---

Spring had arrived haltingly, hesitatingly, so tenuous it was almost lost amid all the other noise.

Ipomoea almost missed the first few buds of green sprouting along the branches, and the way the canopies gradually filled in overhead. It seemed strange to him, when he lifted his head to the sky and saw a thousand shades of green in its stead. Wrong, almost; like the world was no longer the same without skeleton branches caging him in.

He used to think the arrival of spring made everything new again; like the blood could be washed away with the snow, like he could pretend it had never existed. There was still a part of him that clung to that, a part of him that smiled a soft hello to the new leaves and the birds that flit back and forth between them. That part of him can almost imagine it’s only another walk in the woods, and pretends to not hear warnings in the birdsong and premonitions in the way a distant deer turned and fled at the sight of them.

You should have stayed home, that voice still whispers to him - or is it the trees? If you hadn’t left us, all those months ago-

His smile is fleeting, fading even before he turns back to the path he follows through the woods.

The undergrowth of the forest is trampled, crushed under the weight of someone running. The tracks are fresher now - whatever it is had slowed, but the blood flowing from their wounds hadn’t. It’s thick and red and still warm, as if to proudly say that winter would never truly leave the forest, not anymore.

His heart is beating like a war drum and it, too, drowns out the quiet arrival of spring.

And he moves along at its pace, half-running now through the forest as he chases something dying (distantly he knows that it must be dying, even without knowing what it feels like to bleed the way it does.) He can hear Thana tracking beside him, can see the point of her horn breaking the sunlight that falls across their backs. And the blade still strapped to his leg begins to loosen, the point of it tapering, spiraling, reforming itself anew.

By the time he breaks through the trees and into the meadow it looks more like a unicorn’s horn than a sword, aimed at the bleeding thing that lies in the grass, ribcage heaving with every breath.

He forgets, then, that he’s supposed to be looking for the killer, and not the killed; and he forgets to worry about his own safety when he wades through the sea of grass like he’s treading water. Ipomoea only falls to his knees beside the creature, and stares at the bits of crystal half-torn from its head that should have been beautiful, that should have glowed in the sunlight, that are smeared now with blood and mud and sweat. And as the whites of the deer’s eyes roll towards him, and its legs thrash against the ground like it thinks it still is running, he only wonders how the world turned so green overnight,

and why it hadn’t turned red instead.




@thana
“here am i”

---

Maybe there’s a part of him feeling like that downed stag, sinking into the grasses of the meadow. They rise up now like an ocean wave, rippling and shivering, ready to consume the deer, ready to consume him. As if, in that moment, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a creature bleeding blood, and one bleeding magic.

Maybe he’s stopped feeling, and started reacting only by instinct.

And so when Thana comes forward, there’s something in her gaze that makes the magic in him react even before she speaks. With every step she takes it pulses in his chest, flowing as freely from him like the blood trailing its way down the stag’s cheek. But it is not flowers, springing up from the earth around him like an offering of peace in the midst of a fight. Ipomoea doesn’t have time to wonder if he’s outgrown them.

The grass sprouting in the small meadow has an edge to it, like ten thousand slender green swords lifting at once. As each word falls from her lips the stalks closest to him begin to weave themselves together, knitting over the body of the deer like a mother tucking in her child to bed. There’s a protectiveness in it, in the way his magic knows even before she raises her horn what she plans, as if he latently knows not to expect anything more than death from her.

It is cruel to let it suffer.

The deer is not strong enough to break through the confines of the grass-prison Ipomoea’s magic has wrought, and he knows she is right.

He knows, and still he does not, can not, accept it.

“No -“ She is not looking at him, but at the stag; and he is not looking at the stag now, but at her. And in that terrible second before her horn sinks into flesh, when the blade of it is cold against the stag’s soft skin, he is the one who feels suffocated, and threatened, and struggling to draw breath to survive. Maybe the deer knows it, and that is why his glassy eyes turn to look at him instead of the unicorn hovering over him. Ipomoea knows it’s a magic deeper than his own that is reaching out between them now - he knows it, because he has felt it before.

