even after they have been stepped on
The sun is shining brightly over the meadow today, the only shadows those that are cast by the flowers. They reach hungrily for the light, unfurling their petals like open hands that are ready, waiting, eager, straining to outgrow the others and to be the first to reach the skies. It looks as if they’re waving a gentle goodbye to him, dancing on their long and thin stalks, trading in their earthly greens and blues for a cloak of golden sunlight.
Rhoeas watches them sway with interest, and wonders to himself why they don’t just pull themselves up by the roots. Poppies like these had simple roots, easy to pull.
He ambles on through the field, crystal antlers fracturing the light every time he dips his head to smell the flowers. His bones creak and rattle as he walks, the sounds cushioned only partly by the curtains of moss and flowers draped across his spine, the roots hanging from his sides. The way the grass weaves at his sides captivates him, the whisper of the wind sliding between its blades setting his chest to aching.
Everything set his chest to aching, it seemed. Everything alive and beautiful and light. Everything he was not.
He doesn’t understand the yearning budding inside of him, just as he doesn’t understand the instinct that keeps him from wandering too far from the horse sleeping in the grasses. The magic though, the magic he understands; he watches as the grass braids itself around Ipomoea like a cradle, watches as the dandelions press themselves against his own skin. The flowers always seemed brighter, somehow, around his bonded; they stood taller next to him, opening their petals like they held a special sort of beauty in reserve for him alone.
Rhoeas paces a circle around him, and with the tall grass tickling his sides and hiding his body it is almost easy to mistake him, from a distance, as simply another deer that has wandered too far from the forest. But he keeps one eye, one ear, one shoulder turned towards the stallion sleeping in the grass, even as he wanders further and further from his side, never far enough to lose sight of the flowers he wears.
And when the mare comes slowly closer, and closer, and closer, he watches her, too.
But something stops him from waking Ipomoea right away - the delicate angles of her face, soft from sunlight; the bundle of flowers she continuously adds to as she walks - and he simply waits. He sinks lower into the grass, watching her as his heart beats painfully loudly in his ears.
And it is not until she reaches the bed of grass his bonded sleeps in, bending her head near to his, that he rises at last and shouts -
Ipomoea!
~~~
He comes awake with a start, the silent shout rousing him in an instant. Ipomoea’s eyes flutter open, head rising above the dancing grass, just in time to see the golden mare perched overtop of him.
Oh! she says, pulling back in surprise.
“Oh!” he echoes, dragging himself to his feet.
Flowers and grasses pull away from him, petals raining like tears from his skin. He can feel Ro lurking somewhere behind him, somewhere in the sea of grass and wildflowers, watching him. His stare is intense enough to burn. But still the stag does not come forward, not yet - he leaves the stallion to his own devices. Ipomoea knows - by instinct or something deeper - that his bonded would only come to him if he were in danger.
In a way, knowing that, and knowing why he kept his distance still, was reassuring.
So he turns to the mare, as the grass shivers all around them both, and tells his heart to be still, there is no danger here.
And without quite knowing why, as he dips his head and breathes deeply of the sweet summer meadow, he says, “I’m sorry.”
@
"Speaking."
