I P O M O E A
The trees have begun to change, in true fall and festive fashion. As Ipomoea looks out from the window of an upper tower, all he sees spread out to the east is a blanket of red and gold and orange and green, colors reaching up to touch the skies.
Once, he might have thought they looked like flames, like the fiery kiss of the morning sun.
But he’s seen what the trees look like to truly burn, and there was nothing beautiful about that sight.
”Sir?” he turns from the window to study the young page that stands nervously in the doorway.
“Please, Cael, call me Ipomoea.” Strange, he thinks to himself. They never called me ‘Sir’ when I was their Regent. Perhaps they no longer saw him as one of them, not since he had left. The boy smiles hesitantly.
“Ipomoea,” he concedes, although he breaks the name up into two many broken syllables. “Queen Marisol is asking after you. She came herself from Terrastella.” He nods as a dismissal, and waits until Cael has disappeared before he steps away from the window. His hoofbeats echo loudly against the marble tiling, and not for the first time it reminds him of how quiet the Court has become. Like Delumine does not yet know that she is safe, that the threat to the east is gone.
Perhaps the land knows something he doesn’t; but the trees whisper only of the warm sun and cold nights, and how bare their branches feel when the leaves begin to drop. If there’s a warning they’re trying to tell him, it feels only like winter and nothing more.
He finds her waiting for him in a round and airy room, lined with windows that face the courtyards on either side. One on side a few children play a game of marbles; on the other a single, lonely scholar reads beneath an oak tree. He hopes she doesn’t see how empty the Court appears. He hopes she doesn’t notice how the laughter seems to have been drained from Delumine. He hopes he’s wrong, and that the city beyond is ringing with noise his own ears are simply not keen enough to hear.
“Your Grace,” he says, and tries not to think of how the words feel like they still belong to another Sovereign, a King with stars in his eyes and saltwater in his veins. Ipomoea smiles past the sudden lump in his throat, and steps forward to brush his muzzle against her shoulder - if she lets him. Even now, in the most formal of ranks, still he struggled to contain his own informality.
“I trust you had an uneventful flight? It’s a rather long way from Terrastella to Delumine, can I get you anything?” There’s another question left unspoken, when he pulls back to meet her level gaze.
Once, he might have thought they looked like flames, like the fiery kiss of the morning sun.
But he’s seen what the trees look like to truly burn, and there was nothing beautiful about that sight.
”Sir?” he turns from the window to study the young page that stands nervously in the doorway.
“Please, Cael, call me Ipomoea.” Strange, he thinks to himself. They never called me ‘Sir’ when I was their Regent. Perhaps they no longer saw him as one of them, not since he had left. The boy smiles hesitantly.
“Ipomoea,” he concedes, although he breaks the name up into two many broken syllables. “Queen Marisol is asking after you. She came herself from Terrastella.” He nods as a dismissal, and waits until Cael has disappeared before he steps away from the window. His hoofbeats echo loudly against the marble tiling, and not for the first time it reminds him of how quiet the Court has become. Like Delumine does not yet know that she is safe, that the threat to the east is gone.
Perhaps the land knows something he doesn’t; but the trees whisper only of the warm sun and cold nights, and how bare their branches feel when the leaves begin to drop. If there’s a warning they’re trying to tell him, it feels only like winter and nothing more.
He finds her waiting for him in a round and airy room, lined with windows that face the courtyards on either side. One on side a few children play a game of marbles; on the other a single, lonely scholar reads beneath an oak tree. He hopes she doesn’t see how empty the Court appears. He hopes she doesn’t notice how the laughter seems to have been drained from Delumine. He hopes he’s wrong, and that the city beyond is ringing with noise his own ears are simply not keen enough to hear.
“Your Grace,” he says, and tries not to think of how the words feel like they still belong to another Sovereign, a King with stars in his eyes and saltwater in his veins. Ipomoea smiles past the sudden lump in his throat, and steps forward to brush his muzzle against her shoulder - if she lets him. Even now, in the most formal of ranks, still he struggled to contain his own informality.
“I trust you had an uneventful flight? It’s a rather long way from Terrastella to Delumine, can I get you anything?” There’s another question left unspoken, when he pulls back to meet her level gaze.
