The name is a juxtaposition of heaviness and excitement whispering to him from afar. It curls like the smoke of their bonfires, winding its way through every corner of his mind until his hair stood on end and his spine felt cold.
But why does it feel like coming home? Doesn’t his heart know that he’s left his home, that Delumine was a world away now? Gone were the sweet green meadows of spring, the fragrance of lotus trees and sweet cherry wine. It was winter now, and the sea spray of the coast carried with it the bite of snow, the promise of a cold night.
He supposes that is why they have their bonfires and night markets, to keep the chill of the darkness at bay.
It’s a funny thing, a child of dawn running away to the night. Perhaps he was always meant to return here - didn’t the gypsy king tell him so, once upon a time? Reichenbach may be gone, but sometimes his memory brings itself to the forefront of his mind, voice accompanied with the music of golden coins and laughter. Denocte still reminds him of the bay king, but it reminds him of a lot of things now. It’s a queen with scales scattered upon her ribs; it’s a dancer with eyes paler than a clear sky; it’s a sly child running barefoot through the streets, laughter trailing in their wake. It’s woodsmoke and salt to him, stories and dreams and feelings emblazoned forever in his mind, ripped out and laid bare for all the world to see.
There’s something about Denocte that has a way of breaking him in the best of ways. He’s vulnerable here, and it’s exciting and terrifying, much like the city itself. It’s the opposite of Delumine, where everything is safe, everyone is quiet, and only the flowers tell him stories. But perhaps that’s why he likes it so much.
The wind runs its fingers along his skin, tugging this way and that until his hair is dancing with the beat of drums. There’s a feather there, tawny and golden, hidden within the dark strands of his mane, braided tightly to keep it safe.
His eyes are smiling, even if the rest of his features forget to follow suit.
All around him the people are moving, going about their lives and their business with hardly a glance his way. Because he’s not a Regent here, or even a recognizable face. Those days are long past, his last visit nearly forgotten in the time that stretches between then and now. It’s strangely refreshing, and Ipomoea breathes in deep until his lungs are baptized and renewed in the wet, salty air.
He breathes until he’s just a boy with flowers in his hair and the same song running through his veins as everybody else’s.
@open to anyone!
his timeline is a little wonky, takes place a day or two before the fires c:
boudika
rebellion sits well on you; like a red coat
Boudika was a devil. The darkness ate the copper of her head, the white of her limbs, and turned her nearly black—until firelight glinted against the metallic coat of her neck, or haunch, and suddenly she was all red-and-black, devilish, haunting. Her crimson eyes were deep, brooding, and she wandered Denocte like a creature possessed. She could not sleep… She could not sleep, for the dreams that kept her awake, dreams of drowning and dreams of swimming.
I could Make you, he had said. And I will help you look, he had said. It was the first time she had not felt lonely.
The streets should have taken on a shadow of familiarity—they ought to have brought her comfort, or at least a sense of security, rather than the creeping sense she was in someone else’s skin as she walked them. But, there it was. It felt as though when she washed upon the sands of Solterra, she had cast off an old skin and on weak, trembling, foal-like legs she sought something to compensate for what she had loss…
Instead, Boudika was continuously met by strangeness. One of the customs she could not grow accustomed to was the Denocte’s penchant for darkness—her people trusted the daylight, in that a Khashran could not turn ink-slick black and disappear… her people trusted the daylight, in that everything was laid bear, all honesties and dishonesties.
But Caligo was different, and Boudika was uncertain what to make of that, as she navigated her way through Denocte, feeling lost but not lost all at once.
Boudika did not know what to make of Denocte’s goddess. She did not know what to make of a goddess who had been overcome by anger and discontent at her mistreatment. Of an outcast, who caused of a rift that broke their worshipers into four kingdoms, whose overwhelming response to surmounting injustices she suffered had been to plunge a world into a darkness that lasted a hundred years. Caligo. A goddess who, after that decade of shadow, consented to end it only to preserve her brother’s lives and to be left alone, forevermore. But somehow, for some reason, Boudika felt like she ought to pray—for forgiveness, for acceptance, for an end to her raging, torturous thoughts.
These were heavy concepts, heavy deeds, and they were the thoughts that occupied Boudika as she wandered aimlessly, searching… searching, for what? She had meant to go to the markets, to procure provisions for the next week… but somehow, the sea had driven her away, and she found herself without direction, being buffeted through the current of equines like flotsam, the words of the strange water horse resurfacing again and again to the forefront of her mind. I could Make you. A promise. A curse.
He could Make her. What did that mean? But she knew. Boudika knew the answer; it was at once a massive temptation and a leaden burden, the knowledge, that she could perhaps become the very thing she had hunted, the very thing she had spent a lifetime fearing. And all for what?
