and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted

Sun.  It was warm and welcoming, even as her heart pounded as she looked around every corner to see if they had followed her to this place.  Solstice’s golden eyes are wide and bright, drinking in everything around her as if she’d never seen the world before.  In a way, the metaphor was true – for all her life, Solstice had been a prisoner.  

Sure, there had been good moments.  

In particular, she’d enjoyed leisurely afternoons in the temple gardens, lost to her daydreams and surrounded by butterflies.  Even while held captive, she’d been allowed a few moments of sunlight each day, and had basked in the golden rays, never quite getting enough.  But nothing compared to the feeling of freedom which blossomed within her breast.  It was an exhilarating thing – exciting, but scary all the same.

Ahead of her, grasses and wildflowers spread endlessly to the horizon.  She is hungry to take it all in, stretching her wings wide to soak in the dappled sunlight as her heart grew lighter with each step into this strange land.  There is a quiet to the fields, and a peace which comforts her, even as guilt nags at her psyche.  Would they be looking for her?  She wouldn’t doubt it, but she hoped – Gods how she hoped – that they would never find her here.  Perhaps she would have to keep running to escape their captivity forever, but at least in this moment, the harmony and beauty of Delumine was enough to quell her self-doubt.

Lazy clouds floated by, and she stopped to watch them for a while, interpreting shapes in her mind.  One looked like a bird taking flight, she mused.  Another, a leaping rabbit.  So entranced in the skies was the girl that she missed the telltale signs that another approached.  In fact, it wasn’t until the stranger was close enough that she could hear the quiet whuffling of breath, that she turned with a startled gasp.

Poised to take flight, her sunkissed eyes are wide with fear.  "Please… Please go…”  There is a strained sort of plea to her voice, quiet and afraid.  How could they know what secrets hide behind her naïve gaze and demure personality?  How could they know the pain and the loneliness which had plagued her?

She didn’t want them to go – not really… but Solstice was afraid, unsure how to proceed in this free and wonderful world.   If only they would see the hope in her, beyond the fear.  

If only…

like flowers
we can also choose to bloom

e can still see the meadow when he closes his eyes. It’s a blaze of color, its image searing itself in his mind until all he can see is the green of the moor-grass and the red of the poppies, and the impossibly blue sky stretching endlessly overhead.

Ipomoea stands there, surrounded by a sea of wildflowers that reach out to him with petals as soft as silk, and he sighs. The wind curls itself through his mane, and it follows its direction easily - his braids are gone, and the wind seems to delight in curling its fingers through the long, dark tresses. He can feel it tugging, tugging, until he turns his head to follow it.

And then he sees her.

Her wings are stretched wide, so wide his own wings tremble and raise themselves in jealousy. He wonders, for a moment, why she stands there like an earthbound bird, wings aching for the sky and wind but her legs staying stubbornly rooted to the earth. He knows - without knowing how he knows, being earthbound himself - that the wildflowers must look lovely from the air, that the wind must taste sweeter above the meadows. And he wonders why any creature that had the means to fly would deny it to themselves. He likes to think he would not, if his wings were to wake up tomorrow with wings upon his back, wings large enough and strong enough to lift him high. He likes to think he would never come back down, if he were able to fly.

He isn’t sure when he began to walk again, or why in an open sea with nothing but flowers and sunlight in every direction he chose to cross paths with her. But the grasses whispering against his sides sound like they’re inviting him to come closer, and the wind still whipping through his mane feels like its tugging him to her. Ipomoea has always listened to the earth, has always gone where the flowers directed him; he leans in now, his steps light and quick.

But when she turns to stare at him, he does not miss the hollow aching in her voice, the fragile glass-slick look to her eyes, and it has him stopping in his tracks. The flowers curl around his ankles, as if rooting him in place.

When he first opens his mouth, nothing comes out. His heart leaps into his throat, threatening to choke him, and the wind feels suddenly cold against his cheek. It is not until he swallows thickly, and breaks the grasp of the flowers when he takes a step backwards, that he finds his words.

