It had been a long time since he had last come to Veneror.
Sometimes, when he felt especially lonely in the markets of Denocte, when he escaped from the music and the bonfires to the lake, he liked to remember that day. He had met a girl here, with a rose as red as his own eyes braided within her hair. They had talked without knowing each other’s names, had shared secrets from their pasts as if they were old friends. That had been before he was a Regent, and before he found the magic running wild through his veins.
He wonders now how Messalina is doing, and where she might be - her letters had stopped quite some time ago, and although she had promised to meet him at the Night Court, he had yet to see or hear mention of her. Worry gnawed at his heart each day, when Odet with a single shake of his head let him know that no, there were no new letters for him and no, there was no word of the Champion in the marketplace. Ipomoea spends quite a bit of his time remembering her now, remembering the blue of her eyes and the way she looks down when she smiles. And more and more often he found himself reflecting on the day they had met, there at Oriens’ shrine.
It astonished him now, as he began his climb up the mountains, just how long it had been. And still he remembers that day, and each of his other journeys to the top of the world, as if they had been only yesterday…
The first time he had been just a colt, and less than a month shy of his first birthday. He was an orphan from Solterra then, off to see and travel the world - or so he had hoped. The wind had been strong that day, when he had stood at the edge of a cliff and looked out at all that lay below him, marveling at the way he could see into a part of all four Courts. The sky had looked impossibly big, which at the time had seemed backwards to him; how was it that the closer he got to it, the larger it seemed to grow, and the further from reach it seemed to be?
He had been equal parts awestruck, and enchanted. And when the traveling merchants had settled for the night at the temple, offering gifts and prayers to their patron deities, he had gone directly to the first of the five statues that had caught his attention: Oriens.
Although he had not yet been a part of the Dawn Court, still he had been drawn to the god of the morning in a way he couldn’t explain. He had been so young, and so naive then; he had chalked it up to fate, as if it was his destiny to join the northwestern court and serve the god of wisdom. All he had wanted then was to grow up and find a home, a place to belong to.
Sometimes he wished life were still so simple as it was then. Sometimes he wished he could go back to that life, when the biggest of his worries was where his next adventure would take him.
Night is falling quickly as he climbs the mountain, but Ipomoea does not rush himself. It’s the morning that he has come here for, a desire to see the sunrise from the top of the world. It’s a long way off, he knows, but the mountain beckons him forth, the night-blooming flowers whispering sweet nothings in his ear as he passes, and he knows that morning will come soon enough. The mountain today is the same mountain from his memories, the same mountain that had saved him as a child when he had grown sick.
The same mountain where he had been given a name, and a life, and a future. Only now he knows that it was not the gods who had done so for him, nor fate. Ipomoea is not so naive as he was before, although still he reveres the morning and the promises each new day brings.
In his grasp is a scroll, rolled up tight and bound with a scarlet ribbon. He holds it close to his breast along his walk, as if it’s some great treasure - and in a way, it is. For it is his offering to Oriens, a collection of short stories from the island that he hopes to add to the god’s great library. And as he approaches the temple’s doorway he is prepared to lay it on the altar and ask for the god’s blessing (although he’s no longer sure what good will come of that).
But a voice coming from within the sanctuary makes him pause at the threshold, and it leaves his freckled ears straining to listen.
As Ipomoea peers into the temple he sees her there, resting before Oriens temple. The woman inside is painted in tones of silver, and her face is vivid and pale in the darkness, reminding him of a ghosts’. But her voice is very much real, and he listens to it quietly. He hesitates for only that moment.
“Perhaps they become like us,” he answers her quietly, as he steps across the entryway and into the temple. His hoofbeats sound too loud against the stone floor, the quiet night hiding no secrets. “Perhaps that is how heroes are born, from falling stars.”
It’s a fanciful thought, and it has him wondering - how many heroes-to-be has Ipomoea met? How many children were born with stardust in their veins and galaxies in their eyes? Surely that was how legends began, the storytellers always said that fate was written in the stars.
But then he remembers himself, and he pauses several paces away from her, away from the chipped and broken statue of Oriens. “Forgive me, I did not mean to intrude on your worship.”
there’s a bluebird in my heart
that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I only let him out at night sometimes.
I say, stay in there,I’m not going
to let anybody hurt
you
@
i adore her ;u; please excuse this rambling mess
”here am i!“
