Ipomoea
I hope you are blessed
with a heart like a wildflower.
with a heart like a wildflower.
Ah, he knows that look in her eyes.
The look of a starving woman, of wanderlust taking root in her skin; the look that says tell me everything because it is through the telling of a story that the dreamers in them come alive. He wonders then if she was like Isra — a storyteller, a dreamer, woman who made her dreams and her stories into reality. He wonders what she dreams about at night, and if she only dreams to keep alive the legacy that Isra carved into the moonstone streets of the city.
Or does Antiope dream for something more? For Denocte, for Novus, for herself?
Ipomoea dreams for more.
“I have always loved that about your court.”
The admission slips past his lips before he can stop it — but once it is free, he realizes it would have done no good to hold it back. He smiles at her then, a slow, almost-shy thing that shines like stars in his eyes when he sets the teacup down. “I came here for the first time as a boy, with the traveling merchants — and I fell in love with it. With the people, and the sea, and the way no one here was afraid to dream, not at all like the way the people of Solterra were afraid dreams would bring hope, and hope would bring them heartbreak. There is a part of me still who wishes I had stayed here.” There was a part of him that was full of a thousand what if’s, a part who forgot he was supposed to be a king of wildflower-meadows and centuries-old books instead of smoke and spices and stardust every time he crossed through the mountains.
Sometimes when he lies awake at night in Delumine, alone save for his wandering thoughts, he feels that unease in his heart that whispers to him this is not really your home — and he thinks of all the half-homes he’s had, all the places he might have called home had things been different. On those nights he can’t help himself from wondering if his magic might have been the kind to turn water into wine had he stayed here, if he would have been able to transform the ground under his feet instead of bidding flowers to grow through the rocky earth.
But Ipomoea had been made for poppyseed and paper-birch bark, and forests so deep he could run for days and never reach the end of them. A part of his heart would always stay here, in the city of dreams and dreamers — it was the place he kept coming back to, time and time again, to remind himself there were stars still worth reaching for. It is why he looks upon Antiope and lets himself smile, lets himself hope that she will be the leader her people can learn to be brave and fearless dreamers with.
He is silent for a moment, watching her from across the table. The water in his tea is beginning to cool now, when he lifts it to his lips and drains the cup.
“I hope you will come see Delumine one day, Antiope.” Each word sounds like a wish upon shooting stars. “I hope you will get to know us, that we can get to know each other; I believe my court could learn a lot from your’s,” he says with a smile. I will always love Denocte, he does not say, but it is there in his eyes when he stands and faces the door, shining like the hope he found all those years ago.
@Antiope
<3 “speech”
