From the moment the red skinned man stepped into Delumine, the trees had begun to whisper of his passing.

Ipomoea had not heard it at first; the borders were a long ways from the capitol. But the trees talked to the grass, and the grass to the flowers, and the flowers to the vines that crept up the citadel’s walls. By the time Ramses reached the Dawn Court, so too had that silent, ancient language. And although he may not have known, each plant he passed had watched him.

He was in the garden when the roses suddenly stiffened. He lowered his head, slowly, to the center of an unfurled flowers. Its petals were as soft as silk against his muzzle, shivering gently as he exhaled over them.

For a moment the flower seemed to be laughing, amused by a joke it did not seem willing to share with him. Ipomoea frowned, and extended a questioning thought towards it.

Finally, a soft, simple answer came to him: he’s here.

He pulled away before the flower could tell him who. But all around him, it suddenly seemed as if the entire garden were laughing. The grass around him reached up to caress his fetlocks, and then, before he could convince himself to do anything else, Ipomoea was walking. The garden passed by him in a blur, and soon the soft dirt floor soon gave way to the marble of the halls.

He did not pause when he reached the long hallway; he walked through it without seeing, his mind turning far too slowly for his liking. But even when he combed his mind and tried to imagine who, he stubbornly refused to think of the one person he knew, somehow, that it would be.

The hallway intersected another, and he turned without hesitation. His hoofbeats rang out with each step, sharp and bright. Turn after turn, he navigated the hallways with little more than instinct and memory. Vines reached in through the windows as he passed, their night-blooming flowers opening briefly in his presence before they closed back up once more.

When the hallway again intersected another, he stopped abruptly. To his left the hallway opened into the courtyard beyond. But to his right -

The red and white man was as clear to him as that day out in the desert, the same as his mind remembered him. For a second he just watched - Ramses was walking down the hallway, his back turned to him. His wings open and closed quickly, nervously, grasping at the air like they were trying to fly away.

But then he lifted his head, and in a calm, quiet voice, he asked, “What are you doing here?”



It was not spoken in an unfriendly tone.

But the words made it clear; the bone-and-fur-clad man was out of place here.



@ramses
notes

The stallion - the stranger - turned to face him, laughter on his lips and in his eyes. Ipomoea’s eyes hardened.

”I already told you, we’re not -“ he begins, his voice low and tense. But the chestnut cuts him off before he can get the rest of the words out.

For a moment his expression is unreadable.

For a moment his heart is leaping violently inside of his chest.

He thinks he can taste the Mors still on the back of his tongue, the sand and the heat and the wind. Like his body remembers how it feels still to be cast out into that endless, dry sea, even when his mind has forgotten it.

Ipomoea had been so young - not even old enough to wean. He did not even know his true birthday, because from that moment on he had only known the day that he opened his eyes in a Solterran home, and had taken that to mark each year by. And now this stranger was telling him that he remembered, even when Po didn’t; that he was the child their parents wanted, instead of the one they left out to die.

He did not hold any animosity towards his parents - for most of his life, he had hardly given them a second thought. Grainne had been the closest thing to a mother for him, but from the moment he had been turned into an orphan on the streets of Solterra, he had been a wanderer and content to be one at that. Independence had thankfully come naturally to him.

But looking at the chestnut, with the eyes that almost matched his own, he wondered why it had been one and not the other. Why would a parent choose one son over the other, love the first and doom the second? 

”You saw?” His voice is little more than a whisper, but it’s steady. He turns back to the stranger, and perhaps for the first time begins to truly look at him. The way half his body was white and the other half red, much like his own. The similarities were there, if only he chose to look for them.

He lifts his chin, and swallows past the pain. ”Can you tell me why?”


@ramses
notes

For a while, as the chestnut sighed and began to speak, and for the first time since they first met out in the desert lost the smirk that Ipomoea had seen whenever he crossed his mind, all he could do was watch him.

In the absence of all that feral humor, he could begin to think that maybe he was telling the truth. Of course it was something he had already known, somewhere in the back of his mind where his memories were vague and lacking, but until now it had not been something he was willing to believe. Ipomoea had grown up an orphan - his earliest memory was of being an orphan, being alone on the streets of Solterra. It had become a part of his identity, a simple fact of who he was. He had not tortured himself with thoughts of the parents that did not want him, not since he was a foal. The traveling merchants who had taken him in had taught him to not be ashamed of that, the mare that had nursed him back to health had taught him that he mattered more than that.

