let's be wildflowers
He smiles to himself. "Why do we call each other male and female instead of just equine? At least we’re consistent in addressing our colts and fillies the same as adults. I suppose we just like to be more descriptive." Perhaps it did sound strange to someone else, someone not entirely-equine. Ipomoea wouldn’t know, not firsthand.
But she’s relaxing, and Ipomoea lets himself relax around her. The forest feels like home again, with the trees sighing all around him and the earth humming with each step he takes. He presses his shoulder against the bark, and his eyes slip closed for a moment. The trees of Viride were different than the trees in Denocte. He could see that now, the way their roots tangled beneath him in a web of connections.
His eyes flicker open when she speaks again, watching as she shakes her head and explains. Ipomoea nods his head along complacently with her words, and steps away from the trees. He misses the contact - he could sit here in the forest all day beneath the same tree, and never be bored - but now is not the time to lose himself.
She says his name slowly, almost uncertainly, and he can only smile in encouragement. It feels strange to hear his own name spoken, particularly so carefully - for so long he’s only been Po, and to him it feels like it’s a different version of himself now, the condensed and the expanded. He’s still trying to come to terms with it, when each day he feels like someone he shouldn’t be.
"Certainly not the vocabulary," he quips, and laughs good-naturedly. He thinks the trees might be laughing too then, because the wind sets the branches to dancing and the leaves make a dry susurration above them. It makes his heart feel heavy and light at the same time.
"So not very long," he fills in the blanks. "Tell me about where you came from?" he asks softly, when he steps towards the forest path. "And I’ll tell you something of Viride in exchange?" He wants to know more about her, about the land that had shaped her. Because he thought that maybe it had been somewhere good, and good places had a way of forming good people.
