IPOMOEA
let's be wildflowers
I
t feels strange to walk the city streets again. It feels to him as though something should be happening, something other than the quiet and the emptiness he is greeted with today - his heart is still thrumming painfully quickly, agonizingly loudly. As if it remembers the last time he had been here, as if it still senses the remnants of danger and quakes because of it. It makes him want to run again, away from the invisible dangers and the memories and the quiet that is louder than thunder. But he doesn’t. Instead Ipomoea only walks, and he watches, and he remembers the way the markets used to look.
When he was younger, before he had known anything other than the desert and the sun, this had been his favorite place. The water in the fountains had always been cool, and had drawn characters of all sorts to them. It had been the place where the traveling merchants and entertainers would flock, selling their wares and putting on shows for the common folk like him. Back then the markets had always been alive with laughter and music and bartering, a world of its own that contrasted the harshness of the surrounding desert. It was a hub of life and liveliness, and when he thinks back on it he thinks that maybe it had been the place where he had first learned how to live.
Now it’s hard to imagine the markets from his memories as being the same ones here today. It’s too different, too grim now; even in all the time that’s passed, still it has not recovered. He had heard the talk when he first arrived, the whispers of a new king who had walked through fire but did not burn. Ipomoea is not sure how much of the rumors he believed - they had carried hope of a brighter future, of change and restoration, but so far he had yet to see any of it.
And the longer he wanders the streets, the less he believes of those rumors.
Until he comes upon a man with the sun marked upon his brow in gold, sitting alone at a derelict table. And although the overhang looks ready to collapse and a layer of dust (or is it ash?) covers every surface, his presence alone makes it look more like a castle than the hovel that it is.
”Would you like to join me?” He had stopped there in the shadows, watching the flaxen haired stranger. But at the sound of his voice Ipomoea stirs, and while his heart is still begging him to run he steps forward slowly.
Swallowing thickly of grime and sunlight, he answers: “It would be my pleasure.”
He steps carefully around the table, and his wings are reaching again, feathers that are stained brown with dirt opening and closing and opening again, grasping only the empty air. There’s bread on the table, and jam, and for the first time the air smells good and fresh again.
His eyes are sharp and searching as he seats himself on the opposite side of the wooden table. And Ipomoea breathes in deeply again before he lifts his chin and asks -
“Who are you?”
He thinks he knows - or at least that he should know - but still he waits for his answer, and makes no move to reach for the bread.
@orestes | "speaks" | notes
me: no new threads until i close a couple more
also me: ok maybe just this one