"I’m sorry, I did not mean to startle you," he says, and his voice is barely louder than the shush, shush, shushing of the wind. He swallows again. "I’ll go, if you want me to-" Already he is taking another step backwards, the flowers straightening again as he leaves their embrace. And yet -

And yet there is something in her eyes that has him hesitating, teetering between leaving and staying.

"-Can I help you? Do you need help?"

and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted

The world around them seems to quiet, waiting with baited breath to see if the girl would flee or the boy would leave.  Her heart is a racing thing, and she fights to quiet it by drawing deep breaths and focusing her energy on something peaceful.  Her eyes are wide and afraid, darting left and right, as if waiting for the hammer to fall.  Surely, they were still chasing her.  Surely, she could not relax or let down her guard… for if she did, Solstice was certain they would catch up and drag her back into the seer’s tent.  They would steal away her freedom again, and take away her sunshine as punishment.  

But though she cannot allow it to happen, a part of the girl aches for companionship.

Perhaps it is the way he watches her, as if she were a startled bird who might take flight at any moment.  Something in the way he talks to her is disarming, even as he steps backward and lowers his head, allowing her to see that he meant no harm.  In that moment, she fights to be brave.  She wishes, as she had for the thousandth time before, that she were strong enough to fight against the burdens of her past.  After all – isn’t that why she’d come to this place?  To begin anew.  Here, she could be anything she wanted – she could start a new life.

That life would start today, Solstice decided, drawing a last steadying breath as her voice quiets and she pushes down the fear.

“I… I’m sorry.  Please don’t go.”  Would he find her contrary, or could he see the wonder behind the anxiety?  The way she saw the wildflower world stretched before her, wide and red as the setting sun, as if she’d never seen such a thing before in her life.  

Solstice turns again, scanning the horizon for the shadows she knew would follow her here, but finding nothing but tender grasses and rolling fields.  They were alone – the winged girl and the scholar king – and she manages a soft smile of reassurance (as much for himself as for the obviously startled stallion).

“I don’t know.” she admitted aloud.  Did she need help?  As much as Solstice wanted to believe she had her situation under control, she couldn’t be certain that she was clear of the danger forever.  She could only hope that her demons would not burden this unsullied and beautiful place.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come… I just couldn’t resist the flowers.”  

Illustrating her point, she bends closer to their cheery faces, drawing in the sweet scent of their nectar as she marvels at their beauty.  “There were flowers before, in the temple gardens… they were my only friends.”  She laughed nervously, noting that such things would probably sound silly to the stranger, hurriedly adding.   “I’m sorry… I’m sure that sounds foolish to say… Please, what is this place?”

like flowers
we can also choose to bloom

pomoea knows the prayer in her eyes without her ever speaking a word. He’s whispered the same prayer over and over again to himself - beside a lake in another court, on an island wrought from magic, in a desert made of monsters.

Some days still when he looks out across the gardens and hears nothing but silence, and sees nothing but shadows stalking between the trees of his forest, still the prayer is never far from his lips.

But here in this meadow, he has never needed to pray.

The flowers had always been prayer enough, the way they lifted their petals like hands to worship the sun more holy than any sermon he had sat in listening to. Here there was warmth, and growth, and an entire meadow filled of interlocked roots that whispered of the wind, and the sky, and the water summer storms brought. Ipomoea could lie down amongst them and feel, for a moment, like his roots were their roots and he was as much a part of the earth as the grasses were. Here was the one place he had always felt strong enough.

It strikes him as sad then, that not everyone felt the same.

He stops when she speaks again, and his placement feels so precarious, so unstable, like he was barely saved from sinking down, down, down into the earth had she only told him to leave. The flowers press themselves eagerly against him, twining themselves around his legs. Steadying him. He begins to wonder if it’s that unspoken prayer again, the same one in his heart, in her’s.

