Ipomoea
I hope you are blessed
with a heart like a wildflower.
with a heart like a wildflower.
He stares at the painting while he waits. An off-black canvas stretches along one wall, with the drapes set just so that depending on which corner he sets his eyes to it appears almost red, or blue, or green, or a mix of colors he isn’t sure he wants to see. It’s easier, sometimes, to imagine the sky as something great and empty instead, something so deep it consumes every color that lives here on the earth.
Maybe the artist had seen something different in the night sky, something to make her paint it with the colors he didn’t see.
Strewn across the canvas are ten thousand stars, painted so meticulously it seems, when he first sees them, as if he were looking through a window to another world. Each one, he knows, had been painted painstakingly by hand, one miniature white dot at a time, until an entire universe of far-away lights filled the black background. In them he thinks he can see the constellations, as if the artist had been careful to transcribe the cosmos exactly as she saw them.
He remembers seeing this painting in another room once; a room that had been shuttered, so that only the small, faint lanterns had illuminated the faces of each art piece. To better draw the eye, Reichenbach had told him, his voice still husky and warm, as if he were speaking directly from the shadowy recesses of Ipomoea’s memory. Do you see how the center is painted lighter, where the bulk of the stars lie?
It was harder to see it here, with the light throwing so much into contrast. And yet it was easier, too, to see a thousand other small details now, details that had formerly been hidden in the shadows. It seems to Ipomoea that he is looking upon an entirely different painting, similar and yet not the same as the one he had seen in that darkened room so many years ago. In a way, he finds it fitting; a new painting for a new Denocte.
”My lord? The queen will see you now.”
The steward’s voice interrupts his thoughts, and it is with some reluctance that he pulls his eyes away from the artwork. With a nod of his head, he follows the man as he leads him down the hallway. Pausing before the door, he steels himself silently before pushing his way through.
“Sovereign Antiope,” he says smoothly, listening to the doors thud closed behind him. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m sure you have many things demanding your attention today.”
Above them the night sky sparkles, brighter and more lively than the painting that had decorated the hallway. Ipomoea glances briefly up at it, as if to acknowledge Caligo’s presence, before he offers a warm smile back to the queen. ”Congratulations, on your ascension.”
He watches her now, standing directly beneath a midnight-sky even while sunlight pours in through the windows. He can't help but compare her to Isra, and even to Reichenbach, and to all the other kings and queens of Novus. His eyes linger over the ribbon tied to her hair, a flash of red that is bright against the rich colors of her coat and mane. Red. It suits her better than the forest; red like the distant star that lingered low over the horizon each morning in Delumine.
He hoped, silently, fervently, that it was a good sign.
@Antiope
text “speech”
