He isn’t sure anymore if he’s searching for the relic, or for the god who crafted it. Perhaps he isn’t searching at all - a part of him expects it will be left up to chance, that he will either stumble upon one or the other when he least expects it, or not at all. Wouldn’t the god of time have already chosen the perfect timing?

Perfect according to his own wishes, that is.

But for as odd and sometimes-fearsome as the island may be, it was also endearing. Some might find the brightness overwhelming, for everything was painted in the most vibrant of greens, blues, reds, and all other colors, a surrealist’s painted drenched in neon. The shadows were all wrong here, as if the colors themselves were a source of light, banishing away any darkness.

He did not find it unnerving. He found it exhilarating.  This island - this strange, new land - was the most alive place he had ever been to, even putting Denocte’s dancing night markets to shame at times. It was alive in a quiet, terrifying way: the trees seemed to sigh as Ipomoea walked beneath them, their long vines parting ways for him to cross beneath. The flowers turned to meet him, reached their long and pointed petals out to him, and their touch was velvety soft against his skin.

There was always the sense of being watched here, but whether it was the eyes of the plants, the birds, or the shadowy cats that stalked him, he did not know. He suspected it was all of them.

Laughter echoed through the forest and the white-speckled boy stopped. His head tilted slowly to one side, ears swiveling towards the sound as the laughter swelled, reverberating all around him. 

He drew in his breath slowly, holding it close; and then when he released it, he let his tension go with it. 

Magic flowed from his body like a never ending spring, as the leaves of the forest shivered and reached out, surrounding him like a shield. Vines crawled like snakes across the ground, roots raising from the earth, tree branches sweeping low. A bird, disturbed by the movement, flew from the nearest tree - but it turned sharply, finding its way back to Ipomoea where it hung, shivering, just above him. Odet chattered happily at his new “friend”, as if unaware of the grasp of his bonded’s magic.

But slowly the laughter died away, and his magic evaporated like the water it pretended to be.

For a moment longer Ipomoea was still, as the trees righted themselves and their roots sank back into the ground. The forest sighed and shook around him, a dry rustling sound of leaves on leaves, and then all grew still.

He stepped forward, treading across freshly-torn soil.

Time seems to matter little on this island, he thinks to himself when he finally emerges from the treeline, squinting his eyes against the sun. It had felt like he had spent hours within the shaded canopy, it not days, chasing strange birds and smelling stranger flowers. And yet the sun was exactly as he’d left it, hung as if frozen in the sky, as if waiting for him.

Ipomoea stood there in contemplation with his head tilted back, eyes closed to the sky, ears turned towards the sea. Perhaps it was waiting for its god. Perhaps Solis had abandoned his post at last, and left his charge waiting his return in limbo. Maybe Tempus had called time to stop at last, and left them but a single moment in time.

He suspected it was nothing more than another riddle.

Ipomoea opened his eyes, cherry-red, and saw the lone figure on the beach. It should have been an ordinary sight - he hardly went more than an hour here without running into someone else, or catching glimpses of their shadowy frames in the forest - and yet, and yet, it drew his attention in a way he couldn’t explain, like his gaze had been reduced to a magnet and she were ferromagnetic. All the island is alive and vibrant and moving, yet she alone stands in stillness, with her back turned to the wonders.

The image of a grim reaper waiting for their charge comes to mind and he wonders, briefly, if someone has decided it’s his own turn to die.

But he shakes those thoughts off like a cloak, leaving them pooled at the forest edge. There’s no room for such morbidity in his mind, not when the island still has much left to offer. He leaves them behind himself and steps forward towards the beach, towards the sea, towards the stranger that waits at its edge.

When he comes alongside her, he does not look at her; his eyes are still cast towards the horizon, where the water stretches so far it kisses the sky. His wings reach out to meet the waves, as the ocean rushes forwards to claim his fetlocks as its own. It’s surprisingly cool against his skin - or maybe he’s running a fever, high off of the island’s mysteries.

He waits there, for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, three. The waves sound like they’re laughing, filling the silence between them.

“Fancying a swim?” his voice is paper-thin when he speaks, barely raised above the roar of the sea. “It’s certainly warm enough for one.”

He doesn’t say anything about the monsters he’s seen crossing below the bridge, their massive, scaled bodies little more than a shadow in the darkness. He’s heard them roar in the distance, heard the hunger in their voices; he doesn't say how he suspects even his own magic would not be enough to keep them at bay.