He is quiet still, as she begins to speak, like the words are more to reassure herself than him. A thousand reassurances die on his tongue the moment he thinks to voice them, leaving only the quiet wind whistling through the flowers in the pauses between their breaths. But the way she bends to greet the flowers, the way marvel blossoms over her features even over the fear, and the anxiety, and the unknown - it is so familiar to him, achingly familiar.

"It’s not foolish at all." There’s a smile playing at the corners of his lips, a knowing one, a sad one, a smile that wants nothing more than to fall away and disappear between those very flowers. These flowers have always made for good company, too, for those who need it."

The magic is bleeding out of him as he speaks, and the flowers around them shiver in response. Slowly, as if reluctantly, those pressed against his skin begin to peel themselves away, petal by petal, leaf by fragile leaf - and turn towards her, instead. His half-smile widens into something sincere, something almost shy.

"This is the Illuster Meadow, center of the Dawn Court," the flowers seem to dance, as if to say yes, yes, yes, and press themselves as hungrily to the stranger’s skin as they had to his.

"A place of peace," he adds, and his eyes, his voice, the flowers he commands - all of it are begging her to believe it just as much as he does.

and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted

She does feel at peace, moreso than she had in forever.  The flowers are warm against her – as warm as the stranger’s eyes watching her.  He is gentle and kind, a combination she hadn’t experienced in her recollection, and Solstice finds herself impressed by his patience.  She offers him a smile then, timid but hopeful, taking one step closer and drawing in his spicy scent.  It was strange and foreign, but she can detect traces of Delumine on him.  

The king smells of the wild forest and the dancing grass.  She wonders if he can smell the fear on her, or the stench of her captor’s incense that had always seemed to cling in her mane.  Shaking away the memory, she buries her face in the flowers, drawing in the peace of them once more.

“What is the Dawn Court?” she asks suddenly, eager to focus her energy toward something other than her own worries.  He mentions it is a place of peace, and she believes it.  She feels the peace as it settles around her, washing away the fear with each passing cloud and every singing bird.  There is no one who follows her – or at least no one she’s noticed yet… but Solstice worried that in growing complacent, she might let them find her once more.

When she tries to picture a Dawn Court in her mind, she imagines a grand castle with its court… but she imagines too, a temple.  While such an innocuous thing would simply be seen as a place of worship to most, for Solstice, it was a cage.  She shivers thinking of it, wondering what cruel gods would allow their girls to be locked away – but then, she didn’t know the gods in this place or their rituals.  Solstice could only hope things would be different here.

“I’m tired of running…” she whispers to the stranger, confiding in him her greatest fear and exposing her vulnerability.  “Looking over your shoulder is not a way to live…

She doesn’t elaborate, but it’s clear to see that the mare was bruised (if not physically, then certainly emotionally).  Her eyes betray the carefully banked fear, even through the wonder at the newness of this place.  She wants – oh how she wants – to believe that she was safe now.  Maybe in time, she would be.

“Do you think I could stay for a while?  It would be nice to find something more familiar, and I do enjoy the meadow.”  The thought of it was impossible but optimistic, as she begins to imagine a new way to live.  Perhaps here, Solstice could create her own story.  

But life without meaning is the torture of restlessness and vague desire…  

She remembers the words in the poem, avowing to raise her sails and catch the winds of change.  

like flowers
we can also choose to bloom

e feels like he has been here before, in another life, another time, another place. The smell of the incense clinging still to her skin is familiar; it reminds him of—

The memory dances just out of reach, laughing at him as it does.

He sighs.

But she is talking again, her voice brushing away the memories like dust off of a table. He lifts his eyes back to her’s (when had they lowered, to look at the flowers instead? He isn’t sure) and regards her quietly. Her question reminds him of another girl, one that had spoken to him of sunrises and hope in a mountaintop temple. He might have smiled then; but the girl in his memories is dead now, and a monster wore her skin.

