there is no turning back a reversed name; a reversed curse. i will follow you to the depths of the sea, to the cold caves and caverns where the sun does not shine and iridescence rules.

Today, Orestes looks like a Sovereign. 

The doe-eyed prince, so accustomed to loving the world, wears the face of a warrior-king. His head is high and his mane not the typical windswept, disheveled crown. Today it is ornately braided; it loops down his neck beautifully, orderly. Whatever remains of the half-wild boy in love with the sea… well, the palomino has locked those remnants away. For the first time in all of his lives, and certainly this life, he has washed the sea-salt from his skin. Orestes smells of herbal white sage and desert sagebrush; sweet, heady Indian tobacco; Saguaro cactus and prickly pear jam; the heat of baking sand, smoke, dry wood. 

Orestes smells like the sun baking the dunes; like his city streets; and this is how he walks into Delumine’s capitol, as clean and new as a risen sun. His tattoos glow faintly in the bright midday light; the spring breeze wafts cool and reminiscent of winter beneath a sky that is so blue it burns to look at. He brings the scent of Solterra with him; he brings everything Solterra is. The pride is evident in his expression; the fierce and nearly vindictive survivalism. Ariel walks beside him, a lion that reaches the shoulder of his fifteen hand companion. His head, although not quite level with Orestes, drifts at chest-level. Magnificent and nearly mythical, the Sun Lion appraises the Rapax River over the edge of the Dawn Court’s wall. He has never seen so much water in his life, aside from the sea, and regards it with mild curiosity. 

Orestes has yet to visit the Dawn Court; he is impressed to see the lush greenery outside the district walls, and to admire the spires burgeoning from the Court’s towers. Where Solterra is smooth sandstone and golden stucco, Delumine is brick and mortar, aggressive ivy that deepens the apparent age of the buildings, that brightens everything to emerald. Delumine seems bright, promising, blooming with springtime flowers. Small birds—finches, sparrows, a cardinal or two, perhaps a mockingbird, perhaps more—flutter and sing overhead. Orestes takes his time reaching the capitol building where the Sovereign keeps. Dawn Court citizens occasionally stop to glance curiously at the Solterran and his lion companion; but no one stops him until he reaches the fortress itself and informs the guard, standing watch, that is there to visit with their Sovereign. 

The atmosphere here is different. The humidity burns off his too-hot desert-bright skin. His tattoos twist and glow; the rocks gravitate and fall at his passage. A different Orestes, an Orestes with the sea breeze in his dreams and the memory of a thousand shapes in his soul, would have raised his head to the sky and taken in the beauty of it. He would have admired the differences. Today, however, he looks at them with something close to contempt. Today, however, he sees them as what they are; separation; injustice; an allotment of life's black-ice, unexpected chance or privilege of what-have-you. He sees Delumine's green and river and the sound of songbirds and he thinks, life is so much easier here, for you. But even that hard-edged judgement takes on a note of pride.

And anyways, his path was not so meandering as one might have thought. Although he wandered a little aimlessly through the streets, through the markets, even pausing to listen to an artisan play a lute... all along he has been heading toward the capitol. Orestes's arrival is unexpected, unannounced. But the policy of surprise is one that he sees strengths to, even if it is not diplomatic. It has taken him many months to discern the white-and-bay man who met him in the streets of his city when he was a new Sovereign… well, is he not Delumine’s own? 

The taste has left a bitter one on Orestes’s tongue. He waits patiently at the gate, his eyes following up a twist of ivy that reaches the uppermost spire, a green assault against the sky. Ariel says nothing but stretches long and catlike. Then, in the silence through their bond, thinks:

I don't like the humidity.

Orestes glances at him side-long and almost, almost smiles. 

"Speaking." || @Ipomoea

there is no turning back a reversed name; a reversed curse. i will follow you to the depths of the sea, to the cold caves and caverns where the sun does not shine and iridescence rules.

King Orestes. Please, the gates are always open for a reason, my hearth is your’s.

Orestes stands across from a man who he should consider nothing but a stranger and, perhaps, a competitor. And yet those words, light as the birds in the trees, speak to him on a deeper level. There is a moment he wants to ask, do you feel it too?

And it does not mean the sun on their backs, or the duty in their hearts.

It is the way sovereignty crushes him. It is in the way Ipomoea’s words echo eerily now, "Now I’m fettered to the same sense of duty as you. Emissary, Regent, now Sovereign; all we can do is give all that we are so that we might leave this world better than how we found it. We belong to our people now, you to Day, and I to Dawn."

 

Orestes wants to ask, and how much can we give until it is too much?

Orestes wants to ask, how much can we give until our blood is spilling out?

He doesn’t.

He smiles a polite smile. “Thank you. I appreciate your gracious offer. I only wish to acquaint myself with your Court. I have yet to visit and thought, perhaps, there would be no better time than the spring. I would greatly appreciate a tour.” Orestes finds it difficult to believe the man with winged ankles had once confessed his life story included the tales of an orphan, a beggar, a wanderer. Looking at him, Orestes sees none of those things. He sees a man of proper courtly etiquette and for some reason that leaves a bitter taste on Orestes’s tongue.

Still he smiles.

Still he says, “I admire the beauty of Delumine.” 

There is more Orestes wishes to say, but as they begin to walk he finds the words do not come easily. Ariel wanders at a distance behind the two Sovereigns, silent, observant. Orestes can feel the lion’s unnerving stare. He wonders if when he thinks of Ipomoea he will always remember prickly pear jam; if he will feel a kinship related solely to their shared roles of Sovereigns. 

