even after they have been stepped on
There’s a moment, when the two Sovereigns stand and stare at one another in silence, that Ipomoea thinks Orestes might turn without speaking even a word. There’s a moment that he can feel the questions passing unspoken between them, carrying the weight of two Courts’ futures on their spines. From the corner of one eye he thinks he can see their ghosts, sitting in that ramshackle alcove in the desert market, passing a jar of jam across the table. Back and forth, it plays as if on repeat; he can see himself sitting down, can see Orestes breaking the bread, can see the way they stare each other down like a pair or crows circling the same dead thing.
He wants to erase that memory, to tell it it has no place here in his home. But he knows to say so would be to admit that he, too, does not belong here.
Once, he would have turned towards the gardens first; but there’s a reluctance now that makes him hesitate. A part of him is bristling at the thought, a part of him is selfish - too selfish to share the best of his court, the heart of all his secret places, with this other king. A part of him wonders if Orestes would even appreciate the various cultivars, the diversity, the way he’s made species from the desert and the tundra not only coexist, but thrive so far removed from their environments (no one else in Solterra ever had.) Once, he would have delighted in explaining the nuances, the care, the passion the gardeners displayed in their work; now he only smiles.
Now he only inclines his head, and lets his steps carry them towards the citadel instead.
“You and I both. The first Delumines, those who built this castle, had to struggle against the flora to carve out enough room for our Court.” He wondered if Orestes heard the subtle emphasis he put on the possessive, if the same doubts that whispered through Ipomoea’s mind whispered now through his, the worry that he would not, could not belong in the way he needed to. The question of whether a desert-born could live and nurture another court, or whether a foreigner could tame the desert sands. His wings stuttered like broken things, trying to beat the shadows from his mind. “I think, in the end, nature won that fight. And it is my opinion that Delumine is all the more beautiful because of it.”
They wind through hallways nearly overflowing with ivy, vines creeping in through the arched windows to spill across the floor. Ipomoea makes his way through them gingerly, unwilling to disturb a single leaf - and when it’s inevitable, a whisper of his magic tempts the vines to part for them, to prevent the castle from being overrun entirely. Around them the castle opens like a blossoming flower, and the people are the bees tending busily to it. A pair of scholars are making their way down the same hallway as them, heads pressed close together over a book as they argue the points of this philosopher versus that one. The sound of laughter drifts across the grass of a nearby courtyard, as a group of children race from one end to the other. Nearly every door they passed was open, some showcasing only empty rooms filled with bookshelves, or desks, or various artifacts; others revealing equines diligently at work. The citadel always had been the center of the court.
“Delumine is quieter than Solterra, and in some ways it is neither better nor worse because of it. Only different.” There’s a bell of warning ringing in the back of his mind, weighing his words out carefully. “The quiet does allow for each of us to focus on our talents however, to pursue them ruthlessly. So if Delumine’s beauty is not her highest virtue, then it is the devotion or her sages to upholding it, and to their pursuit of knowledge.”
He breathes in slowly, listening to the wind whisper through a maple, watching a pair of squirrels chase each other around its trunk. “Of course, I’ve never met a people more adaptable than those of Solterra, nor more resourceful.” Sometimes, he liked to think his own survival was a testament to that. And yet for all the mad kings they’ve survived, the many times they had rebuilt their court from the ashes of the previous reign, the droughts, the wars - he was not so foolish as to think he or any of his people here in Delumine would survive the same. He smiles then, and there’s only an ounce of irony hidden in it.
“Nor does Delumine makes prickly pear jam the way Solterra does.”
"Speaking."