A shoulder brushed her shoulder. A child skittered about her legs, chasing after a pygmy dragon in jest, marked by a high trill of laughter. Firelight danced and glittered upon the stones and varying skins of Denocte’s residents. Denocte was marked by a perpetual air of festivity, the scent of bonfires subdued by ocean breezes, the liveliness of the night, the chaotic vivaciousness—all of it, all of it, filled Boudika with a strange hollowness, as though one could drum her ribs, and her loneliness would echo out.
Perhaps she did know what to make of Denocte’s goddess. Perhaps she felt it, deep within her, in the stirrings of her own sentiments for a life she had forsaken, a life she had turned away from, a life from which she had been banished, a skin she had shed.
Perhaps she knew the rage that could launch a nation into darkness, for a century. Did that very thing not hold her now? Did it not cause her self-imprisonment to her room after each performance, as though she were a beautiful object only to be admired, and then put away, before they realised what horrors her dances mimicked?
Boudika would not have noticed Ipomoea, she would not have paused in regarding him, if not for one very simple fact. He had stopped to breathe in his memories directly in front of the alleyway that allowed Boudika to enter the performance hall through the back door. She cleared her throat, not wanting to disrupt him, but finding it necessary. ”Um… excuse me. You’re blocking my way.” And then, because she felt rude, and thought she might know him—perhaps from the guild, perhaps from the Court—”Have we met?”
@Ipomoea ... oh man I apologise for how long this got and that it's so rambly D: i started it and then came back to it and then was like "eh let me destress before bed" and BAM all the words :c (also i hope its okay I assumed it he had stopped walking to breathe it all in for a moment? if not i will gladly change!)
t was a mild shock, realizing how little he missed Delumine. It was even more of a shock to be aware of that realization, and still not care.
He knew the homesickness would settle in eventually, and his soul would grow weary of the night and long for the stillness of the morning again. Whether it took days or weeks, dwelling on it would only cause him to miss what was happening right in front of him. So until that day came, Ipomoea would soak in the feeling of alive again, cling to it with every ounce of desperate strength he can muster, until his muscles run out of sugar and his body fails beneath the weight of his weary heart.
Until that day, he would lean into Denocte and take everything they had to offer him, would be whatever Denocte wanted to turn him into.
It was an exhilarating prospect, the hovering chance of being turned into something new by the city. Ipomoea suspected he had only ever been what his surroundings had made him; he could be remade if he stayed here long enough, of that he was certain. The gyspy king had told him so once, and his blood responded in kind every time it got near enough to feel the vibrations of the drums. He wondered how long it might take, and how much the country would change him.
Would Somnus recognize him in a fortnight? A month? A year? Would Somnus even recognize him today, standing with his hair tumbling freely in the middle of a busy street?
But he doesn't want to reflect on that. Thinking of Somnus meant thinking of the letter he had left him, and the way he had left Delumine. Ipomoea had come here to be brave, but that had been anything but.
So he shifts his pink eyes to the streets, watching the wind tear a woman’s scarf free from her neck, so it writhed like a snake made of smoke through the air. Red, orange, purple; the colors spun round and round each other as she chased them through the square.
Everywhere he looked, there was movement. The street was lively and bright, filled with equines of all shapes, colors, and sizes coming and going from all sorts of places. He could watch the Night Court dance forever, without realizing the time as it slipped away from him; day or night, Denocte was not only alive, but celebrating life jubilantly, and with every breath.
And he alone was unmoving, as still as a statue in the midst of all their movement. He could only watch on in wonder, envying their brightness. Each one of them was a star - it was only fitting, being that they lived in the Court of Night. He was enraptured, struck into silence, unable to turn away.
So it was no wonder that he would find himself standing directly in someone’s path.
Her voice brings him out of his musing. Ipomoea shakes his head slowly, as if awakening from a trance.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sidestepping from her path to reveal the alleyway. “I think I lost track of time for a moment there.” An easy thing to do, especially for a dreamer like himself.
He expects her to continue on her way - Denocte was a busy city, filled with busy citizens - but she didn’t. Ipomoea lifts his gaze slowly, rose-colored eyes meeting crimson. Her spiraling horns catch his attention, rising proudly to stab at the sky.
“No,” he breathes at last. A thin smile wavers on his lips. “No, I don’t believe we have.”
Half a heartbeat stretches between them, as each of his memories slip away one by one to shatter silently on the cobblestone streets. And in that time he makes a choice, letting go willingly.
“My name is Po.”
Not Ipomoea, not the Regent of Delumine. Today he is no one - and he had never been more excited to simply be.
