IPOMOEA
somedays i am wild child
T
he willow switches are dancing in a stray breeze all around, just inches away. They reach for him, their long and flexible fingers grabbing fistfuls of his mane, a tangle of leaves and hair. And then they begin to tighten their grasp, tugging at him as if to say come here, I’ll protect you, imploring him to step away from the apple and the danger Isra’s bow and magic promises.But he doesn’t. And one by one, the branches slowly fall away, waving at him gently as if to say goodbye.
The arrowhead is sharp, anointed by the morning sun as she lifts it up and aims it for him. Ipomoea does not look at it, he does not let himself worry about how it might feel to have an arrow bury itself into his leg, his chest, his neck. He does not imagine blood trailing down his skin to soak the ground, the willow tree drinking deep of his life.
He looks only at the queen with scales dusting her belly, eyes the color of the sea. And when she inhales he does too, and he tells himself be brave, be brave, don’t look away, be brave…
The arrow strikes flesh with a twang and a mumble, burying itself through that golden core and carrying it away. He can feel the wind it sends across his skin as it flies past, and he shivers just a little. And it does not stop; not until the arrow buries itself within the trunk of the willow tree and stands on end there, quivering, the apple caught somewhere in the middle of it.
And only then does he let his breath out.
His heart is erratic inside of his chest, raging against his ribcage and screaming in his ears, but he pretends to not hear it. He looks down and blinks - once, twice, a third time - and tries not to let her see the relief that soothes the tension from his limbs. He hopes she doesn’t see that he was afraid, that he wasn’t ready for war yet, if only a little bit, if only for a moment.
”Maybe they do,” he says softly when he looks up again, and there’s a ghost of sadness in his gaze when he looks out across the lake. He did not want to believe it, but he was too old now to claim to be naive. He had seen too many things to continue living his life pretending his only worry was how much sun and water his garden got. ”Perhaps there’s a world out there, somewhere, a place where violence isn’t always the answer. If there is, I’d have hope that maybe, someday…”
His voice trails off as he watches a moorhen fly across the water, its reflection mirrored perfectly across the lake’s surface. Its feathers were limned in gold, framed by the dawn light. His own small wings open and close, reaching jealously for the sky, for the flight they would never know. A wan smile, woe and knowing, slips onto his face.
"But what do we fight for, if not for the hope of eventual peace? What do we do if peace is never an option?" he asks her, but he thinks he already knows the answer.
@isra | "speaks" | notes: <3
