He waits throughout the night, his eyes turned ever towards the horizon. The bridge is quiet, save for the murmurs and vibrations of the berries and the crashing of the waves against the stone. Occasionally whispers break out in the darkness, rumors flying back and forth like wildfire in the night, sparking anew with each explosion across the ocean.
Through it all Po is silent.
He hardly dares to breathe, let alone speak; only the beating of his heart and the roaring of his blood adds to the fray. He waits and he watches, with both dread and expectation.
When the sun finally breaks forth through the darkness, nothing has changed. The wall is as indomitable as ever, its ivy impassable, its presence foreboding. He wants to scream, wants to beg to know the purpose - surely there must be one? Surely this can't be it? Why cause all this for nothing?
The water is a roar in the back of his mind, waves spilling over the bridge and showering him with water and salt. It laps at his hooves playfully before slowly receding, dribbling back into the ocean as if inviting him to follow.
But to protect, or to drown him? He can see fins in the waves, bony spines protruding like hardened rainbows each time the water breaks, massive creatures who disturb the water as they swim past. Ipomoea is not afraid of them, although he knows he should be; his magic is a sweet lullaby in his veins, promising him he’s safe (as if safety were anything more than a fallacy), promising him…
He wonders then what he would find, if the waves succeeded and he let them take him.
Was there a hidden castle, where something other than equines reigned supreme over all the other sea creatures? Or would he find only kelp forests and coral reefs, endless mazes to lose himself in? Would he find wonders beyond compare, or only death? He imagined the shoal surrounding him even now would come to his aid, were he in need, but he supposed there was only one way to find out.
The sun rises to his left, feeble rays struggling to break through the clouds as the child of dawn waits upon a bridge blacker than the night before. He lets out a sigh, his breath and body shaking in the wind.
There's nothing for us here, Odet speaks quietly in his mind, plucking at the Appaloosa's mane gently. Let's go and be done with it.
Still, Ipomoea stands there a minute longer, unsure if he should be waiting or fleeing.
But waiting for what, and fleeing from whom? His mind is begging to know the answer, inching ever closer to the wall. Around him all the horses are mingling, their whispers barely louder than the thrumming of the berries - but they fade into the background the closer he steps, until ivy is all he can see. It fills his vision with hues of green, striations swimming across his vision like waves imprinted in the leaves. And when the wind plays across the bridge, it catches the leaves and sets them to dancing, turning them this way and that until they're glistening in the early morning light.
With a frown he reaches out, closer and closer -
No.
He wants to touch the ivy. Surely, if he does, it will tell him something? His magic leaps eagerly in his blood, daring him to take a hold of those berries, to rip them from the wall and hold them close to his own heart, but caution tells him he shouldn't. It's magic that's made this wall, magic that's raised an island in a day, fickle magic from fickle gods. His magic would be useless against their's, even though it begs to try.
Abruptly he pulls away, ears tilting backwards. And then with a shake of his head he turns away, hooves echoing against the dark stone bridge. Even as others arrive and step forward to investigate the wall for themselves, Ipomoea walks against the crowd, against the flow of traffic. It's a long way back to the shore, but he doesn't look back; one step after the other, and he's on his way home.
@LASAIRIAN | "speaks" | notes: sorry for the delay!
is this a natural feeling or is it just me bleeding?
Considering the fact that Bel had mentioned the whole whales thing, and Lasairian knew that there was a mess of creatures close by after the bridge was created, he had to wonder on if a whale was among those creatures breaking the surface of the water near that bridge. That was what had him roaming back to it all; the idea that he might get to meet a whale, now that he was curious about the creatures. He was aware that they were dangerous due to sheer size, but it wasn't as if Lasairian intended to go in and swim with one. Just try to meet one and call it a day.
He wasn't sure how he would manage meeting a whale, even if the large creature did happen to be swimming around the bridge -- how he would gain the attention of one up close and personal -- but he figured he would sort that much out when he got to that point. When he knew that there was one to meet at all. Until then, he was winging it, and he knew it. Still, wasn't it better to have something in mind other than trying to figure out why berries were pulsing to a heartbeat and ivy climbed far too high into the sky, unable to be breached?