“It is a city, south of here. And all these lands - the forest, meadow, the river running through them both - belongs to it.” And to me, the thought helicopters through his mind like maple seeds. But today, being a king of anything does not feel important at all.

He watches the way she shivers, and a tremor runs the length of his own spine in response. “It’s a very beautiful city,” he adds with an almost-smile hiding in his eyes, “perhaps you would like to see it someday; the gardens are its peoples pride and joy.” A part of him suspected they were just his pride and joy — the libraries suited most of his people better — but still, it was hard for him to speak of the Court and not mention them. Perhaps it was the first sign of his vanity, rearing its head at last.

Her eyes betray the fear running like a river below her skin; it makes Ipomoea’s heart clench to see. It makes his magic burn a little hotter inside of him, like with magic alone he could erase the shadows hiding between the trees and the monsters that made their homes there. He knows he can’t help her with the monsters living in her heart (he knows he has his own to conquer, first, he knows it is a battle she must fight herself) but still, he wishes he could. He doesn’t want her to become like Emersyn.

“Stay as long as you’d like,” he tells her, but the words come out more like a beggar’s than a reassurance. He’s painfully aware of the slow thud, thud, thudding of his heart, of the soft and slow shushing of the wind, of the flowers laying themselves against her skin at his behest.

All of it feels so familiar again, like the broken shrines on the mountain.

He wonders if time was determined to repeat itself; he wonders if he could stop it this time (a foolish thing, to think he could change anyone’s fate when he was helplessly chained to his own.) A thousand hopes, and desires, and questions are flooding through his mind, but there are no shooting stars to wish them on, no festival lanterns to tie them to.

Still he asks.

“Where have you come from?” he whispers back to her. His heart beats a little more sharply at the words, at the thousand scenarios he imagines in his mind.

He asks because there are only the flowers here, and the girl smiling down at them like they were her only friends.

and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted

Where have you come from?  

With his question, the illusion is shattered – the illusion of safety and freedom.  His query forces her to relive the impossibly tall walls in the temple gardens, the weight of chains around her feet in the warlord’s tent.  She takes a steadying breath, her eyes finding his for a brief moment, blinking with pain as she fights to still her racing heart, her gaze dropping once more to the cheerful poppies which seem to encourage her to speak.  As she stares at her feet, Solstice wonders – would he find her weak, a thing to be pitied?  

Her breath becomes a sigh as she wonders where to begin.  Around them, the world is still and bright – calming as the autumn breeze kisses her frame, gentle and warm.  There is a stillness to the meadow, a quietness which brings her peace even as the sweet fragrance of the flowers clouds her senses, pushing away her fear as she begins.

“I was taken from my mother on the day of my birth – the day of the solstice – and given to the temple.  What some saw as a place of worship and religion became my prison, for the priestesses kept me locked within its walls, away from the world.  They told me it was for my own good – to keep away the things which would tarnish or tempt me.”  She didn’t add why… for the why had never made much sense to her.  By the simple virtue of her birth, she had been revered.  Those who were superstitious and pious had treated her as an idol.  She had been bathed in the holy waters, doused in incense, forced to stand on an altar of marble as they prayed at her feet.

“War came, and raiders ransacked the temple.  They raped and murdered the priestesses, burned the altars, stole the relics.”  She choked on the memory, breaking as a silver tear slid quietly down her cheek, falling on a waiting flower as Solstice fought to compose herself again.  “I suppose it is lucky that their leader took a liking to me – the he too saw me as something of a fascination… otherwise he might have killed me too.”  

There were nights when she’d lain awake wondering if death would have been kinder than her semi-charmed existence, chained on the furs in his tent.  If anything, she supposed it was a fortunate thing that he’d protected her virtue – for at least locked in his tent, she was kept from the hunger of his soldiers.  Still, she had to run – for living in captive was not truly living.  Solstice had taken the leap of faith when it had presented itself, never looking back.

