The last time he was here, the meadow had been on the cusp of winter. There had been smoke rising from the blackened stone chimney, gray smoke rising into an already gray-sky darkened by storm clouds. Snow had been falling slowly on the garden rows, hiding away the hard-frozen earth, chilling him with each cold flake that settled upon his skin.
But inside - inside it had been warm. Inside had been filled with life and vines and artistry, lulling him into what he now knew to be a false security.
It was always easiest to see one’s mistakes when looking back, never forward.
There had been a single tree standing by the cottage, bare branches clicking and humming quietly to one another as he passed beneath them. Ipomoea had always thought there was something foreboding in the blunt buds of a winter tree, something disquieting in their death-gray colors. He had ignored it then, had brushed off the disquieted way they shook as nothing more than another sign of winter, had mistaken Emersyn’s distance as a sign of soul-searching rather than the signal of a guilty conscience.
He asks himself now, how had he not seen it then?
And he wonders, had anything she said been true?
He thinks the questions might hurt more than the answers. But today - today he has no intentions of turning from the pain.
Today he stalks down that meadow path like a sheep pretending to be a wolf, singing promises of blood in every step. Today he is equally savage as the crystal-crowned stag walking beside him, who taps his antlers like a warning against every tree, every rock, every fencepost they pass. And today, the wildflowers growing beneath his heels do not wither or wilt in the late-summer heat - they lift their heads and stare at the cottage in the meadow with all the judgement of the earth.
The flowers are angry. Rhoeas is angry. He, too, is angry.
Each beat of his heart reminds him of the blood he has seen watering the forest. Every step he takes is reminiscent of the thousand times he went running between the trees. Ipomoea can not breathe without remembering the fallen stag in the forest, the one he gave his breath to so that he might live. Rhoeas huffs and drags his antlers through the corn yellow grass, until the stalks rattle as they rake against the crystal. A hundred deaths are in his eyes and in his heart, and all of them he has pinned over the head of one gray-colored girl.
Emersyn may not have been the one who killed him - but she has killed others just like him. And the forest remembers each one.
So with the morning sun just beginning to turn the sky blue, and the flowers in the meadows only just beginning to lift their heads and shake the sleep from their petals, Ipomoea approaches the Emissary’s small cottage at the edge of Illuster. And as he stands there, just across from the garden, searching the dirt and the windows for signs of life, he can feel the rage coiled in the pit of his belly begin to unwind.
His bonded knocks on the wooden gate, tap tap tapping, announcing their arrival.
But inside - inside it had been warm. Inside had been filled with life and vines and artistry, lulling him into what he now knew to be a false security.
It was always easiest to see one’s mistakes when looking back, never forward.
There had been a single tree standing by the cottage, bare branches clicking and humming quietly to one another as he passed beneath them. Ipomoea had always thought there was something foreboding in the blunt buds of a winter tree, something disquieting in their death-gray colors. He had ignored it then, had brushed off the disquieted way they shook as nothing more than another sign of winter, had mistaken Emersyn’s distance as a sign of soul-searching rather than the signal of a guilty conscience.
He asks himself now, how had he not seen it then?
And he wonders, had anything she said been true?
He thinks the questions might hurt more than the answers. But today - today he has no intentions of turning from the pain.
Today he stalks down that meadow path like a sheep pretending to be a wolf, singing promises of blood in every step. Today he is equally savage as the crystal-crowned stag walking beside him, who taps his antlers like a warning against every tree, every rock, every fencepost they pass. And today, the wildflowers growing beneath his heels do not wither or wilt in the late-summer heat - they lift their heads and stare at the cottage in the meadow with all the judgement of the earth.
The flowers are angry. Rhoeas is angry. He, too, is angry.
Each beat of his heart reminds him of the blood he has seen watering the forest. Every step he takes is reminiscent of the thousand times he went running between the trees. Ipomoea can not breathe without remembering the fallen stag in the forest, the one he gave his breath to so that he might live. Rhoeas huffs and drags his antlers through the corn yellow grass, until the stalks rattle as they rake against the crystal. A hundred deaths are in his eyes and in his heart, and all of them he has pinned over the head of one gray-colored girl.
Emersyn may not have been the one who killed him - but she has killed others just like him. And the forest remembers each one.
So with the morning sun just beginning to turn the sky blue, and the flowers in the meadows only just beginning to lift their heads and shake the sleep from their petals, Ipomoea approaches the Emissary’s small cottage at the edge of Illuster. And as he stands there, just across from the garden, searching the dirt and the windows for signs of life, he can feel the rage coiled in the pit of his belly begin to unwind.
His bonded knocks on the wooden gate, tap tap tapping, announcing their arrival.
@
”here am i!“
