even after they have been stepped on
It was not lost on him, how easily she carried herself. How steady her gaze was on his own, how unnervingly balanced she seemed as she continued to stare upon him, as if she were peering through his eyes and down to his very heart to see how it betrayed him with each tremulous beat.
He supposed it was a part of their upbringing (and their heritage, although he still refused to count his own.) She had been born into this life, had had it ingrained into the fiber of her being since her birth.
Ipomoea had not been so lucky. The desert would never let him forget that he was an orphan, a wanderer, a nobody; that the flowers he wore tucked into his mane were only ever the earth apologizing for the sand and the salt that filled his veins. His blood was starting to roar again, and it was only the sight of a vine, creeping across the marble floor, reaching out with spade-shaped leaves for him that distracted him enough to keep him from fidgeting. And when the first flower pressed itself against his ankle like a kiss, he could almost forget that he was born into a different life than this one, and pretend that it had only ever felt natural to wear a crown that was equal parts gold and petals.
A part of it still felt like a lie (so many things felt like a lie now, now that he knew why the anger felt so right, now that he had seen death and had not been as afraid as he once thought), but less so than before.
And as the silence stretched between his words and her’s, he lost himself for a moment in a sense of tranquility. Ipomoea was not so great a liar as he thought - how could he be, when he had only come into it so recently, so suddenly? He was not practiced enough to lie so well as to not be caught, nor was he experience enough to know what it felt like to be caught.
But oh, how that sense of calm that had settled his wings if only for a moment shattered much the way he imagined the porcelain tea cup would if he were to stand and drop it against the marble floor.
He thought his heart might have stopped at that first now, though. Surely it was traitorous enough to leave him now to deal with this fallout on his own. All he could do while he waited, painfully, endlessly, for his heart to resume, for Llewelyn to say her next bit, was stare at a fixed point on her horns, at a jewel that sparkled like a dying sun in the midmorning light. And still his heart - and his voice - betrayed him.
You’re a liar, Ipomoea.
He still wanted to rebel against that, to deny, deny, deny. They had not been true lies, he told himself, only half-truths, as any king was apt to tell. But he couldn’t bring the words to his lips - you’re wrong, I’m not, Pinocchio is a better liar than I - because he knew now. His entire life had been a lie, before he had even known it to be, why would now be any different? He was desert-born, and there was a part of him that would never belong here in a room full of flowers, and the rest of him hated that part.
It was a relief, as much as it was a torment, to have that part of him recognized.
As Llwelyn finished speaking, he moved his eyes to her’s at last. And with a grip that was almost imperceptibly shaking, he lifted the tea cup to his lips again, barely tasting the honeyed wine. His heart was still raging, begging him to tell her she was wrong even when it knew she was right, but he knew better than to try.
”And say I shared them with you.” His voice was quiet; it sounded far too dry to have been borne of springtime. This time, he was slow, careful, as he set the tea cup back down on the glass table, staring at the horned woman all the while.
”What would you do with them, Llewelyn?”
He knew too many people would trade them like flowers.
@llewelyn
I don't really know what this is
