even after they have been stepped on
It sounds like the wind is whispering to him, with each step that brings him closer to the summit. The higher he goes, the more it whispers, the louder it whistles through his ears - he does not know if it bids him onward or if it begs him to turn back the way he came.
He does not think he wants to know.
Once, he had climbed these peaks every time he passed Veneror. Once, he had brought flowers along the way to leave at Oriens shrine, and scrolls he wished the god might bless. His hooves still know the way, they carry him without question, without doubt, without fear. But his heart is another matter. It leaps into his throat now, choking him; his wings flutter like wild, trapped things, straining for an escape. Perhaps if they were bigger, big enough to carry him, he might have thrown himself from the rocky mountain path. What he might give to fly far, far away from the emotions crashing now like a wave inside of his chest, to fly until the horizon showed only rose petals and golden light instead of the shadows he was far too used to seeing -
If he could, Ipomoea would fly until he found a world that made sense again, until his heart did not ache for all the things he could not name. If only if only if only, the words became his lullaby. Even the mountain air unbraiding his mane and caressing his skin can’t shake loose the heaviness and the sorrow he carries with him.
He tries not to look at the sky as he climbs the mountain. They are too close here, too real, too alive for him. He feels small beneath them, dull compared to their light. He feels like he is entering their world, now, a world he does not belong to; here was where heroes were recorded in the constellations, where stories of triumph and greatness were immortalized. Here live the fables he had grown up with, the odysseys he had dreamed himself a part of, the childhood tales he had wished to become. Ipomoea does not remember now when he grew up and lost sight of those dreams - he only knows he feels like a dying star, ready to fall from the sky and admit the end had always been inevitable. His lungs start to ache alongside the aching of his heart, but still he climbs.
He climbs until the temple winks into existence ahead of him - and then, he stops.
The light flooding through its windows is bright, too bright. And for one long, trembling moment he stares and stares and wonders if one of the too-close stars have made the summit its resting place. But stars - like gods - did not lower themselves so, lest they be confused for mortals.
It is not until he hears a laugh, or rather half a laugh, splitting through the light that he steps forward again. The distance between he and the temple feels like infinity, like each stride a century, each step piling on more aches, more dust, more water in his lungs. It feels almost as familiar as it does wrong, but it seems to him in that moment that the gold of the light is waiting for him, if only he can reach it, if only he can fall into it like a baptism.
But it is not salvation waiting him in that temple, nor gods, nor stars, nor the pieces of himself he had hoped to maybe find. He finds only light, and a woman with the same uncertainty in her eyes that he knows, and Ipomoea wonders if the mountain temple sets her heart to throbbing in the same pattern as his.
Perhaps some gods are not meant to be trusted, he thinks as he steps into the fringes of the light, as if the gods would not still hear his blasphemer’s heart.
“The night is dark, Antiope,” he says quietly, eyes fixed now on the goddess’ stone face. How strange it looked, bathed in gold, void of the shadows Caligo so loved. “I thought a star had fallen asleep in here.”
And there he stands, halfway through the entryway, unsure if he should step into the warmth of her light, not knowing if the gods might toss him from the mountain if he tried.
@Antiope
"Speaking."