So as the first drops of blood appear, bright and red against the stag’s throat, he stands. And even while he feels like a dying thing, he still feels strong enough to put himself between Thana and the deer, feeling the heat of his skin against her’s as he presses into her, presses her away, begging with his body for her to let him - let them - live.

And the dagger-grass begins to wither and die, folding in around them like their life is being leeched out by his.






@thana
“here am i”

---

The clearing, once-peaceful, lost all of its charm the moment the two of them entered the sunlight of it. Everything is growing thorns, from the dandelions crushed under his hooves to the dogwood trees clustered around the meadow. The sweetgrass covering the deer, covering him, look more like overeager brambles now.

Everything is growing thorns, because Ipomoea is trembling.

His heart leaps into his throat, his sides turning dark with sweat. And for just a moment, as his breath rasps painfully in and out of lungs that are growing heavy with the weight of the rot filling the air, he begins to wonder if it’s her magic, if it has at last reached out and touched him. But there’s another part of him, a deeper part of him, that knows it isn’t his throat her magic is wrapping around like a noose. It’s only the deer, with his shuddering breaths that force more and more blood from his body with every exhale.

“I know,” he answers her.

But the knowing doesn’t stop the way his magic is responding to her’s, the way he can’t help but reach for the dying thing the same as her. The memory of the golden sapling is just out of reach, caution and understanding lost in the way his heart seems to beat twice as fast as it needs to, like it’s making up for the deer’s own stuttering pulse. There’s a part of him buried away that knows he can’t pull the creature out of her grasp any more than he could the sapling - but he tries anyway. And perhaps that is the only difference the forest will ever know between them.

Even as Thana’s magic is making the animal die, Ipomoea’s is begging for him to live.

The valleys between his ribs deepen, and his skin grows as thin as paper; but if he had any more blood to give to the earth, it does not come. As his breath gives out at last and his limbs go still, moss begins to creep along his spine and replace the thorns, pollen and roots filling the gaps in his skin a blade had made. And when his heart finally stops, so does Ipomoea’s - and the silence is almost-peaceful. And he forgets, as the seconds stretch on and he feels his own legs go cold, why he had been trembling, and aching, and why it had seemed so important at the time.

Because in that infinite space that stretches between his heartbeats, he doesn't feel the cold grasp of her magic against the stag's throat, or the prick of his own thorns against his skin. He doesn't see the green of the bright new leaves budding along the trees, or hear the whisper of the river in the distance. In the absence of his own breath he only hears Thana's, and the tapping of her tail against the ground like a lullaby carrying him to sleep.






@thana
“here am i”

---

He can taste the rot in his dreams.

It reaches up from his lungs, claws its way out into the place where his heart should be beating, and his blood racing, and his magic filling. In the absence of his breath there is only silence, and in the silence there is only death making a home of him, mold spreading in mosaics through his veins. And two hearts turning cold and black.

He thought it would feel like salvation. He thought it would feel something like returning to the earth at last, like curling beneath the roots in peace.

But it only aches.

His bones, his heart, the spaces between them, it all aches. The magic drains from him like the stag’s blood, watering the earth in flowers still. It leaves only wanting in its place, dust and rust and the memory of something that had once filled him with wonder, and hope, and joy, and a reason to run through the meadows and say hello to every flower he passed there. But this - this doesn’t feel like running. This feels like wanting, but never gaining; like a goldfinch chained to a pedestal day after day, until it forgets it had ever longed for the sky. It feels like the forest pulling its roots away from him.

He wants to tell his magic to stop, wants to beg it to understand that this was not what he wanted. He can feel it churning still, a swirling pool of light that is fading, and hunger that is growing in the darkness.

Maybe he had known this would be the answer all along. Maybe that is why he had never asked the question.

But there is another magic stirring the tar-thick blood in his veins. A magic he doesn’t recognize, even when it swells up from the deepest parts of him and breaks like a wave over every nerve. Some part of him that is achingly familiar stutters back to life, and he can feel in it an echo. The stag, pressed cheek to cheek with Ipomoea, begins to stir. And instead of blood falling from between his ribs there is only soil, and flowers, and pollen, and a heart that doesn’t quite remember how to beat. And all he did was circle closer and closer to death.

