we all wish for forever
He waits throughout the night, his eyes turned ever towards the horizon. The beach is quiet, save for the rumbling of that distant land and the crashing of the waves against the shore. 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, he isn’t sure if he was to sing or sob. He lets out his breath in a shuddering sigh, and for the first time since his watch began, he moves. The waves are cool and welcoming as he steps into the sea, fish surging between his legs and sandpipers circling overhead. His wings are submerged, the water lapping at his knees like a hungry beast, like it wants to pull him down into its depths.
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.
It’s not kelp his hooves find, but a bridge of blackened stone. It leads him out of the water, his hooves clacking and ringing. Up and up and up, the mystery stretches onward, beckoning him forward. The sea crashes below, and again he glimpses something green and scaled hiding beneath the water, a glittering eye that blinks and watches.
He blinks back.
The sun rises to his left, feeble rays struggling to break through the clouds as the child of dawn walks across a bridge blacker than the night before. On and on and on, he walks until his legs beg for relief, until his hooves tender and sore and he has to force each step. He walks until he nearly loses hope, until he’s all but ready to give up and return to Denocte.
But before he does, the path ends as suddenly as it had started.
Another test? Odet questions, his voice quiet in the back of his mind as he hiddles into the Appaloosa’s neck.
A wall of ivy blocks their path, swallowing the sky and gleaming in the early morning light with a hundred captured dew drops. Bright white berries, as white as pearls, break up the dark green expanse. It’s only when he looks closer, when he leans in so close he can nearly taste the salty of the vines, that he sees the way they swell and pulse, the way tiny beads of light seem to dwell within each fruit belly.
He lets out a sigh, his breath and body shaking in the wind.
Another test, he whispers back.
But he 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.
@Ipomoea | "speaks" | notes: open to any!
xSTAFF EDIT***
@ipomoea has rolled a 4! He has been awarded +100 signos.
