with criminal mentality
Oh, how he wishes his own anger could manifest as lightning and thunder wrapped around his body, so that his looks might match the storm inside of him at last. Maybe if he could let it out with a rumble and a bang, with a flash of lightning echoing across his face, maybe then he wouldn’t feel as though he were drowning in the flood waters he struggles now to hold back.
Instead, all he has are the beginnings of wildflowers fighting to bloom in his hoof prints. Wildflowers that are washed away by the wind and rain before their petals get even a chance to unfurl.
He meets Andras’ gaze evenly, waiting for the flurry of emotions to slow their race through his eyes. Raindrops roll down his face like tears, but Ipomoea makes no move to wipe them away. The storm was crying for him, letting lose all the tears that he refused to show.
“I’m not,” he confirms, surprisingly even himself with the calmness of his voice. Because inside, Ipomoea is falling apart. Piece by piece the wind is tearing him open, exposing bones, and roots, and all the things he would rather keep hidden, all the parts of him that belong more to the harshness of the desert than to the beauty of Delumine. He can feel the flood waters inside of him beginning to rage, consuming him, drowning him, stripping him down to the darkest parts of himself until all he can do is lay down beneath the torrent of his rage. And even then, it’s not enough; even then the waters continue to rise. It’s only a matter of time before the dam inside of him breaks beneath it.
There’s a part of him that knows it’s not true anger cresting the waves, but only the grief he has disguised as anger. But caught in the riptide of his emotions, there is no line drawn where the sadness ends and his outrage begins. They have only ever looked and felt the same.
Because Emersyn is fine.
And Ipomoea is not. Andras is not. All of Delumine is worn down to their bones except for its emissary. And Ipomoea, hurt, resentful, betrayed Ipomoea, does not understand it. Nor can he forgive her for it.
What will you do? the pegasus asks him. And Ipomoea can only say -
“I don’t know.”
Another crack of lightning illuminates Viride, the strike lingering dangerously close to the two stallions. And this time, Ipomoea trembles with the earth.
@
"Speaking."
