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.
flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
The grass betrayed Orestes’ presence. The message had surged on ahead of him, a shiver of wind racing through the meadow and bending the poppies on their long, thin stalks. A single red petal tore loose, crimson and unsettling bright in the sunlight. It spiraled on through the air, twirling perhaps unseen around the Sovereign’s legs before the breeze snatched it up, and up, and away. Only then did it flee, like a bleeding, desperate thing, leaping from current to current until it arrived, at last, in the citadel.
Ipomoea caught it in midair, the edges of it trembling as if it wanted nothing more than to escape him.
Solterra is coming, the petal quivered in his grasp, He is coming. There was no need to ask who.
He let the petal go with a frown, and in an instant it was whirling away over the mossy stone walls. For a moment he stood there, quiet and still. The grass twined like snakes around his fetlocks, his mane lifting in the breeze, the same breeze that had carried the petal selfishly into the distance now trying to carry his thoughts along with it. ”Red,” he muttered to himself, looking up into the sky as the petal whipped through the courtyard and out of sight, ”why is the messenger always red?”
It was a brisk day, one in which he still could feel a touch of winter in the wind’s caress. And the red of the petal only reminds him of the red hiding in the forest, and the way blood looked against snow and freshly sprouted leaves. Even when the birds in the court are singing of life and hope and love, and the strains of a lute is tying all their melodies together like the heralding of spring - still Ipomoea is thinking of death and dead things and a court that sleeps too often, and far too soundly, for his liking.
He takes his time, rolling up the map he had been studying into a tight reel, hiding the many red X’s that had been scrawled across the expanse of Viride. He folds Emersyn’s report next, and a part of him is thankful for the interruption; the Emissary had always been rather thorough, and her descriptions of the most recent kills had not spared him any of the gory details. With memories of his first and last meeting with the Solterran Sovereign drifting like desert ghosts through his mind, Ipomoea tucks his documents against one shoulder, then turns and retraces his steps through the gardens.
”What other lives have you lived, desert-born, since the desert has forgotten you?” Orestes’ voice whispers again through his ears, a different rendition of the same question that snuck its way back into his dreams whenever he thought he’d finally forgotten. His legs feel heavy, as if they’ve been filled with sand; as if the desert were still dragging him down. By the time he enters the courtyard, beyond which the other Sovereign waits like a miniature sun beside the open gates, his mouth has gone as dry as the Mors. And only one thought is left to wander like something lost and lonely in his mind, If the desert has forgotten me -
- why does it keep finding me?
”King Orestes,” he has to force the dryness from his voice, lifting his head until the words sound more like spring flowers than shadows in a canyon. ”Please, the gates are always open for a reason, my hearth is your’s.”
He’s remembering the bread Orestes had offered him in the market square, and the prickly pear jam, and the ghosts that had taken the empty seats at their table. But he’s become good at pretending, since taking his crown - so despite the hollowness in his chest, despite the ache, he smiles. And he doesn’t comment on all the ways Orestes is the same, and different, than the last time he saw him; or the way the smell of the sea has been replaced by the smell of sage and desert sands, or how he thinks the sea had suited him better.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I would have sent a runner out, had I known to expect you; would you allow me to take their place, and offer a tour of my home?” It feels wrong, to play the servant to a foreign king, a king of the home he had forsaken, a king he does not recognize; it makes something almost-feral come slowly awake inside of him, and all it thinks is, Only one of us is desert-born.
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.
flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
There’s a moment, when the two Sovereigns stand and stare at one another in silence, that Ipomoea thinks Orestes might turn without speaking even a word. There’s a moment that he can feel the questions passing unspoken between them, carrying the weight of two Courts’ futures on their spines. From the corner of one eye he thinks he can see their ghosts, sitting in that ramshackle alcove in the desert market, passing a jar of jam across the table. Back and forth, it plays as if on repeat; he can see himself sitting down, can see Orestes breaking the bread, can see the way they stare each other down like a pair or crows circling the same dead thing.
He wants to erase that memory, to tell it it has no place here in his home. But he knows to say so would be to admit that he, too, does not belong here.
Once, he would have turned towards the gardens first; but there’s a reluctance now that makes him hesitate. A part of him is bristling at the thought, a part of him is selfish - too selfish to share the best of his court, the heart of all his secret places, with this other king. A part of him wonders if Orestes would even appreciate the various cultivars, the diversity, the way he’s made species from the desert and the tundra not only coexist, but thrive so far removed from their environments (no one else in Solterra ever had.) Once, he would have delighted in explaining the nuances, the care, the passion the gardeners displayed in their work; now he only smiles.
Now he only inclines his head, and lets his steps carry them towards the citadel instead.
“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.” He wondered if Orestes heard the subtle emphasis he put on the possessive, if the same doubts that whispered through Ipomoea’s mind whispered now through his, the worry that he would not, could not belong in the way he needed to. The question of whether a desert-born could live and nurture another court, or whether a foreigner could tame the desert sands. His wings stuttered like broken things, trying to beat the shadows from his mind. “I think, in the end, nature won that fight. And it is my opinion that Delumine is all the more beautiful because of it.”
