even after they have been stepped on
He is not sure when he became a man of memories, staring down into a silver pool like he was watching his life play out before him.
There, in the corner: he can see the dunes rolling, shifting. And that leaf drifting across the surface is him in another life, another form, another aimless trek. All the ripples, all the reflections are nothing more than the garden’s way of reminding him that it will continue on long after he is gone. Even now, with the path overgrown and the reeds tangling together with the water lilies, forgotten by all but the two of them — how long had it sat here, unnoticed, unloved? How long since the first gardener had carved the pond into existence? How long since they had died? And still it was here, tangled and wild and very much alive nonetheless.
His smile is sad when she speaks. He should feel sorry for that — for the truth of her words, for not knowing her and so many others who called him their king. There are so many things Ipomoea is sorry for, and he adds this to the end of the list. One day, he was sure, retribution would come knocking at his door.
But today — tonight — there are only secrets in the garden.
“Aren’t we?" Alone?
The wind whispers across the water, sends a new course of ripples shivering across its surface. He watches her, with his eyes turned to silver and melancholy in the moonlight, and wonders again who she is to know whether the loneliness was real or imaginary. Someone wiser than him, it would seem.
So when he sighs, he adds his voice like he has never been anything more than another whisper of a flower’s petals. “Did the quiet wake you, too? Or have you come looking” for me “for the garden’s secrets?”
@Mesnyi
"Speaking."
