Someone had told him once that the dunes liked to sing.
But they have never sung for him.
Today they look like restless giants behind him, whispering about the flower-clad child they once nearly devoured. He wonders if they still want to consume him now, all these years later; he thinks they must. He can feel it in the way they shift around him like hungry wolves, the pack circling the rabbit. Always moving, always changing, always ready to drag him down to the depths of them and take back the life that was stolen from them that night.
Already he can taste the sand, and each breath of it makes his lungs ache like they have only ever been an hourglass slowly filling up. It makes something in him start to tremble — from dread, or from anticipation, or from the blood-deep instinct to rise, rise, rise and bare his teeth. He can’t tell the difference between his courage and his fear anymore; he supposes that is what it took to learn how to be brave in the middle of a war.
But Ipomoea is not the helpless prey. Not anymore.
And the flowers on his brow will not wilt so easily.
Inside the blood-stone walls, he can (almost) forget the way the sun feels like the great eye of Solis bearing down upon him. Inside the Colosseum there is only the glory and the gore of the fighters, and the blood-drunk frenzy of the crowd. Their cheers drown out his thoughts, their cries suffocate the wind of the desert whistling like songs through the canyon walls, and when the gates swing open with a crash, it sounds to him like death knocking a little too keenly at the door.
From the darkness on either end of the arena steps a soldier, one clad only in leather greaves, the other bearing a strip of metal down his face in the crude semblance of a helmet. They circle each other like hungry dogs, like they have forgotten how to be anything but monsters hiding in slack-ribbed bodies. Ipomoea can feel the crowd leaning in around them, pressing him forward, daring him to watch and oh, how like carrion crows and vultures they seem to him now, with their sharp eyes and their sharper teeth, and Ipomoea does not know which of the dogs is hungrier, the crowd or the fighters.
He wonders which of them will die today. He wonders if it will be worth it.
He wonders if he will ever be able to look on a gladiator fight and feel anything but contempt for the so-called sport rising like bile in the back of his throat. Or if he will ever hear the calls for blood and not feel the broken bits of him forming into that beast just below his skin in response, so close to the surface that he can hear it beginning to pant. The crowd presses in and oh, Ipomoea can feel himself pressing in beside them, and in the war-drum beat of his blood he finds all the truth he will ever need.
Ipomoea knows there is no glory here, there no glory to be found in their deaths. He has seen death, has known death, and death — death is no better or worse than the primordial dance the two warriors begin.
He tightens his grip on his wooden dagger, feeling it grow thorns and vines and blood-red petals, and again he wonders which of them will die today.
But they have never sung for him.
Today they look like restless giants behind him, whispering about the flower-clad child they once nearly devoured. He wonders if they still want to consume him now, all these years later; he thinks they must. He can feel it in the way they shift around him like hungry wolves, the pack circling the rabbit. Always moving, always changing, always ready to drag him down to the depths of them and take back the life that was stolen from them that night.
Already he can taste the sand, and each breath of it makes his lungs ache like they have only ever been an hourglass slowly filling up. It makes something in him start to tremble — from dread, or from anticipation, or from the blood-deep instinct to rise, rise, rise and bare his teeth. He can’t tell the difference between his courage and his fear anymore; he supposes that is what it took to learn how to be brave in the middle of a war.
But Ipomoea is not the helpless prey. Not anymore.
And the flowers on his brow will not wilt so easily.
Inside the blood-stone walls, he can (almost) forget the way the sun feels like the great eye of Solis bearing down upon him. Inside the Colosseum there is only the glory and the gore of the fighters, and the blood-drunk frenzy of the crowd. Their cheers drown out his thoughts, their cries suffocate the wind of the desert whistling like songs through the canyon walls, and when the gates swing open with a crash, it sounds to him like death knocking a little too keenly at the door.
From the darkness on either end of the arena steps a soldier, one clad only in leather greaves, the other bearing a strip of metal down his face in the crude semblance of a helmet. They circle each other like hungry dogs, like they have forgotten how to be anything but monsters hiding in slack-ribbed bodies. Ipomoea can feel the crowd leaning in around them, pressing him forward, daring him to watch and oh, how like carrion crows and vultures they seem to him now, with their sharp eyes and their sharper teeth, and Ipomoea does not know which of the dogs is hungrier, the crowd or the fighters.
He wonders which of them will die today. He wonders if it will be worth it.
He wonders if he will ever be able to look on a gladiator fight and feel anything but contempt for the so-called sport rising like bile in the back of his throat. Or if he will ever hear the calls for blood and not feel the broken bits of him forming into that beast just below his skin in response, so close to the surface that he can hear it beginning to pant. The crowd presses in and oh, Ipomoea can feel himself pressing in beside them, and in the war-drum beat of his blood he finds all the truth he will ever need.
Ipomoea knows there is no glory here, there no glory to be found in their deaths. He has seen death, has known death, and death — death is no better or worse than the primordial dance the two warriors begin.
He tightens his grip on his wooden dagger, feeling it grow thorns and vines and blood-red petals, and again he wonders which of them will die today.
@anyone !
”here am i!“
