It is an easy thing to close the distance once the thud of apple, and arrow, and tree stops echoing in her head like a heartbeat. Isra's not shivering now when she moves close enough to see the way the grass, and the willow reach out like Ipomoea is more sun than horse. She smiles for the sight of it, the way that each blade of nature is content to be around him and nothing more. It makes her wonder, perhaps, if the things around her even want to become 'more'.
And maybe she's too much of the sea to wonder too much about it; because she brushes their shoulders together as she walks towards the arrow and the willow tree and the world around her is already changing. A stalk of rye brushes against her leg once before turning into fountain-grass as violet as the twilight sky. But when she pulls the arrow from the tree the willow stays nothing more than a willow.
Isra thinks that maybe it loves Ipomoea too much to become something else. She can understand the sentiment. Once the sea loved her (and maybe it still does).
“I think every world is the same. It's all violence and hope, like the two together will ever be anything but corrosive. There are few blades that rain will not rust.” Everything rusts, until Isra turns the arrow into a wooden blade. It's redwood and it shines like blood when the morning light catches in the grain. She pulls a switch of willow free from the mother. It becomes a vine when she wraps it around the redwood hilt.
Isra tells herself that the willow loves Ipomoea enough to be willingly remade (and to die).
She holds the blade between her teeth even though she doesn't have to. But it seems right, to feel the way it presses hard and hot against her tongue, before she drops it at the Regent's hooves. It hardly makes a sound when it hits the grass and meadow flowers. “In every world the violence will go on and on. They will call it peace when the smoke starts to clear even while the ashes are still burning. It will never end--” There is no woe in her smile when she pauses, only knowing, only ferocity.
“Until everyone like us learns to say that is enough.” She touches her nose to his and she can smell roses on his skin, roses and sunlight. There is no need for her to wonder what her pwn skills smells like. It's always been darkness and cobwebs, moonlight and brine. “And then we accept that we might die for it.” She inhales again just to remember for once last time the way spring should smell.
“Will you say the words with me?”, she asks, even though she hopes she already knows his heart.
Fable dives into the lake, like the words are too much for him to hear. But Isra does not need to turn from Ipomoea's face to know that the ripples of water are rushing out over the shore like it is made of slate instead of bloom.
@Ipomoea