“The Davke,” he echoed, when the other had finished his tale. The pelts and bones he dressed himself in told the story well enough, but still it was shocking to hear it for himself. “You’re saying that you - that we - are of Davke blood.”

It was not phrased as a question.

The thought makes his heart skip a beat, though whether it was in fear or understanding he would never know. It’s the same rush of fire he felt when he had looked into Raum’s and Legion’s eyes, the same trembling fury that had promised he could do more than grow flowers.

Ipomoea swallowed, tasting bile at the back of his throat.

“If this is true,” he turns away, but he can’t stop seeing the coyote teeth wrapped around Ramses’ leg, or the skull peeking out at him with empty eyes over his shoulder, or the undeniable horse rib that circles his throat. “Then there was nothing you could have done for me. Not without being thrown into the desert yourself.”

But he can’t stop the selfish thought that runs through his mind like a ghost, the vicious pride that says I would have done it for you. Even when you didn't for me.






@ramses
woahh po

The information was startling, directly at odds with everything Ipomoea had ever known. He had never met a Davke in person - but the stories, the rumors, their very appearance said enough. They led a wild life, a savage life. The appaloosa had never heard of a Davke who loved flowers, let alone one blessed with the same magic as he.

Had Ramses found him a year ago and revealed his heritage then, perhaps the news would had unsettled him more than it did now. Ipomoea’s face was passive, expressionless. Aside from the way his brow slowly begins to crease as he processes the information, there was no obvious change in his demeanor.

Inside, he was a rage of emotions.

And yet, there was a small voice that whispered in the back of his mind with smug satisfaction: why did you expect anything else?

The realization sunk in slowly, like the sun rising over the mountains. The now-familiar anger was beginning to rear its ugly head within his chest, sharp teeth stretched into a smile. Anger the likes of which he had never imagined himself capable of until the last year - anger that had been steadily rising ever since Raum’s first attack on the Night Court.

Ipomoea swallowed thickly, and choked all that anger back down.

And that voice continued to whisper - it all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

His brow creased further, looking at his brother.

“You can stay.” His words come haltingly. How could he say anything else? How could he turn away a guest without reason, especially one from Solterra, where he had pointed so many away from the deserts to here?



He closes his eyes, giving a quick, sharp jerk of his head. “You can stay as long as you’d like. I would never dream of turning you away.”

He isn’t sure if he’s speaking now as his brother, welcoming Ramses home; or as a king, inviting a guest in. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither - Ipomoea brushes the thought aside, unwilling to dwell on it. He swallows thickly again.

Is that sand he tastes on his tongue? Or is he imagining it?

The wind coming in through the open window is warm, far too warm for winter in Delumine. When he strains his ears he can hear hoofbeats - but not the steady clack of hooves on cobblestones. Ipomoea can hear the rhythmic pounding of bare feet on sand, of scarred horses stretched out beneath a desert sun -

His eyes flutter open.

“If you’ll excuse me-“ he cuts Ramses off, unable to meet his red gaze as he turns away. “I have someplace to be.”



He’s already walking away when he suddenly stops, and turns to look at the chestnut over his shoulder. “I…” the words die on his tongue. I what?

“I’ll see you-“ he swallows again, meeting Ramses’ red eyes. Eyes so similar to his own. “-tomorrow? The gardens, maybe?” He regrets the words as soon as they leave his lips. The gardens, really? He doubts it would be Ramses’ first choice of sightseeing.

But it’s too late to take them back. So he waits.






@ramses
another abrupt exit gosh po what are you doing

With Ramses’ confirmation he nods, a curt, sharp jerk of his head that feels too mechanical, like a machine that has not been properly oiled. To make up for it he smiles, and his eyes seem to be saying forgive me even when he can’t force his lips to say the words. There’s something like relief filling his chest, but whether it’s relief that Ramses agreed, or relief to be moving again -

- He isn’t sure.

But he doesn’t question it.

His wings flutter nervously at his ankles as he lingers, a heartbeat longer than he should have. “Great,” he says, feeling the need to fill the silence that’s already beginning to stretch between them.

And he’s about to smile again, to reassure Ramses or maybe just himself, when the red stallion suddenly turns. And whereas Po had looked back, Ramses does not.

Thoughts of the desert choke his throat with sand again, as he watches his brother leave. And Ipomoea has to force himself not to think of the other time he did not look back, that time in the desert when he had called, and called, and called, but no one had answered. He tries to not hold it against him.

But as his hooves echo against the floor, it’s hard to think of them as anything other than a woodpecker and a wolf, always longing, always waiting, always hungry.




@ramses
uhh yeah new thread soon?! didn't realize it's been so long