He isn’t sure when he stopped carrying the songbird around with him. It sits on the windowsill now, a once-favorite spot of Odet’s, bathed in the light streaming in through the opened window. Its dappled in green and gold, rosettes of color that move gently back and forth each time the trees outside sigh.

Ipomoea studies the statue now, his eyes paying close attention to each perfectly carved feather. Once he had watched it religiously, waiting for an eye to blink or a wing to twitch. Once he had been hopeful each morning, expecting to wake up and see his bonded waiting on his perch for him.

Now he rarely bothered to glance in the roost’s direction, because he already knew it would be empty.

Slowly, gently, he pushes the small statue until it gazes out over the courtyard with eyes that no longer see. In the right light it almost looked like the songbird was simply resting, pausing for only a moment before taking flight once more. There was a slight bend in his legs, like he was preparing to jump up into the air, his wings raised subtly at the shoulders, beak lifted skyward. As the days continued to pass, as more and more time spun into place between that last spring and now, Ipomoea becomes more certain that that leap will never come.

Footsteps against the marble floor bring him out of his reverie. He lifts his head in time to see the antlered man stepping through the door, and a smile instinctively welcomes him.

“Seir. Come in, come in,” he murmurs, and without looking back at the small stone statue, he turns to greet the man. Even now he still was not sure what had made him choose this stranger - just as he still was not sure what had made the stranger choose to say yes. But neither did the thought worry him. “We have much to talk about.”

There are questions buzzing in his mind, begging to be asked - but for now, he holds them at bay. At the large walnut desk he pours two glasses of water and then, while drinking from one, offers the other to the chestnut.

“How are you? Settling in well enough, I hope?” His smile, while warm, does not quite reach his eyes.

---

The man standing before him was one of few words - but his eyes spoke for him. Seir was quiet in a way that was fitting for a scholar of Dawn. But it was not the sleepy, disenchanted way the rest of the Court had seemed since his return.

Seir’s quiet was like the quiet of the trees, the space between birdsongs. And the pale golden glow he carried upon one antler felt like he was bringing the forest into the citadel with him, like the dapples on his back had been wrought from the sun streaming through the leaves. And the miniature sun trapped in his lantern brought light to the entire room.

“That it is,” he murmured in response. He could see the forest from the windows - it was never far, although here in the Court it could often feel far removed - it was there now, waiting for him. He wondered how many unicorns were wandering its twisted paths, and how many of them left a dark trail behind them.

“Let me know if you need anything, you have only to ask.” He lifts his head slightly, turning back to the other stallion.

Tell me child, what ails Delumine? 

Ipomoea sighs, setting his glass back down on the desk. “I wish there was an easy answer,” he says softly, meeting Seir’s gaze. “To most of Novus, Delumine seems perfectly fine, and the quiet is easy to write off as our studious nature.”

At this he laughs, and the sound is soft and choking, a sob disguised by humor. Inside his heart is shaking like a leaf hanging on to the end of its branch, left behind by all the other leaves that have already been blown off.

“But they weren’t always this way. To me this kind of quiet sounds more like death than anything else. Like the joy and excitement that gives us reason for being here has all but vanished.”

He stops abruptly, glancing quickly back at his new Regent. “Some might call me crazy or say I’m imagining it.” But he lifts his chin higher, and there’s a hard edge to his bright cherry eyes.

As if he’s daring the other stallion to agree with him, or begging him to not.

---

It’s the most words Ipomoea has heard the antlered man speak at once - more words than he had expected, if he was being honest with himself - and he smiles because of it. Seir’s words are soft and honest, and although Ipomoea has learned in recent months to question what others say, he can’t help but nod his head along. He wants to believe Seir, and the regent’s gentle demeanor gives him no reason to not.

”I am glad you’ve come then,” he says, meeting the stallion’s verdant gaze. Eyes that are green like the forest; green like Somnus’; green like spring.

In a Court that was filled with forests and meadows, there never was enough green. Especially now, with winter setting in and all the landscape looking grey each morning when he looked outside his window.

Ipomoea breathes a sigh, rubbing his temple against the window sill. “You have far more experience than I,” he said at last, his voice soft. The stallion would outlive them all he believed, his life would surpass the entire court. Another time, when he had a moment to himself, Ipomoea would wonder how many worlds Seir had seen before, how many lives he had lived - and why he had chosen here, and now, and him. But now he can only ponder the chestnuts question, and his heart trembles at the way the words seem to cut through his very soul.

