. But she, she is reverent. The gilded woman only traces each shape with her gaze and wonders what they might have once done, coaxed by voice and magic.

When Ipomoea turns toward her, eyes bright and wide and wondering, Eulalie can’t help the smile that spreads across her face. Her eyes twinkle in the light, a small flame of mischievousness coming to life inside them. “Each one stands for something different, of course,” she says, "Beauty, love, peace. Protection.” She presses her nose to a different symbol with each word that passes her lips.

“What they say, that isn’t the important thing," her voice lowers, her lips twisting into a smirk, “It’s what you do with them that matters.” She winds her way about the stones, stopping on the inside and looking up at the top, where the three massive formations meet. “I bet that if you stood in this spot, under a full moon of course, the light would funnel down to these stones as if they were a conduit. And the runes would glow. What a sight it was, can you picture it?”

The woman glances back toward Ipomoea for a moment, to see his reaction. She can tell that even Tabbris is listening now and her smile widens. “What is it that you seek, they ask. The voices of dozens. No, hundreds. Of their ancestors, of all who have ever been. They ask, and you have to answer. But not with your voice, with your heart.”

“What is it that you truly seek?”

She closes her eyes and lifts her head to the tops of the stones and images them alive with the magic of the moon and of equines long gone and a history that has been lost to time. “Some probably asked for strength, for power, for grace. But what mattered is whether their heart was pure and their intentions true. The moon, she sees everything, she knows who you are. Your hopes, your dreams.”

Eulalie lowers her head and opens her eyes, and the sun is nearly gone beyond the place where the water meets the sky. She begins to move, leaving prints in the sand as she steps from beneath the shadow of the stone monuments. She can almost imagine the prints of hundreds of others alongside hers, as she stops before Ipomoea and smiles. “What do you think?"

@Ipomoea <3

[Ipomoea]

rose-colored boy

He holds her gaze - perhaps for a moment too long - before he nods and quietly accepts it. He knows of Solterra’s reputation, but it had always seemed so far away, removed from his own world and mind. Eulalie had an airy feel about her that now, in retrospect, feels to him as the desert should. How she still smiled and wove stories to entertain him was beyond him, and it made him envy Somnus if only a little.

Ipomoea lets her voice wash over him like the waves, and for a moment his eyes flutter closed like dark half-moons pressed against his cheeks. His legs are moving seemingly of their own accord, drifting like a wind-blown thing until he’s standing between the three twisted spires. And when he opens his eyes he’s looking up, up through the small ring of stone into where the sky lies waiting.

He does not see the blue of the mid-day sky; his mind is too busy imagining how it would look to gaze up at the stars through that window, and how magic might twist them into something else. And as he looks, and as Eulalie talks, he imagines the moon sliding into view, bathing him in a silvery light that is cold and electric and sets his skin to tingling. And his mind can’t stop turning, echoing the same question over and over like it’s the stars themselves projecting into his thoughts -

What is it that you truly seek?

The stars fall away, one by one by one, until the blue of the sky fills his vision.

Ipomoea lowers his head, glancing back at Eulalie. A smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes hides at the corners of his lips.

“I think that sometimes it sounds like we were born a hundred years too late,” he says, gesturing back at the rock monument. “Like all the magical and wonderful feats have already been accomplished, and all we can do is look back on them and wonder at the power of our ancestors.”

The stories always had the more powerful, the more creative, the more ingenious heroes. Sometimes Ipomoea wondered if he would ever get to witness one of them himself; but the more obelisks he found, the more he thought they were all relics of the past.

“…But it makes for a good story,” he concedes, when he turns back to her.

Sometimes, he hopes that he might make for a good story, too.

“It’s getting late,” he says when the silence had begun to settle in between them. The edge of the horizon had turned golden, as the last remnants of the sun slipped from the edge of the earth. “Should we be heading back?”

And when he turns he offers her his shoulder, before he begins to retrace their hoofprints along the beach - albeit at a much slower, relaxed pace this time.

hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you

i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy




@eulalie !
”here am i!“

ponyglxy art

[Eulalie]

and, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
and she would mark the opening skies,
i saw no Heaven—but in her eyes

Ipomoea takes to the story much like her children would, were they here. You are never too young for a good story, especially not one of light and hope and wonder. When it comes to those things, there is a little bit of child in all of them, waiting to hear it, searching for it.

But when the last of her words fall away to the coming night, fading like the sun over the horizon and Ipomoea turns back toward her, something is missing in his eyes. “Perhaps the magical and wonderful feats are just waiting for the right equine to accomplish them,” Eulalie suggests, settling her warm brown gaze upon the younger man. “For someone with a pure heart and good intentions to discover who they truly are.”

There is a suggestiveness to her tone, a quirk to her brow, as she says this. Like she could be talking about anyone. About herself, her children. Him. “But you’re right, they do make for the best stories, especially if they can help inspire others.” Eulalie smiles, at last, and is reminded of the story Somnus had told her once about a constellation, of a love so great the gods had immortalized it in the stars.

She remembers wondering if she could ever love so strongly, so deeply.

The golden haired mare takes the offered shoulder, and can tell that Tabbris is relieved that they have decided to return to the safety of the court. But she is not worried, not with the sun haloing them in a golden lining like they are something magical and otherworldly. “Yes, we best get going before we’re discovered,” she laughs, as they head down the beach and away from the strange stone monuments.

@Ipomoea fin <3