flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
It had snowed last night - the clouds were still hanging low and heavy in the sky, blocking out the sun and drenching the world in an overlay of gray. Ipomoea’s breath came in frosty puffs, climbing like smoke into the sky with each exhale.
He shivered, wings wrapping tightly around each fetlock. It was going to be cold today if the cloud cover never broke - cold and quiet. The sages expected more snow by midafternoon, and as the appaloosa lifted his head towards the sky he couldn’t help but wonder if the clouds would be able to wait even that long.
The meadow felt unnaturally silent as they crossed it, and Ipomoea struggled to convince himself it was only the snow, and the early hour, and the cold keeping all the animals hidden in their dens. He didn’t want to think of the other reason - the more prevalent one, the threatening one, the reason that had dragged him out of bed at dawn to check what news had happened in the night. “Only snowfall, sir,” the page had told him with wide, sleepy eyes. “Nothing new to report.” Nothing new that they had found. Yet. Ipomoea could still see the red of the kill pit Emersyn had led him to, how the blood had stained the snow. He did not believe that the forest had been as quiet as the page had wanted him to believe; just because the scouts had not yet found anything suspicious, did not mean it was not lying in wait for them.
“Emersyn’s map had a few different areas listed,” he turned his eyes to Maerys, regarding the soldier walking beside him. “We can start on this side of the Rapax, and work our way across?”
He shifted his weight, snow crackling under hoof, eager to be off and moving. The trees waited for them, canopies shivering beneath the fresh blanket of snow. Somewhere in the distance a branch broke, its crack echoing over the meadows, breaking the silence.
He could feel it reverberating through his chest, like a piece of him were breaking along with it. With a stubborn shrug, he turned towards the forest trail that led away into the shadows.
@Maerys
hope this is alright! sorry it's a little short ;o;
01-03-2020, 02:30 PM
Played by
kealie [PM] Posts: 74 — Threads: 16 Signos: 0
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
He was altered now. All those delicate and yielding curves of his body were sharper now. Those features that had laughed and waltzed with Maerys' words once had since hardened. She had met Ipomoea when he was a Denocte commoner, not a Delumine sovereign, and the difference between the two felt starkly opposing at that very moment.
But it made sense.
In Delumine it was familiar to awake to a range of daffodils where each shoot was a classic golden horn amid a fanfare of nimbus corolla and still feel bile extending skyward in your larynx. All the citizens wanted to shield this court, to build walls around its border and keep all the wicked things out, but how could they deny travelers a tour of land's blooms, a living ocean of light? What if the darkness was already within the borders, amongst them? Then what?
Now the silver-haired dun could hardly lay her mauve sights on the wintry area without welling up. It was lovely, something she could not begin to replicate in a thousand lifetimes, but the world knows no sentiment it seems and that meant love for this land was a weakness just as much as it was a strength.
"Aye," she agreed quietly to Ipomoea's plan, her eyes never turning to his, but rather the leisurely evolving area around them. She remembered Emersyn's map well - all those crimson points and that one profane x.
Meadow filtered effortlessly into forest as Maerys followed the sovereign's lead into the shadows that recently had only known melancholy and tragedy. This forest, once so alive, now brought chills to her slender body. The trees that had sheltered so many with their spreading canopy of green and provided so much are now listless phantoms of their previous glory.
Vradara, who had been sitting quietly on Maerys back, unraveled her wings into the brisk air and jumped upwards, her appendages catching the breeze and ascending her skywards. The dragon clicked and screeched as she circled them from above, her keen eyes watching the area with an acute precision most flight creatures could only dream of. The gold and mauve mottled animal communicated with Maerys what she saw, which at the moment was not much, her view somewhat obscured by the leafy boughs of the dense Viride trees. Maerys hardly acknowledged Vradara or her actions (if at all) for Ipomoea would surely know what the divine creature was doing from the heavens.
"Hast aught new been revealed that couldst aid in our search now?"
She yearned he would respond yes, but inevitably if there had been any new revelations most would have known by now.
flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
If there’s any peace in the quiet the snow has created across the field, Ipomoea does not feel it. He misses the brightness of spring, the melody of birdsong drifting from the tree line, the whistle of wind as it weaves through the wheatgrass and the poppies. The white is blinding; the silence is deafening; and Ipomoea picks his way gingerly as if he’s afraid that at any moment the ice beneath his hooves will snap, and the cold will swallow him.
But he tries not to think of that, as the cold seeps into his hooves and snow clings to his fetlocks. Ipomoea tries to think only of the map Emersyn had drawn out for them, with its red dots and red x’s breaking up the green of the treetops. He memorized it upon the first time seeing it, and while the thought of adding more to it makes him sick -
- He knows there is no other choice, if they hope to resolve the mystery once and for all.
Perhaps Maerys had been right, perhaps there was more they could be doing. But if there was an easy answer, Ipomoea and his regime had yet to find it.
“No,” he tells her, and although his voice is little more than a whisper it seems impossibly loud beneath the quiet of the trees. Ipomoea casts his eyes towards the canopy, catching a glimpse of Maerys’ dragon through the interlocked branches. Shrugging his shoulders, he continues. “The snow hasn’t helped - it covers any tracks we may find, and who knows what else may be buried beneath it.”
Although he wouldn’t admit to it, sometimes he wondered what the ground they were walking over during the patrols looked like. Was it bloody, covered in bits of feathers and flesh that had been hurriedly cleaned up? Were they following the tracks of a poacher without realizing it, stepping into his very hoof prints? The thought sent a shiver crawling down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold.
He looks sideways at her, as they trudge side by side through the snow. “We’ll find something soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow - but with all of us looking, they won’t be getting away so easily as they think.” And he tries not to let the word soon sound so final, like even considering the words will somehow create another pit filled with discarded parts and red, so much red.