you are the poem wildflowers write to spring
He can’t remember the music anymore — and the realization strikes like a hammer descending on his heart. He can feel it crushing beneath the weight, can feel the blood and the magic draining from it bit by bit like the guilt is determined to leave his chest hollow.He can’t remember the music —
Or any music.
When he thinks of a song, he thinks of the way the flowers danced even when there was nothing for them to dance to. He thinks of the voices of the trees, the way they weaved around each other so that you could not pin their rustling to any one tree, or branch, or leaf; all you heard was the forest, singing as one. And he thinks of the wind, and the sun, and the rain and how it all felt like an almost-song, one not everyone could hear.
When Ipomoea hears music, the sort of music that makes his chest feel tight and convinces the magic in his veins to sing, it reminds him of the earth. And the song he sings along to does not have words or lyrics; only roots and petals and a language older than the common tongue.
Sometimes, he wishes he could hear the music other people heard, that it might move his soul in the way it moved their’s. But a flower had no use for music.
The boy smiles, but Ipomoea is only thinking of how bright his eyes are. They remind him of another pair of eyes, eyes that were just as violet, eyes of a woman who did not know the sound of music; and he smiles back.
“Do you play many instruments?” he asks, with genuine interest (he cannot play an instrument himself; orphans did not receive free piano lessons with the scraps of bread tossed at their feet.) He wonders if tapping a rhythm upon the back of a drum felt the same as pulling a bow across the strings of a violin; he wonders if playing notes feels the same as shooting arrows. He knows he will never know for himself, not when the only music he can play is the song of the soil and the roots and the water.
Ipomoea knows he will never understand what would prompt someone to strum a harp instead of plant a sapling, and how the two things could feel the same to different people. But he is glad there are people who know the sound of music, and who can make it their own; he only wishes he could be a better listener to it.
He wants to hear more of the boy’s lessons, and why his parents did not think it useful (he knows how well musicians can be paid; he knows, because he pays them). But the boy is smiling again, and his violet eyes are sparkling, and his voice is flowing like a melody through the hallway. It feels like the music from the concert room, and something about it makes his heart harden.
“I suppose some might think so.” The wisteria is stirring in the nearby window, lifting its leaves and looking at the two horses standing in the hallway. His magic whispers to it, and slowly, silently, buds appear along the vine and begin to bloom. “—But the flowers have always kept me company.”
He turns back to the boy, regarding him quietly.
“Is that why you play music?” he asks quietly. “To escape the loneliness?”
Because that —
That he would understand.
@oliver
“speech”
