like flowers
we can also choose to bloom
we can also choose to bloom
S
he does not need to tell him that she is a dying star (aren’t all shooting stars dying? don’t all stars flare the brightest, in the end?) he can see it in her already. It’s there in the way she moves, like she’s drowning in the ocean of her own memories, like each step is a fight for survival, a fight for freedom. He knows what the weight of all those memories feels like. To see all those pieces of yourself following after you like a fractured mirror, feeling all those shards of glass shattering under your feet as you walk across them, trying not to let them cut too deep (but they do, they always do.) But sometimes he still wonders what it will do to them, living in their memories instead of dreams; he wonders what it says about a person, to have more nightmares than hopes.
He is not the same Ipomoea who braided a moonflower into her mane as she stepped onto a ship all those months ago. He is harder now, and sharper, like a rose left to grow wild without a gardener to trim away its thorns.
And so, he thinks, is she.
But to feel her kiss against his brow, telling him to make a wish the same way she once told him to be brave —
And to see her shrouded in a thousand fireflies pretending to be miniature stars —
And to feel the ground beneath his hooves turn to glowing stone, like they stood on the moon instead of the shoreline —
He thinks there might still be a part of the Ipomoea who learned how to be brave with her, surviving in one of the deep trenches of his heart. A part of him that remembers what if feels like to dream, and hope, and believe that wishes come true. So he closes his eyes with a sigh, and feels his heart settle into an almost-quiet rhythm that feels as familiar as it does strange. I wish — but there are too many things Ipomoea wants — all of them scarred into his heart with sharp-edged and brightly-colored emotions.
“I was wondering why the night felt so different, like it was celebrating more than the season. Now I understand,” he tells her, and although he doesn’t smile his voice holds a touch of it anyway. “I’m glad you found your way back to us, Isra.”
The fireflies settle around them (as if they’ve forgotten the horses who are still dancing, forgotten how the game works, forgotten that Isra and Ipomoea were not a thing called home). And for a moment when he opens his eyes again, the Rapax looks like a ribbon cut from Vitreus, its surface still and shimmering and as sharp as their memories.
“How many people discovered the sound of freedom, while you were away?” He knows it doesn’t matter if the number was one or one thousand — he knows either would still have been worth it. But still, he asks, and he —
He almost dares to hope.
@isra "speaks" <3