“I’m nothing special” she assures the king -  her pleading eyes too wide, almost childlike as they seek his reassurance.  “Just unlucky… for the solstice is my curse and my name – but nothing more.  I just want to be invisible… I just want to be like the flowers, beautiful and free.”  She worried a bit that it sounded foolish, but the impossible dream seemed closer than ever in this place of endless wild and peace.

like flowers
we can also choose to bloom

hat breath she takes — slow, steadying, the way she inhales and holds it there in her lungs, eyelashes fluttering down — he knows the feeling. And while Solstice is breathing in Ipomoea is breathing out, feeling his chest deflate, grounding himself into the earth, flowers reaching out as if to say we’re here, we’re here, it’s okay to fall into us —

Another day and he might have.

It was always to the meadow that he came when the world started to turn too fast and his heart never seemed to beat fast enough to catch up. It was always to the poppies, and the wildflowers, and the gentle permanence of the grass growing taller every day, growing softer, growing stronger. And it never ceased to both amaze him and calm him — the immortality of the world. The way it exists quietly, and how it went on and on and on towards some deeper goal despite the modern-day things that make him stop in his tracks.

There was a quote, he knew, about watching grass grow. But Ipomoea knew that whoever coined the phrase knew absolutely nothing about the grass, had never learned to listen to the endless conversations it had with the sunlight and the soil. But he — he learned something new everyday. The waving of a tree’s boughs in a storm is both surprising and familiar, new and old, nodding to him, and he nodding back.

So he breathes out, and he feels the grass anchoring him — he breathes in, and he smells the flowers dancing red around their bodies.

And he smiles.

It’s a soft, almost sad smile — listening to her story, aching because he does not know the weight of her chains both physical and emotional, but wondering how they have not bent her neck all the same. He thinks he would not be so resilient, if their roles had been reversed (it was why, after all, he had ran from the desert before he had given it a chance to scar him.)

"I think you are more special than you think, even if it is not in the way they thought," he tells her quietly. "And maybe you’ll find your luck can change here."

For a moment there is only the wind and the meadows and them standing there in it all.

He tilts his head back to look at the sky before he speaks again. It seemed to him a sign — that her eyes were the same color as the sunlight. "I’ve spent long enough intruding," he says at last, dipping his head to her. "I’ll leave you alone to the meadow — maybe here you can learn to be like the flowers and the trees. I can promise that here, at least, you can know freedom." But not invisibility, he does not say, even when the words are leaping in his heart and whispered to her on the petals of every flower pressing against her legs. Never teach yourself to hide when you deserve to live in all your colors.

"I hope to see you again Solstice. If you’d like, you can find me in the city, on the other end of this meadow. Ask for Ipomoea."

And then with a smile and a bob of his head (and a whisper of magic to the flowers, telling them to keep her company), Ipomoea is turning away. And with the grasses shush, shush, shushing at his sides, he makes his way back to the Dawn Court.

and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted

Here is in steadying presence and in Oriens’ meadow, she feels more free than ever before.  As he speaks, she feels a sense of calm and safety wash over her, and in that moment, Solstice visible lets her guard down – just a bit.  She smiles softly at his words, lowering her face to nuzzle at the flowers which caressed her.  Their petals brush against her cheeks,, widening the smile, their touch gentle and soft as the breeze washed over them.

“Thank you,” she says, not for the first time.  “I think I will stay a while, enjoy the warmth of the sunshine… and then, I should like to see your home”.  For in that moment, the girl fees brave, watching as he nods and leaves her to the flowers and bird song.  She feels a sense of something more.  Home.  It was a strange feeling, but one she’d longed for countless times as she daydreamed in the temple.  What it might feel like to lean into the touch of someone who cared for her, to share a meal unburdened by protocol, with friends.  

Here, she would find all of that and more… Solstice just felt it in her bones.  Solstice stays a while, watching the sun as it turned toward the rest, blinking into dusk.  And then she goes, following the way Ipomoea had gone, tracing his steps toward the mysterious kingdom she would come to know as home.