The ink was neat and pretty upon the page where he left it, black on white, elegant and sloping. Dear Mateo, it started, in fancy, crisp script. I hope this letter finds you well...

But it did not make it far down the page; the quill tapped impatiently against the desk, the ink dried upon the page with no fresh words to add to its length. He had gone over his letter over and over, until there was not a single part of it that was untouched. Lines had been scratched out and alternative words written in the margins, and still it remained an unfinished disaster. Try as he might, his mind refused to focus.

And that was before the rumors had reached him.

When Ipomoea heard that the ivy had fallen at last and that a statue of a unicorn had appeared overnight, when he heard that magic and time ran amuck on a world seemingly separated from Novus - he had left his desk and his letter at once. Even now it lay curled upon his desk, pushed back and forth by the wind drifting in through the open window, and the regent was gone from his chambers.

The air on the island seemed fresher, crisper; a stark contrast to the stale and dusty air from his room. Each breath was restorative, as if the magic in the air were infecting him in the best of ways. He could get drunk on breathing alone he knew, if only he stayed here long enough.

And he supposed he would. There was enough gossip to make his head spin here - gossip of gods and monsters, of silver men with daggers in their teeth and a relic older than time itself. So he strides along the beach with a determination he didn’t know he possessed, a sureness in each step that he would not have found had he stayed within Delumine. The world is changing, and Ipomoea is changing alongside it.

”You’re not the only one changing,” Odet’s voice was welcome in his mind, as the songbird landed upon his withers. ”Look.” He gestured with one wing, blue feathers glinting in the sunlight, and the dawn child followed their course.

His first thought is that he doesn’t recognize her - his second thought is that he should.

He comes alongside her and her tiger, the brightness in his eyes nearly synonymous with the shine of her feathers. And when he turns to look at her there’s something knowing in his eyes, for Ipomoea has heard the stories of Denocte’s Emissary.

“Miss Tonnerre,” his breath is a sigh nearly lost on the wind. “I was wondering if I might find you here.”

And he couldn’t help but wonder when he looked into the other mare’s eyes -

- Had she heard rumors of the flower-crowned boy, as well?

---

”I’ve been caught,” she tells him, and his name is gentle on her lips when she turns her eyes to look at him. He can’t help the similar smile that blossoms like a rose across his face - happiness had always been contagious, when it came to Ipomoea. He couldn’t help but smile when others smiled, laugh when others laughed, dance when others danced.

He was beginning to learn that anger, too, was an emotion he could soak up and reflect as easily as any other. But oh, how much nicer it was to be happy and at peace!

Too few of the world had that, these days.

“I would love that,” he tells the red woman, and he means each word he says. “Your city is marvelous, as soon as I think I’ve seen it all it shows me something new.” He’s walked the streets of Denocte under three different Sovereigns now, at very different times of the Court’s history - it was a second home to him, a place that always made him feel as if he were waking up from a long slumber. But there was something in the lightness of her voice and the shine of her golden eyes that promised adventure, that promised to show him places of the city he had never seen before. It piqued at his wanderlust soul.

So when she asks him why he’s here, his heart sings with laughter.

“Adventure.”

And maybe a bit of a hunt, as well. For gods, for relics, for monsters.

“This island makes me feel like a boy again,” he tells her, and there’s a sly sort of smile hiding at the corners of his lips. “Like all the world is just one great treasure hunt, and all we have to do is fight the dragon to find it.” Now he knows better - dragons didn’t always look like dragons, and sometimes dragons were more friend than foe - but still, the island has a way of singing sweetness into his ears.

The tigress falls behind them, and he settles into step beside Moira. For a moment all he hears is the gentle crash of the sea, their muted footsteps on the beach, and the sighing of the wind through the nearby trees. He knew the quiet would not last for long - it never did, here in this strange and exciting world - but he found comfort in the lull.

“And what of you? Does the island tell you similar fairy tales?”

---

It’s easy to walk alongside her, this women of red with her tiger trailing along beside them. It’s almost easy to forget where they are, to forget they’re on an island that seems more than sand and palm trees but something alive, and intelligent, and full of magic. He can almost ignore the way the birds seem to watch them and the how the trees seem to bend the way light moves.

He almost doesn’t have to think about how he’s here looking for a god, and for a killer, and for the answer to why this place was necessary in the first place.

But he puts it to the back of his mind for now, in that place where tigers prowl. It’s a hidden place, one that only makes itself known when it’s already too late - when the tiger has her jaws wrapped around her prey.

He smiles, brushing his shoulder against Moira’s. “I believe it,” he says, and laughs. It sounds like glass shattering and waves crashing, like the streets of Denocte when the sun sets. “It makes me want to stay ever longer, knowing that each night brings with it something new.” He wonders if it’s the same sense of mystery and adventure that keeps her, that keeps all of them, wandering the streets of the Night Court like beggars holding out their hats, wishing not for copper pennies, but for stories. For secrets.

A million lifetimes. It made him feel homesick, but in a way that made him not want to go home at all. Denocte was enthralling, with enough mysteries to keep him entertained indefinitely. Delumine felt as stale as an old, discarded book in comparison; a book that was only half-finished, whose author had run out of things to write about.

The Night Court would never have that problem.

He tilts his ear towards the red woman, even as his gaze wanders again. To the waves, to the trees, to the sandy beach that stretches on and on and on. But at her admission, he can’t help but tear his eyes away so that he can look at her properly.

Slowly, a new smile begins to spread across his face, like a flower unfurling.

“Is that so?” he asks, and again bumps playfully against her. “I hope you find him here, then. Life is far too short to keep such passions to ourselves.”

His wings are fluttering now, matching the beat of his heart as they ride and fall and rise again.

And then, coyly, daring a glance at her from the corner of his eye as he pretends that he’s not trying to take notes from her, he asks: “What will you tell him, when you see him again?”

There was time yet for her, for him, for all of them.

---