Ipomoea
I hope you are blessed
with a heart like a wildflower.
with a heart like a wildflower.
Ipomoea can no longer count all the times he’s stood in this hall, staring up at the bewitched ceiling. It feels as if he’s always been here, one way or another; as if there were a part of him that had always been looking up at the stars, through an enchanted mirror or otherwise.
The thought brushes across his mind then, as a wave of sea air drifts in through a window, if she knows how many times he’s been here, how the Night Court had always been a home to him - had she seen him in the market, when the fires had ravaged it? Waiting on the shores, when the sea had created an island? Had she been here for the thunderbirds, when he had stolen away again to make sure their court was not aflame like his forests had been?
This room had always made him wonder at all the questions he was too afraid to ask; he supposed the stars and magic had a way of bringing out the dreamer in him. And from the way Antiope looked at him, with her eyes full of wondering and waiting, he thinks it may have the same effect on her.
"I would love one," he admits, and follows her to the small table. He sinks down into the pillows across from her, thankful for the informality, thankful for the warmth of the steam rising from the kettle.
The distance between them feels greater than it had between he and Isra, during their first meeting; her words still echo in his head, the memory of her standing upon the steps to the castle with the smell of the sea clinging to her like a veil. Isra on the beach telling him to be brave, Isra by the lake teaching him how to shoot a bow, Isra in the desert with her gemstones - clever boy, she had called him once, as they talked about her city. Antiope’s city, now.
“Reichenbach once called Denocte the Court of Dreams and Dreamers.” His voice sounds impossibly quiet, as if the words were drowning in the galaxies above them. He has heard the words spoken time and time again - less so after Isra came from the sea to lead her people, and yet, the less Denocte’s people had said it aloud, the more true it had seemed to become. In the same way, the small part of dreamer still in him came alive each time he crossed the border.
He looks down at the amber color of the tea, watching it bead against the sides of the cup as he swirls it. For a moment Ipomoea thinks he can see shadows hiding in the current of it, and he wonders what a palmreader might tell him it meant. He smiled to himself, a small, wistful thing that is soon fading. “I suppose she was off to see her dreams through.”
His eyes meet her’s from across the table, and he offers the new queen a smile.
“Isra trusts you,” he says simply, taking the first sip of the tea. It warms him from the moment it settles into his stomach, feeling like moonfire spreading across his skin. “She wouldn’t have left, I think, if she didn’t believe her people would be held safe for her. And so I’m glad Denocte has you to lead them.”
It had felt almost like a betrayal, when he had first Isra standing in the place of Reichenbach.
But as he looks at the new queen's piercing blue eyes, and sees something almost like a god staring back at him - it feels only like a new star being named, a new constellation being formed from the story of the night's champion. It feels only right.
@Antiope
<3 “speech”
