even after they have been stepped on
The shadows deepening in between the trees feels like an omen, have felt like an omen ever since the frost settled in the woods. It’s hard still for him to shake off the weight that has made a home inside of his chest, the pressure filling his lungs so that each breath felt heavy. It’s harder still for him to ignore the shadows between the tree trunks, and the emptiness of the branches overhead.
But when there’s a murmur in the roots wrapping around his hooves, everything else becomes noise in the background. And the aching inside of him begins to lessen, if only for a moment, if only because his connection with the earth has returned, however tenuous it may be.
“Always,” he tells her, and his voice is little more than a whisper, as if he’s afraid that too much noise would drown out the small voice of the forest entirely, and then he might never find it again. “Ever since I was a boy, when I first left Solterra -“ Funny, how he never remembered the flowers or the trees or the music of it all when he lived in the desert. It had always seemed to him as if his life had only ever begun outside of the Day Court.
Perhaps, in a way, it had; and perhaps that was why it had seemed to stop again after he returned last fall.
“My adopted mother used to have a favorite saying,” the words slip out before he can stop them, and he takes a half-step to turn and smile back at her. “There’s no sense in worrying about the unknown. Better to let it be a puzzle to unwind. All we can do is keep looking. And besides,” a tangle of roots smooth out in front of them, clearing a path that leads deeper into the forest.
“- The trees are on our side.”
And he turns down the path without hesitation, slipping easily between the shadows and the trees. In his mind he can see the crow flying, a dark spot against the morning light. And for half a second he feels something else, something darker stirring in the pits of his chest - a hunger that tells him to press on, a feral edge of teeth that makes him feel not like he’s chasing, but hunting. The hair lining his spine stands on end, and his wings flutter like broken things; but his feet skim the ground even faster, giving in to the urgency of the forest’s memory.
Half-running, half-fighting the urge to relent and become the hunter he half-felt like.
Stop, the command felt like it echoed through his body, locking his limbs in place. Stop… As always, he was quick to obey the forest, sliding to a halt at once as his heart leapt into his throat and his chest heaved violently.
…And look.
For a moment he couldn’t make sense of the sight awaiting for them, crowned by a semi-circle of trees. Had the sun been shining it would have anointed the bits of feathers and flesh in liquid gold; as it was, they nearly blended into the shadows of the forest.
Ipomoea stepped forward slowly, and all the forest seemed to go silent at once. Only the leaves crunched underhoof, and somehow, he didn’t need to ask Corrdelia to know her bonded lay in pieces now before them.
Bile rose in his throat.
@corrdelia