“Having lived in both places, what would you say the merits are, between Delumine and Solterra?” Orestes means it conversationally. But it is difficult for him to admire the greenery without a hint of envy; without the prevailing thought life must be easier for those who do not have to pray for rain. 

"Speaking." || @Ipomoea

there is no turning back a reversed name; a reversed curse. i will follow you to the depths of the sea, to the cold caves and caverns where the sun does not shine and iridescence rules.

Perhaps there will come a day when the foreigner is not held captive to the intricacies of Novus and, specifically, Solterra. Orestes has long-since come to terms with the fact he inherited, by choice, by fate, by Solis’s will, a kingdom of carrion, pain, and scars. Orestes, too, has long-since accepted his sovereign-ship of Solterra as penance for the sins of another life. Men are not often given second chances, but Orestes had been, by foreign gods he had never known. Solis had stripped the Old Magic from his blood, the grey dapples from his coat, and transformed him into a golden King. 

Yet, Orestes cannot help but wonder at how easily things could have been different. He wonders, too, if Ipomoea ever asks the dangerous what ifs of rulership. What if the flower king had inherited Solterra’s throne, rather than Delumine’s? Would so much needless suffering had occurred, if the orphan had found it in his disposition to survive on Solterra’s streets, to come up rough and tumble in the desert of his birth? 

You and I both. The first Delumines, those who built this castle, had to struggle against the flora to carve out enough room for our Court. Orestes had almost forgotten the line of their conversation; but gladly turns away and breaks the tension when Ipomoea begins to lead them towards the citadel with a private type of smile. 

“Certainly,” Orestes agrees, noncommittally. The vivacious foliage of Delumine is something he has never experienced before, at least not in earnest; it has never been a component of his daily life, and Orestes admires it, as one may admire any foreign beauty. As a visitor would. But for him—and Orestes is surprised to admit it, even to himself—the austere beauty of the desert is, by far, his preference. 

Ariel pants alongside him; a brief and undignified expression, as his tongue lolls out between his large, pointed canine teeth. Yet, both Solterra’s Sovereign and his bonded admire Ipomoea’s tour. Orestes takes care not to catch a hoof on the ivy that stretches hungrily through the cobblestones; and as they venture further into Delumine’s citadel, Orestes begins to wonder if the entire building is actually constructed of foliage if it, itself, is not a flower waiting to bloom. A pair of scholars passes them by; and Orestes’s turns his head to follow their passage, and their conversation. He finds himself intrigued and, despite himself, he begins to become more entranced with the differences between their Courts. 

“I admire Delumine’s focus on intellect,” Orestes admits. He has often found Solterra’s minuscule library troublesome, and has instead relied heavily on the resources of the friendlier noble families. The difficulty of Solterra would forever lay within not only that class devision, but the preeminence of the warriors, the emphasis not necessarily on violence but pride, conflict, and wealth. "Do your scholars swear away all other pursuits, similar to monks? Or is it simply their utmost passion?” Orestes is genuinely intrigued. 

Of course, I’ve never met a people more adaptable than those of Solterra, nor more resourceful. Orestes glances at Ipomoea then; the admission is one Orestes finds surprising, but appreciates nonetheless. Nor does Delumine make prickly pear jam the way Solterra does.

Orestes smiles then, too. “No, I imagine it doesn’t.”

He pauses thoughtfully; Orestes eyes restlessly travel over their surroundings, the Court, the greenery. Ariel, from Orestes’s peripheral, lowers into a crouch and fixes his attention upon the squirrels; the lion pounces but, of course, the squirrels shimmy up the tree and out of his grasp. Ariel cranes his neck after them. 

The image of the Sun Lion strikes Orestes, too, with the differences between them. Glowing faintly and nearly as large as the horses, Ariel does not seem to fit among the foliage, among the cobblestones. His colouring is too bold, his profile perhaps a little too fierce. 

Conversationally, Orestes says, “In my experience, there is nothing that breeds a tough people like the land they inhabit. The more inhospitable, the harder the people become. Solterra was overcome with so much strife because the Court deviated from the ideals of their Land, and by consequence, their God.” Orestes offers a sad, subtle shrug. The lecture, from a foreigner, may lose value. But Orestes was certain of it. It was Solterra’s inherited wealth, her monarchy, that had weakened the nation to the point of civil war, tyranny, and natural disaster.

He turns to Ipomoea, however, and offers a nearly boyish smile. “But, I suppose that’s what I’ve set about fixing.” Orestes does not say the comment arrogantly, but—there is something there. “You must have quite a bit of experience in that. Emissary, Regent, and Sovereign, you’ve served your Court on a variety of levels.” And Delumine had largely prospered, at least according to rumour, to history, to the Court itself. 

This is where the splinter lays. This is where Orestes does not know how to assess the man with wings on his ankles.

So much service, so much duty. 

Orestes’s settles his eyes on him; he wonders if he finds their obligations crushing.

He wonders if Ipomoea every lays awake at night, and asks the perilous what if—

Orestes nearly asks it now, but decides against it.

“I should have thought to bring some,” the Sovereign says, almost absentmindedly. “Prickly pear jam, that is.” And perhaps there is a bit of irony in his voice, as well. 

"Speaking." || @Ipomoea