I P O M O E A
—
I
t is not until the flames are burning low and the moon has sunk below the sea that Ipomoea finds himself alone once again.At first he came only to listen to the vines in the night, to see if their leaves had turned to the same silver spun from light as the flowers in the meadow. He had wanted to know how deep the magic ran, to know if the fireflies from the river would follow him to this place to fill the gaps between the fruit hanging heavy on the branches.
But there are no fireflies or fairy lights pretending to be miniature suns rising over the vineyard. There is only fog curling across the ground and dewdrops glistening on the leaves, and a quiet so profound he can hear his own heart echoing in the night. And beneath it all the magic still hums like something living, something breathing, a creature lying in wait. He can feel it there, as much in him as it is in the earth and in the air.
Everything is still —
Except for him.
His heart feels too heavy to walk quietly between the vines tonight.
His lungs tremble like dying leaves, his wings beat again and again and again like caged birds flying to freedom. With each step he takes the leaves whisper noisily around him, so that when he tilts his head back he can see the stars blinking like eyes above him, watching him. He knows he shouldn’t think of them as ghosts, or as lonely things weeping in a bruise-blue sky, millions of miles apart from one another —
But oh, tonight Ipomoea thinks he understands why some stars fall so quickly from the sky. And the wind that reaches him starts to smell like rotting leaves then, like a world about to once again bare its skeleton to the cold and wintery wind.
As he walks the aisles he wonders if the trees can feel it, too: that other world simmering just below the surface of this one, the ghosts escaping with the mist that hangs low over the ground. Sometimes he liked to imagine there was another tree growing at the ends of their roots, another orchard spun from foggy lights hanging upside down beneath the earth, another Ipomoea wandering like something lost beneath their boughs. Was there music there, too, the same notes lingering like memories on the wind blowing in from the meadow?
And when he lays his cheek against the cordons and leaves unfurl to press against his skin, he thinks he can hear it.
All his magic shivers and drags its teeth against the dirt at the sound of it.
He is all alone and all he can think is how much he would like to bury himself in the earth beneath the grape vines, where the roots twist themselves together and reach for the magic running like a river in the dark. And even when he hears footsteps moving softly at the end of the aisle (soft enough to almost be a ghost, escaping that other-world and wandering this one instead), he does not pull away from the vine.
Ipomoea only closes his eyes, and breathes out memories of blood and petals instead of air.
you have dug your soul out of the dark
do not go back to what buried you
@anyone!