It had a defensive Bheo vibe to it that Lasairian had no interest in messing with. There was a subtle curiosity as to get close enough to look at it all, but he wasn't about to go touching at it or trying to kick his way through it, either. When you've seen flowing vines strangling someone in the past, you tended to afford them more respect later on. At this point, there was no way to be sure that this wasn't in the same type of situation as that, and Lasairian wasn't willing to test it too far. Being curious was one thing, being quite possibly suicidal was another, and Lasairian wasn't interested in dying.
It's early, maybe too early for such things as this, but he wanted to get here before too much of a crowd stirred again. The onlookers and explorers that tended to try to pick these places apart, pick them clean. If there are whales close by, then now is the best time to go looking. That was why he was stepping across the lava made bridge now, shivering lightly at the salted spray from the water on both sides of it. There is plenty of life out there in the waves, but most of them look foreboding with spines and such sticking out of the water. Nothing he feels he wants to meet face to face or on a swim.
Things that might eat a gentle giant of a whale rather than let it float on by. Lasairian felt disappointed in this, but he keeps going on and on across the bridge, hooves scraping at the shells and other strange things littered across it. The closer he gets to the ivy and berries, the more of the crowd he can see. Well, at least he had tried to get here decently early and ahead of the rush, though something wary in those forms up ahead told a tale of waiting for hours. They had probably been lingering here a long time, and that was more than Lasairian was willing to offer the bridge, the ivy, and it's berries.
He takes a breath and pushes on into the fray, eyeing a spotted equine that looked about to try his luck with the ivy. So far it hasn't taken anyone, else there would be an outcry on it if any noticed others vanishing through it, but there was still a risk. How much did any of them really know about this stuff? Vaguely, Lasairian wonders if anyone had attempted real violence at the ivy or the berries, and if anything at all had happened when they did. Even if it hadn't yet happened, eventually it would. Someone would get stir-crazy over the waiting for the unknown, and then what? Only time would tell.
Lasairian pauses in step as he watches the other turn from the wall and begin the way back, away from all that ivy, and it jolts through him that there's nothing to see here, and he hadn't intended to come this far as it was. He shakes himself from it, as if to rid himself of the invisible thread pulling him closer, and when the spotted equine passes close, Lasairian turns with him, falling into step to go back, "has anyone tried to rip through the ivy yet?" he asks, meaning it exactly how he says it; not push through, but something more violent from a mind that snapped during the waiting.
tag — @'Ipomoea'
template by cas • equine lines by AriesRedLo • border image from hashtag-bg.com
He’s shouldering his way through the crowds, feeling like he’s fighting a wave and losing. Just below him the ocean is laughing, its waves slapping against the hardened stone bridge and sending a mist of saltwater across his face. A part of him wishes he were a hippocampus, that he might escape into the waves and swim unmolested to shore; another part of him wishes his wings were bigger, so that they might carry him into the clouds above the mass of people.
Even now they open and close subconsciously about his legs, wrapping themselves tightly around his fetlocks as if to say we’re useless, we can’t help you.
And the waves keep laughing, rushing past faster than he could hope to run.
Very few of the other horses pay him any mind, except perhaps to grumble and part around him like he’s a messiah in the sea, or a plague they’d rather avoid. But the conversations he catches snippets from are largely focused on the bridge with ivy blocking the end, and the volcano that raised it from the waves. He listens silently, but he doesn’t stop. There was nothing for him here, not yet at least.
He’s caught within his own thoughts, listening to gossip and the ocean and hardly seeing the faces he passes. So he doesn’t see the other man at first, not until he suddenly turns and falls into step beside him, hooves echoing in tandem.
”Has anyone tried to rip through the ivy yet?”
Ipomoea comes to a stop, blinking in surprise at the pale stallion. Rip through the ivy? The thought had not even crossed his mind, at least not until now.
“No,” he started, accentuating his words with a slight shake of his head, peering back at the strange wall that rose like a mountain behind him. “You’re welcome to try, but I suspect it won’t do much good.” It was magic that had brought the wall, he was certain. It did not react like other plants, did not feel or look or think like nature. Ipomoea was not a strong man, at least not physically, but surely something so unnatural as this would not be so easily toppled by natural means.
His wings flutter open and closed, feathers fanning the air about his legs. “I’m Ipomoea,” he offers, turning back to address the stranger as he begins to walk again, inviting the stranger to continue down the bridge with him.
