[P] eyes flecked with ash

[Antiope]

She watches with keen eyes as Ipomoea enters the room, eyes bright and rosy, skin mahogany and white—not unlike her own—and small pairs of pristine white wings at his fetlocks. Sullivan closes the doors behind him with a resounding thud, and it suddenly makes her wonder if his voice has always matched the solemn sound of heavy wooden doors closing.

“There is always time for making new friends,” Antiope says, watching as the Deluminian King glances toward the star-adorned ceiling, “I hope.” They watch each other, like there is so much emptiness between them, so much space to fill, so much unknown. She wonders what is behind his eyes, is it how she imagines Caligo’s? Judging, wondering, waiting.

She must get out of this office, very soon. The stars are whispering to her, the planets scalding her skin with their stares. “Please, come join me. Would you like something to drink?” Antiope motions toward a low table lined with deep velvet navy pillows, sewn with thread that looks like pure gold.

Upon the table rests a cast iron tea set, the kettle embossed with a large raven flying through a cloud-filled sky. The moon, full and round, sits opposite the side of the raven. The entire set is glazed with an aubergine color. “I am certain Isra appreciated you being here to see her off,” Antiope tells him, recalling him stepping up to speak to her before slipping away into the crowd.

The tigress looks out the arching windows with the warm light rays slanting in through them.

The ocean is out there somewhere. Isra is out there, somewhere, on that sea. “She was so convinced that the court would be better off without her,” when she turns back to Ipomoea, she smiles, “I think, in the end, it was hard for her to see how much she would be missed.” If there is any uncertainty in her eyes, it is hidden by the shadows falling over her face.

"Speaking."

---

@Ipomoea

∞