The staf tilts his head over the horse laying wilted against him, and his antlers only add to the cage of brambles and thorns Thana tries to tear away.

Rise, the stag speaks to him not in words, but in aches and wanting. And rise, the magic begs of him as it falls like rain against his heart.

I can’t, he wants to tell them. It was easier to give into the aching, easier to fold himself against the deer and tell the hunger it could have its fill of them. But he knows as well as any that the roots of a rose bush grow too deep to be killed.

There’s a part of him that is beginning to remember how to be brave.

Rise, the forest tells him, and his heart begins to tremble. The thorns are falling back by the time Thana cuts him free of them, and this time he wishes them only to flower, not to consume. When his heart starts to beat again like a question, and the deer’s follows along like an answer, and Thana begs of him to breathe -

They listen.

And it is not as two things learning how to come awake, but one. Together they open their eyes and see the sunlight breaking itself against the crystals on their brow. The blood in the earth starts to feel like a baptism, like rebirth, like the spring that had arrived so haltingly. And it is together that they fill their aching lungs with air, and start to think the aching in them both could wait one more day. He thinks he can still taste the rot on his tongue, and how it makes the air in his lungs jealous.

”Thana,” he whispers, because he is still suffocating and she is the thing that stops the pain of it, the thing whose magic tangles with his own like two vines climbing over each other to reach the sun. Because there’s still a wanting in him that wasn’t satisfied by a half-death or a half-love or a half-life, something that is desperate and hollow and only beginning to be filled.

”I needed to know.”







@thana
“here am i”

---

There is not much sunlight coming down through the mostly-bare branches, that lean in around them like a skeleton cradle. But it is enough for him to see the green-and-black buds decorating their skinny arms. Some of them are withering, drawing back upon themselves until they sever their stalks and fall like dry tears to the ground; but others are brightening, leaves unfurling proudly, joyously, stubbornly. And they turn the sunlight in the small clearing green.

It feels as though there are roots in his belly, burrowing down into the deepest parts of himself. He can feel them clawing, gnawing, dragging his heart down to a place of dirt and moss and magic.

Rhoeas groans beside him, feeling it too.

Ipomoea wonders if this is how a tree feels, watching the orchid growing from its veins begin to bloom. Or how his flowers feel, all the times when he would bid them to grow through deserts and rocks and places where the dirt was hard, and dry, and unforgiving. Had they thought of him as selfish, too? The way he thinks of the rose thorns and the birch trees and the wildflowers begging him to rise as selfish?

You could have died, she tells him. “I didn’t,” he answers, but the words come out like a broken prayer that does nothing to settle the distressed way his magic turns inside of him. Perhaps it is because his magic already knows better than he does, before he does, that a part of him had died, that there was a lost part of him had not come back awake. His magic knows Rhoeas was only taking the place of something else, something vital, something lovely - some part of Ipomoea that had trembled to see a mountain rising from the ocean and a jungle from the desert. The Ipomoea who had thought everyone, and everywhere, deserved the beauty flowers brought; and had never stopped to consider that maybe the flowers did not deserve the hardship he had laid so unfairly upon them. He knows that, now.

In the silence stretching between the trees he hears only the wind, and their breaths, and their heartbeats all echoing madly. It feels for a moment like time has finally stopped, and the four of them alone resist it - but then Thana is stepping backwards, and Rhoeas is tapping his blood-crusted antlers against the brambles, and Eligos is smiling without moving his lips.

Ipomoea alone is still, and silent, and praying he could be more like the leaves sprouting along the branches overhead.

And when Thana turns to run, this time he does not chase after her; this time Ipomoea feels like the golden sapling that does not know if it wants to wilt or bud.

He does not watch the leaves and the dirt settle behind her. He only watches the deer trip on broken legs and tangled brambles in the clearing, and wonders if half his life had been worth half of another.







@thana
“here am i”