IPOMOEA
yesterday i was clever
H
er laughter fills the air like birdsong, bright and chirping and pleasant. But it’s not the sharp cries of a mountain hawk or the chuckle of a jay; it’s the soft warble of the forests, the tapping of a woodpecker, the high-pitched zee of a goldcrest. It sounds like Viride, like trees without beginnings stretching as far as his eye can see. She sounds like wildflowers, every shape and color imaginable basking in the sun.He isn’t going to ask - he doesn’t trust himself to, not when his heart is already thumping so wildly inside of his chest. But she goes on without knowing what her words mean to him, and with a simple admission, his heart stops.
Delumine? It starts again, slowly, tentatively, hopefully.
"You came from Delumine?" he clarifies, his voice impossibly soft. Home?
The interest in his voice is immediate, like a chord plucked from an instrument.
"How are you finding it? How have things been there?" He can’t stop the words that rush now from his lips, the questions that reveal his nationality. Ipomoea had never been good at keeping secrets, nor at pretending to be someone else - his wings flutter open and closed hopefully, his heart lurches in his chest. Thoughts of home race through his mind faster than breathing, faster than his heart can beat.
He swallows, and wills his heart to slow, forces his tone to remain steady. "Is the - are the forests quiet?" He can’t voice what he wants to ask, can’t make his lips form the word murderer. But he hopes she understands, and prays her answer will soothe his soul.
Ipomoea shakes his head, and pulls himself away from her mauve gaze. But her laughter is contagious, and her smile so warm and bright he finds it difficult to resist. So he flutters his wings, so that a breath of wind courses down his ankles. "Closer," he agrees, and his smile is wan. "But still not close enough." They would never support his weight, no matter how many times he had wished upon a shooting star that they might.
The flap gently against his fetlocks, as if to prove their strength to him. He calms them with no little effort, tucking them neatly against his legs so that they are still once again.
"Maerys," he echoes her name thoughtfully, then smiles again. "That’s a pretty name." It has a gentle ring to it, hovering in the air like mist hovers against the mountains.
Ipomoea takes a step backwards, and a rock tumbles down the slope. "The path widened a little farther this way," he says, and gestures over his shoulder. "If you’ll follow me…"
With a grin and a flourish, like a tour guide leading her into the Court, he begins to back his way down the path, carefully retracing his steps in the most literal of senses.
"This is, indeed, the Night Court - or at least the way into it. This path is the only one in and out of Denocte, at least the only one I know of." He’s ready to rattle off any number of facts about the territory, about the flowers that grew in the meadow at the mountain’s base, about the people who call this land their home - but he hesitates, gauging her reaction first.
And for as much as he can say about Denocte, he hopes - he prays - she can tell him just as much about Delumine.
@Maerys | "speaks" | notes: <3