A thousand possibilities have been running through his mind since his return, since Somnus passed on his crown to him. Ipomoea can see the Court so clearly now, as if his time away has sharpened his senses to it.

And the way he sees it is as a flower - nearly ready to bloom, but with the odds stacked against it. It needed more sun, and water, and nourishment, and care, it needed a gardener’s instinct. 

But with so many things that it needed, how could he know where to start? He was still just a boy, and until recently had lacked any sort of experience or qualification. Ipomoea shakes his head slowly, but the frown that stretches across his features is more contemplative than sour.

“Delumine needs something to rouse it back to action, to liveliness. I had hoped the war our east would have provoked some sort of response - I should be thankful the fighting never reached our borders, but our citizens did not even seem concerned about that possibility. I don’t know how to make them see that, I don’t know how to show them -“ His voice falters. I don’t know how, his heart is beating like a wild thing in his chest again. He swallows thickly, and fixes his new regent with his cherry gaze.

“How do you think we should proceed, Seir?”

Ipomoea is still just a boy, trying so hard to be a king.

---

He lifts his chin as the chestnut begins to speak, a subtle shift that changes his entire demeanor, if only slightly. Something about his eyes harden, a glint of determination hiding in the shadows.

He was not expecting an easy answer. It had never been a possibility, not when he had already crossed a world and found nothing but a tangled pathway that eventually led back to where he had started. Ipomoea knew now that there was nothing quick about changing history; Raum’s dictatorship had taught him that. Change was always brimming just below the surface, sometimes wild, sometimes demure, but always present. The trick was in guiding that change.

Past rulers had let that change go by unnoticed in Delumine, had allowed it to take root among the citizens until they were wrapped within its vice-like grip. It had taken leaving for him to see that, to see the way the rest of the world continued to learn and grow while his own home appeared to regress, to grow in upon itself instead of out.

He had never planned to pave the way alone - Ipomoea would never be a ruler who distanced himself from his people, who asked them to go without going along beside them.

“That is all I ask,” he says, as softly as the sound of leaves falling in the forest.

The more eyes he had, the more minds who sought out the solution, the more likely they were to find one. Seir was a part of the land, a part of Delumine in a way Ipomoea was not. He was grounding, in a way that was comforting and strengthening. He was what Ipomoea needed by his side.

And as much as Seir might try to downplay his experience, it was experience that Ipomoea needed most, experience that had prompted him to choose the antlered man.

He can’t help but fidget as the newly-made Regent bows before him, inclining his head in a silent sign of gratitude. Senna’s words came to him then, unprompted and unwelcome. If you really wanted to help us -

What the red man hadn’t known then, perhaps still did not know, was the ember that had been struck over Ipomoea the moment he had chosen to leave his home, the slowly-smoldering fires that now filled his chest. What Senna did not know was that Ipomoea was willing - to kill a king, to lay down his life, to be the spark. It had never been about himself.

It had been about the people.

“We have much to get started on,” he says, and at last he comes forward to press his muzzle against the stallion’s side. ”Are you well acquainted with the library out in Viride?” Sunlight is streaming in through the window, anointing the two of them with golden halos, limning them in light. Ipomoea smiles, and turns his head to the door.

“Thankfully, we are in the perfect place to find the answer, if such a thing exists.”



Where better to start to search for it than within Delumine, where there was never a shortage of study materials?

---

He turns to the chestnut, and for half a heartbeat their eyes meet and the entire castle around them seems to sigh. Ipomoea can see the green of an ivy vine curling in through the open window from the corner of his eye, a stray wind tousling its leaves until it looks like its waving at him. And something about it seems like a good sign to him - like the earth itself is content around Seir, like the plants growing on the castle walls are as comfortable with the newly-made regent as they are with the king who tends to them.

Ipomoea smiles, and holds the door to the hallway open for him.

”Allow me to walk with you there, then,” he says, and pretends to not struggle with making it a command rather than a question. ”And on the way I can tell you a little more about Novus’ current state of affairs.”

And he hopes, selfishly, fervently, that the trees will be green and bright and that the birds of the forest will be singing instead of silent. The Court has been far too still for his liking since his arrival back to Delumine; but something about the ivy creeping in through the window makes it seem like at least one, small part of it is coming back awake.

---