They wind through hallways nearly overflowing with ivy, vines creeping in through the arched windows to spill across the floor. Ipomoea makes his way through them gingerly, unwilling to disturb a single leaf - and when it’s inevitable, a whisper of his magic tempts the vines to part for them, to prevent the castle from being overrun entirely. Around them the castle opens like a blossoming flower, and the people are the bees tending busily to it. A pair of scholars are making their way down the same hallway as them, heads pressed close together over a book as they argue the points of this philosopher versus that one. The sound of laughter drifts across the grass of a nearby courtyard, as a group of children race from one end to the other. Nearly every door they passed was open, some showcasing only empty rooms filled with bookshelves, or desks, or various artifacts; others revealing equines diligently at work. The citadel always had been the center of the court.
“Delumine is quieter than Solterra, and in some ways it is neither better nor worse because of it. Only different.” There’s a bell of warning ringing in the back of his mind, weighing his words out carefully. “The quiet does allow for each of us to focus on our talents however, to pursue them ruthlessly. So if Delumine’s beauty is not her highest virtue, then it is the devotion or her sages to upholding it, and to their pursuit of knowledge.”
He breathes in slowly, listening to the wind whisper through a maple, watching a pair of squirrels chase each other around its trunk. “Of course, I’ve never met a people more adaptable than those of Solterra, nor more resourceful.” Sometimes, he liked to think his own survival was a testament to that. And yet for all the mad kings they’ve survived, the many times they had rebuilt their court from the ashes of the previous reign, the droughts, the wars - he was not so foolish as to think he or any of his people here in Delumine would survive the same. He smiles then, and there’s only an ounce of irony hidden in it.
“Nor does Delumine makes prickly pear jam the way Solterra does.”
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.
flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
The citadel had always been the center of Delumine life. It had surprised him, once, too, when he was just a boy still, and had only Solterra to compare it to. As they walk through the sunlight-dappled halls side by side, and he looks around at the heart-shaped ivy reaching up the walls, and listens to the laughter of a fountain somewhere beyond the window - he feels something like that boy again, staring in awe at another world. He had never known so many shades of green existed, before Delumine.
He does not need to wonder if Orestes is comparing the two courts now in the same way he had. It’s written across the sovereign’s face, across his body, in his eyes. Ipomoea almost smiles to himself - almost - imagining the sense of wonder he had felt then as if he were feeling it for the first time once more. He hopes Orestes can feel it, beneath the envy, beneath the resentment; he hopes he can understand why an orphan who had never known love might fall into the embrace of the wildflowers who did not judge him.
He shifts his eyes slowly to the Solterran kings, watching his profile with interest, searching the lines of his face for a hint of admiration, or awe, or warmth. But he is not sure he recognizes the look in Orestes’ gaze, and he is not sure he likes what he sees.
“Some do,” he says, equally conversationally. “But there is no code for them to live or swear by. We invite anyone with a thirst for knowledge to browse the archives, and they take up the title by their own choosing.” He doesn’t mention the exceptions, the black sheep of Delumine’s history that had garnered their followings by darker means. As always, a few rotten grapes could sour the whole wine.
Ipomoea thinks it would not take much to sour Orestes’ opinion of the Dawn Court.
Further, he is not sure why he cares so much about the foreign king’s view on his home.
When the Solterran king pauses, he follows his gaze across the Courtyard. He has to hide a smile, when his lion is only a moment too late to catch the squirrels; but he supposes Ariel had not had much squirrel-hunting practice in the desert. Lizards, maybe, or teryrs. Ipomoea is still looking across the courtyard, listening to the sound of a nearby fountain play like music, when Orestes begins to speak again.
And again he thinks he must choose his words carefully with this one.
“We both have given our lives to our Courts,” he says at last, without turning to look at him. “If I had been asked all those years ago to be the Sovereign, instead of the Emissary - I would have failed.”
Oh Sun King, did your crown feel as heavy as the King of Flowers’?
What he does not say is: not all of us can step from the sea and become someone new. He does not tell the foreign king that while the throne was handed to Orestes, Ipomoea had had to prepare nearly his entire life for the same right. And he does not tell Orestes that sometimes, he wonders what would have become of him had he sought a different throne, Solterra’s throne-
“It is a hard mantle you’ve taken up, the King who would fix his Court.” I know, I know, oh how I know…
Orestes’ eyes on him feel like twin stars, burning him alive.
He shifts uneasily, and still does not meet his gaze.
His heart beats like an unsure thing; he has to fold his wings tightly about his ankles so they do not follow suit. And he counts the seconds, the breaths, the pages a nearby student turns in his textbook in the time it takes Orestes to answer-
“Maybe next time,” he says, turning his red eyes on the king. The irony is not lost on him.
flowers grow back
even after they have been stepped on
Ipomoea is thinking of the desert when he looks at Orestes. And he is thinking of all the ways he knows the dunes more clearly than their king from the sea does, and how he recognizes the buried agony that the Last Prince had not been there to witness.
But he had been.
And perhaps that chip is only a bit of bone broken off from his rib, or his jaw, or his femur. Maybe it is the part of him that wakes at night and looks east (always, he is looking east) and wonders if he was the Sovereign of the wrong Court. Perhaps it is the part of him that never learned how to leave the desert behind that looks at Orestes now and rages at the way he cannot leave the sea behind, either.
Maybe, it is because he sees the similarities between them that has him hunting to find the differences, to find all the ways to hate a king to settle that dark pit growing in his heart day, by day, by day.
But when the tour ends and he bids the foreign Sovereign a good day, all the promises they make feel like so many dead leaves tearing themselves from their winter branches.
