He does not recognize this part of him, the way his pulse chimes frantically in his ears and his heart pounds against his ribs. He is leaning in with the crowd, hating them for their frenzy and yet how can he be so disgusted, when he is there alongside them? When he is holding his own breath, waiting, watching, until his lungs start to ache from it? The warriors are circling each other and for a moment Ipomoea feels as though they are circling not each other —
But him.
He does not remember when he became a man that knew the song of blood better than one played by a violin. He does not remember inviting the darkness in when he learned how to be brave that night beside the lake, he never imagined he would need his dagger for more than a single monster (just this once, he had told himself, had he not told himself that?) He had not known then that it was in his blood, that “just this once” would awaken a part of him that he had not even known to exist. Even now that beast is blinking slowly awake, snarling just below his skin, coiling like a snake around his heart before it begins to squeeze.
The two warriors (he has to fight himself to call them such) circling each other in the ring were not like him, and oh, how he hates them for it. Perhaps if they were wolves, or bears, or lions he might have loved them; perhaps if one of them was a unicorn with the same bone-deep hunger he has come to love, he might have understood. Perhaps if they had a rage that ran as deep as his, that burned as hot as his, perhaps if their roots had grown in the same poisoned soil as his —
But no.
Overhead he can hear the carrion crows begin their calls.
Outside he can hear the desert whispering.
Come home, he imagines it saying. This is who you have always been.
A part of him still wants to deny it, even as his heart beats faster and the thorns twist themselves into knots in response. Something in him is aching and begging him to turn back, to run back to his forest, run through his forest, to follow the twisted deer-trails until he remembers that he has only ever been a part of the earth, and not this mortal thing that seeks to consume it like all the others. But it is hard to remember here where everything is either dead or dying.
He does not see the man at first, the only one to part the crowd instead of lean in amongst them like another lamb following the flock. It is only when he is there beside him, grinning his humorless grin that he becomes more than a faceless man standing in the crowd, becomes something for him to notice.
Ipomoea wonders if he is like him, if he is full of the same contradictions.
"Would you escort me back to the pits if I were?" He does not say that the fighters belong down on the sand, not here in the crowd; he does not say his rage was reserved for monsters, not a false sense of glory. But oh it’s there in his eyes, it’s written in the hard edge of his jaw when he sets his teeth together, it’s meaning is unfurling like the roses on his dagger that keep blooming, that dig their thorns into his own skin.
"Or would you offer a fight here, instead?"
All around them the crowd grows wild as one of the fighters collapses into the red-stained earth. But Ipomoea is not watching as he falls, is not cheering along with all those blood-drunk cries, is not listening as they name a victor and announce the next fight. He is watching only the stranger’s eyes, as if testing his reaction, as if daring him to look away from him.
And he wonders to himself — if this is how the crowd reacts for the conclusion of the first fight —
how would they react to the finale?
But him.
He does not remember when he became a man that knew the song of blood better than one played by a violin. He does not remember inviting the darkness in when he learned how to be brave that night beside the lake, he never imagined he would need his dagger for more than a single monster (just this once, he had told himself, had he not told himself that?) He had not known then that it was in his blood, that “just this once” would awaken a part of him that he had not even known to exist. Even now that beast is blinking slowly awake, snarling just below his skin, coiling like a snake around his heart before it begins to squeeze.
The two warriors (he has to fight himself to call them such) circling each other in the ring were not like him, and oh, how he hates them for it. Perhaps if they were wolves, or bears, or lions he might have loved them; perhaps if one of them was a unicorn with the same bone-deep hunger he has come to love, he might have understood. Perhaps if they had a rage that ran as deep as his, that burned as hot as his, perhaps if their roots had grown in the same poisoned soil as his —
But no.
Overhead he can hear the carrion crows begin their calls.
Outside he can hear the desert whispering.
Come home, he imagines it saying. This is who you have always been.
A part of him still wants to deny it, even as his heart beats faster and the thorns twist themselves into knots in response. Something in him is aching and begging him to turn back, to run back to his forest, run through his forest, to follow the twisted deer-trails until he remembers that he has only ever been a part of the earth, and not this mortal thing that seeks to consume it like all the others. But it is hard to remember here where everything is either dead or dying.
He does not see the man at first, the only one to part the crowd instead of lean in amongst them like another lamb following the flock. It is only when he is there beside him, grinning his humorless grin that he becomes more than a faceless man standing in the crowd, becomes something for him to notice.
Ipomoea wonders if he is like him, if he is full of the same contradictions.
"Would you escort me back to the pits if I were?" He does not say that the fighters belong down on the sand, not here in the crowd; he does not say his rage was reserved for monsters, not a false sense of glory. But oh it’s there in his eyes, it’s written in the hard edge of his jaw when he sets his teeth together, it’s meaning is unfurling like the roses on his dagger that keep blooming, that dig their thorns into his own skin.
"Or would you offer a fight here, instead?"
All around them the crowd grows wild as one of the fighters collapses into the red-stained earth. But Ipomoea is not watching as he falls, is not cheering along with all those blood-drunk cries, is not listening as they name a victor and announce the next fight. He is watching only the stranger’s eyes, as if testing his reaction, as if daring him to look away from him.
And he wonders to himself — if this is how the crowd reacts for the conclusion of the first fight —
how would they react to the finale?
@anyone !
”here am i!“
