I P O M O E A
The magic in the air was intoxicating, like it contained a special strain of energy that lit every nerve alight. Everything felt clearer here: the colors were more vibrant and lovely, the sounds seem especially loud and crisp, the scents more potent.
Ipomoea’s magic was awakening inside of him like a great beast, yawning after a long sleep and stretching its legs, testing its claws. Even without meaning to he left a trail of grass and flowers everywhere he walked; the vines overhead swung down to greet him, the leaves if each bush stretching their spindly fingers out to touch him as he passed. He shivers as they do, and they tell him stories of the other equines who have walked the same unsteady path as he, of the unicorn queen and the ocean king, of the girl with dawn light upon her shoulders and the boy barely weaned. He is not the first to search this path for the relic; nor will he be the last.
But the animals - all the strange and fearsome and wonderful and magical creatures seemed to come out of the shadows in his presence, watching him silently with eyes of topaz and emerald, ruby and sapphire. They did not seem afraid of him - nor was he afraid of them. Ipomoea nodded his head as he passed, and a few even dared follow. A fox with a split tail and bear feet padded alongside aside him for quite some time, before turning and disappearing silently into the night. Their presence comforted the appaloosa, for he knew they would not hurt him.
A few, mere months ago he may not have dared to search for the relic at night. But Ipomoea has watched fires burn at midnight since then, and he has walked a silvery forest in pursuit of a murderer. The dark, he knows, is nothing to be feared.
An owl hoots somewhere in the distance, yet something tells him that if he went to investigate it would not be an owl he found.
Overhead it was a moonless night, so the stars seemed all the more bright. But as he passed beneath the canopy of the forest, Ipomoea looked up in wonder to see a galaxy emblazoned on the underside of the broad, flat leaves, a mirror to the heavens.
They dance and they spin, entwining themselves together into endless constellations and stories. Even as he looks, he can pick out similarities and differences between they and the real thing outside the forest. His eyes drift back and forth, and the names of the ones come naturally to him; yet it is the unfamiliar ones that hold his attention. A galloping pegasus, a flaming sword, waves that bend and break gently. His imagination is running wild tonight, as he envisions a flock of butterflies swimming through the canopy overhead, immortalized in fake starlight.
And as he stops to admire the wonder of magic, footsteps crunch across the forest floor behind him.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” he whispers softly to the stranger. “I’ve never seen anything like this place before.” It was magic he knew; terrible, beautiful, wondrous magic.
And he loved it.
He turned towards the sound at last, pulling his eyes reluctantly from the star show above to focus instead on the stranger padding through the dark. They’re still clad in darkness, but the starlight draws sharp lines upon the planes of their face, bathing their shoulders in silver.
“Hello,” he says simply, as flowers begin twining their way up his legs.
Ipomoea’s magic was awakening inside of him like a great beast, yawning after a long sleep and stretching its legs, testing its claws. Even without meaning to he left a trail of grass and flowers everywhere he walked; the vines overhead swung down to greet him, the leaves if each bush stretching their spindly fingers out to touch him as he passed. He shivers as they do, and they tell him stories of the other equines who have walked the same unsteady path as he, of the unicorn queen and the ocean king, of the girl with dawn light upon her shoulders and the boy barely weaned. He is not the first to search this path for the relic; nor will he be the last.
But the animals - all the strange and fearsome and wonderful and magical creatures seemed to come out of the shadows in his presence, watching him silently with eyes of topaz and emerald, ruby and sapphire. They did not seem afraid of him - nor was he afraid of them. Ipomoea nodded his head as he passed, and a few even dared follow. A fox with a split tail and bear feet padded alongside aside him for quite some time, before turning and disappearing silently into the night. Their presence comforted the appaloosa, for he knew they would not hurt him.
A few, mere months ago he may not have dared to search for the relic at night. But Ipomoea has watched fires burn at midnight since then, and he has walked a silvery forest in pursuit of a murderer. The dark, he knows, is nothing to be feared.
An owl hoots somewhere in the distance, yet something tells him that if he went to investigate it would not be an owl he found.
Overhead it was a moonless night, so the stars seemed all the more bright. But as he passed beneath the canopy of the forest, Ipomoea looked up in wonder to see a galaxy emblazoned on the underside of the broad, flat leaves, a mirror to the heavens.
They dance and they spin, entwining themselves together into endless constellations and stories. Even as he looks, he can pick out similarities and differences between they and the real thing outside the forest. His eyes drift back and forth, and the names of the ones come naturally to him; yet it is the unfamiliar ones that hold his attention. A galloping pegasus, a flaming sword, waves that bend and break gently. His imagination is running wild tonight, as he envisions a flock of butterflies swimming through the canopy overhead, immortalized in fake starlight.
And as he stops to admire the wonder of magic, footsteps crunch across the forest floor behind him.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” he whispers softly to the stranger. “I’ve never seen anything like this place before.” It was magic he knew; terrible, beautiful, wondrous magic.
And he loved it.
He turned towards the sound at last, pulling his eyes reluctantly from the star show above to focus instead on the stranger padding through the dark. They’re still clad in darkness, but the starlight draws sharp lines upon the planes of their face, bathing their shoulders in silver.
“Hello,” he says simply, as flowers begin twining their way up his legs.
@anyone! another relic hunting thread <3
”here am i!“
”here am i!“
