[AW] the flowers say hello

[Ipomoea]

IPOMOEA so lay me down in golden dandelions  It was not the stranger standing before him who answered, but a snake. The likeness was uncanny he decided, as the silver stallion wove through the crowds towards him, parting the throng like a prophet standing before a sea. Even if Ipomoea had not heard the tales of the crow-turned-king, even if he had not left his home to fight a war against the usurper, still he would have recognized him by the crowd’s reaction alone. It does not take long for the sick and the starving to scatter, some desperately taking fruit on their way and others too terrified to do anything but flee.  For a millisecond, Ipomoea is alone with a murderer.  A millisecond is all it takes for the warmth in his cherry gaze to vanish, as he looks into the eyes of a madman.  His heart stutters, grinding to a painful stop. It takes too long for it to start beating again, and in that time the silver man draws closer, and closer, like a grim reaper come to take him home. He has never drawn blood before, but today he thinks he might like to. I’ve never heard your voice before, he thinks, his eyes narrowing, his blood boiling with every word that flows like poisoned honey from the liar’s lips. He did not like it. It sounds like starvation and death to him, like a kingdom oppressed and acts of war.  Ipomoea hardly looks at the woman who comes between them, his vision tunneling in on Raum. But when she moves, when her foreleg darts out to carve a bloody line across his chest, he is quick to react. The basket of goods slips from his grasp before she can strike it down, while his telekinesis reaches instead for the wooden blade strapped to his thigh. The vines uncurl in an instant, but he does not point it at either of them, not yet. He does not need to, not when a stranger he knows only by reputation stands between him and the soldier. No longer is he alone. His heart is racing, a wild thing inside of his chest that screams for blood, for retribution, for justice. Ipomoea is surprised by how much he longs to hold a bloodied dagger, by the way it begs to feel flesh split beneath its blade. “Your people.” He spits the words from between gritted teeth, and oh how the anger rises like bile in his throat, how it wraps its cold fingers about his heart and squeezes any bit of joy and love he might have had left, wringing it out of him like a rag. “You have no right to starve these people. You have no right to call yourself their king.” He wants to keep going, even after his jaw clenches so tightly the words cannot find their way out. He could almost laugh, in a bitter, hateful way; his fury is poorly contained, coloring each word red, red, red, as he stares down the false king. The fires flash before his eyes; the ribs of starving children; the smile of a traitor; the cry of a dragon. All of the anger that has been slowly festering away inside of his heart, all of the guilt and doubts that have taken hold of his mind since the day he watched his own forests burn at the work of a god - it all roars inside of him now. There's a savage inside of him that he doesn't recognize that's clawing its way out, a monster that has been sleeping since the day he was born here in the deserts surrounding the city. “Would you like to hear a secret?” his voice has dropped to nearly a whisper, for he cannot find it within himself to shout, not while his teeth lock themselves together and wish it was skin they bit down on. “Come here, and I’ll tell you one.” The wooden tip of the dagger is growing longer, the vines that wrap around its grip sprouting thorns. Be brave, his magic whispers to him, the same way it had in the Bellum steppe, the same words it had said when Isra had aimed her bow at him besides the lake. Be brave, be brave, don’t look away, be brave, be angry. Overhead an eagle begins to circle. And he knows, as his magic raises cactus and shrub grass from the sun-baked earth, their tines pointed at Raum, that it will not be the last. @Raum @efphion @Torstein! I know there was a LOT of interest in this thread - if anyone is still looking to jump in, please feel free! let’s make a showdown c; po you idiot i told you not to come here feat. a saga of po's internal thoughts ”here am I!”