The steller’s jay was a brilliant flash of blue amongst all the green, appearing and disappearing from the shadows in rapid succession. His song was bright, almost as bright as his feathers - echoing off the long, flat leaves surrounding them, making its way back to his bonded like a beacon guiding him through the forest.
It was a forest unlike any Ipomoea had seen before, a forest that was awash in so many shades of green and viridescent. Occasionally he passed a flower, with petals long and draping and bright enough to burn his eyes amidst their monotonous background. He stopped at each one, dipping his head low enough to smell -
- Only once did he regret it, when it was not the fragrant scent of roses rising up to greet him, but the fetid smell of something rotting and decaying, like a slab of meat left out all day in the sun. Its smell had betrayed its beauty - for it truly had been one of the most remarkable blooms he had ever seen, with layer after layer after layer of corollas radiating out from the center, overlapping one another in an intricate, seemingly purposeful design. It had had a waxy layer over each petal, so thick and translucent and shiny that it was as if the entire flower had been encased in glass, and the light reflecting off of that coating had only made its orange appear all the more fiery, like a setting sun. “A flower from another world indeed,” he had murmured, as he held his breath and edged away.
It was funny, how each flower was so unique. There was no rhyme nor reason to the plants here, no sameness uniting them together as a species. Their colors, although similarly vibrant, never matched; their scents varied from rose-like to putrid to everything in between, including scents he had never dreamed of before. They varied both in the shape of their petals, and their number: one had a scant two petals adorning its seeds, but others seemed to have nearly a hundred times that amount. Even the vines dangling from the canopy overhead seemed to change every so many steps, whether it was in color or texture or some other trivial aspect.
And yet, Ipomoea noticed. He noticed everything about this strange new world, seeing and taking it all in with a mixture of wonder and apprehension that left a foreign taste in the back of his throat. He wanted to be amazed - Ipomoea wanted to see something wonderful, something hopeful, something beautiful - and this island, surely, could do just that. He just had to force down the questions that continuously reared their ugly heads in the pit of his stomach, quiet the doubts that they spoke.
He walked slowly amongst the trees - for if he rushed, he may have missed something, and that simply would not do. This land was foreign to him - or maybe he was foreign to it - and if the flowers weren’t enough to clue him in, the rest of the island surely was. He would need to tread carefully here, for even when the island was inviting him in, calling him sweetly, gently forward, he knew better. Just like the flower with the beautiful arrangement yet foul smell, surely not everything was as it seemed here. It was too perfect, yet it reeked of magic and mischief, like Tempus had made himself a dream retirement home that had never been meant for mortals to walk.
Everything about it begged the mortals of Novus forward, promising them that it had somehow been made for them. The volcano exploding, the island recovering seemingly overnight, the bridge that connected one land to the other - it all attested to that.
“Don’t wander too far,” Ipomoea cautioned the steller’s jay aloud, yet his voice felt strangely muted by the foliage, as if the density of the forest were pressing in against him. As if the forest is swallowing us alive, he thinks grimly, sidestepping a vine that seemed to creep across the ground before his very eyes, reaching its prickly fingers towards him. His wings shuffled uneasily, wrapping themselves about his fetlocks like a worried embrace. A soft trill was the only response from his bonded, as his blue feathers disappeared once again into the shadows. It took only a minute for his song to fade away, for the whisper of his wings to silence, for the wind stirred to life by his feathers fall still once more.
And in his absence, the young regent felt strangely alone and vulnerable, as the trees leaned in around him.
yesterday i
was clever,
so i wanted
to change
the world
today i am wise
so i am changing
myself
@ipomoea ! relic hunting
”here am i!“
