There’s always a way out.
Perhaps it is the star-shine that makes the words seem disembodied, belonging to any time, any happenstance. There is a pleasure in Ipomoea’s voice; as if he is simultaneously commenting on the scenery, saying, it is beautiful here.
Why leave?
And meanwhile, Lyr can only think: sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes the darkness is absolute. Sometimes, you cannot break the surface of frozen water or escape the inescapable silence of the end.
Lyr’s mind is full of glacier’s and cracked ice. There are wolves howling in his soul; there is an astral plane not so different from this one, cut through with a boat's sharp prow. The stars reflected in the sea had not been so different from the stars above, in a clear and moonless sky. Lyr reaches his nose to touch a speck of brilliant, luminous dust. It spirals, an orbit out of control, that sends it colliding with other minute formations. There's always a way out.
He wants desperately to take stock of that optimism; to ground himself in it.
But he already feels dead.
Yet, even he can admit this would be a beautiful place to spend eternity. Would you like to stay a while?
“Yes. I would.” Where Ipomoea smiles, Lyr’s eyes only soften. It is his nature. He has not smiled since—well, it seems, nearly since his sister died. And that is the way of things. What joy was left to be found? And here, in this magic island, Lyr feels entrapped by strange gods. Is it Tempus, transforming the air into galaxy around them? Is it Caligo, who has seeped the bright light from every orifice but the stars? They are ghostly in the illumination of the false nebulas; pale and crimson; pink and blue.
In the silence that follows, the stallion introduces himself: “I am Lyr.” And then, more quietly, in a voice lost to stars and stardust: “Do you love your Court?”
"Speech." || @Ipomoea
so you say you want a deathbed scene
the knowledge that comes before knowledge
