you be the wind
i'll be the wildflower
i'll be the wildflower
Maybe he’s always been a part of the island, long before the day it decided to rise from the sea and invite them to it. He has always thought there was a bit of desert living in the warmth of his blood, and the forest in the dark brown of his skin; if that were the case, it would be the island holding his skin and muscle together as surely as the magic that kept trying to pull him apart.
Maybe he was meant to be reborn every time the island shed its skin.
It would be fitting, in a way. That the boy who had wanted nothing more than to be everything should grow up to live a hundred lives he didn’t want.
All around him the forest of grass is quaking, and he doesn’t know if it trembles for him or for her. He wonders what it’s saying - surely it’s saying something, screaming something, warning him, condemning him, crying out to him - when all he hears is silence. Ipomoea has never known before how many different kinds of silence there were, not until now, and this past winter. Now, it seems, all he ever hears back when he lifts his voice to the wind is silence, and the noiseless thrum of magic in his blood.
“Maybe it doesn’t think of me at all,” he tells her as she breathes against his ear, and the shiver passes from her spine to his. “Why should it give death a name now, when we never have before?”
The flower is nothing more than dust at his hooves now, and a circle of black is spreading around him. Each beat of his heart sees the death-spot growing more, like his own life is fueling the death of many. But the taste of a magic not his own has it almost-worth it, has him almost-forgetting what it had felt like to feel a sapling’s death like it was his own. And somehow, that made this feel less permanent.
So he turns to Thana, and wonders at the weight of all that pollen along her back as he runs his nose alongside it, like he’s rediscovering what she looks like beneath it. ”The only death I’ve known to have a name was Thana,” he says the words like they’re better suited to a confessional, and watches as bits of flowers that were just beginning to take root turn black and tumble away. It feels illicit, the way he explores her body with his lips before laying his head the gold of her back.
”Even so,” he whispers against her skin, ”’Thana’ has always meant more to me than death.”
@thana
Maybe he was meant to be reborn every time the island shed its skin.
It would be fitting, in a way. That the boy who had wanted nothing more than to be everything should grow up to live a hundred lives he didn’t want.
All around him the forest of grass is quaking, and he doesn’t know if it trembles for him or for her. He wonders what it’s saying - surely it’s saying something, screaming something, warning him, condemning him, crying out to him - when all he hears is silence. Ipomoea has never known before how many different kinds of silence there were, not until now, and this past winter. Now, it seems, all he ever hears back when he lifts his voice to the wind is silence, and the noiseless thrum of magic in his blood.
“Maybe it doesn’t think of me at all,” he tells her as she breathes against his ear, and the shiver passes from her spine to his. “Why should it give death a name now, when we never have before?”
The flower is nothing more than dust at his hooves now, and a circle of black is spreading around him. Each beat of his heart sees the death-spot growing more, like his own life is fueling the death of many. But the taste of a magic not his own has it almost-worth it, has him almost-forgetting what it had felt like to feel a sapling’s death like it was his own. And somehow, that made this feel less permanent.
So he turns to Thana, and wonders at the weight of all that pollen along her back as he runs his nose alongside it, like he’s rediscovering what she looks like beneath it. ”The only death I’ve known to have a name was Thana,” he says the words like they’re better suited to a confessional, and watches as bits of flowers that were just beginning to take root turn black and tumble away. It feels illicit, the way he explores her body with his lips before laying his head the gold of her back.
”Even so,” he whispers against her skin, ”’Thana’ has always meant more to me than death.”
@thana
