He wonders what it would be like, to be a shooting star upon which people cast their wishes. Was it the dreams they carried that made them burn so bright, that had them soaring through silent skies while all the others only watched?
He supposes, in the end, that being a king is not so different.
Every day he walks among his people, and every day he listens to their hopes, their worries, their fears and their joys. Every day he feels a little less like Ipomoea and a little more like a thing upon which others rest their lives like hats on a coatrack. Every day he sinks a little further, a little deeper, a little harder, and when he listens to the winter wind tapping out a rhythm of branches and snow against his window, it sounds only like come home.
I am home, he had told it one night, as he watched an owl glide through the stars. And the words had felt like a lie long before they left his lips.
The island is not home, but it feels close enough to pretend. It feels like magic, like dreams that know how to make themselves come true instead of relying on the stars that fell dead to the earth. It feels like a world in which he can remake himself over and over and over again, as many times as it sinks into the sea and drowns its own bridges, only to let a new one surface in its wake. It feels like almost-violence, and almost-softness, and that twilight place between shadow and soul that he has come to love.
It feels like a unicorn whose horn sits more like a weapon than a thing of beauty. It feels like a flower girl with a knife by which to tear worlds apart.
It feels like an orphan who has learned that a home is wherever he chooses to be.
“Florentine.” Her name is a sigh on his lips, and he wonders when he started to sound more like winter than spring (when he looks back he thinks it must have happened over time, slipping a little more into it with every bloody bone and dead-star he found buried in the snow.) But his eyes, oh his eyes still know how to smile even when his lips have forgotten.
There are a thousand questions begging for space on his tongue (where have you been? why were you gone so long? did you find a flower for my daughters while you were away, like you promised once?). But none of them feel very important when he leans into her touch and says instead, “Better than I was, now that a friend is here. I am glad to see you.” And even when he has forgotten how to say how glad, and why, his eyes are speaking it all for her.
The snow is still falling gently, slowly, into the waves, onto their backs, frosting over his flowers and the mirrors. Winter lives inside of him as much as on the island now, with the hungry waves reaching out for it. ”The island was a field of galaxies before this. There were so many colors, and stars, and to walk among them was the closest thing to flying I’ve ever known.” He is not watching the snow fall when he brushes the tears from her eyes, and braids flowers into her mane to replace the petals that have grown impossibly cold.
”Will you tell me what it is like?” He has never asked her before. And when his wings begin to tremble at his ankles and open and close, open and close, the way he’s seen a hundred thousand birds do before —
He wonders how he was never brave enough before.
He supposes, in the end, that being a king is not so different.
Every day he walks among his people, and every day he listens to their hopes, their worries, their fears and their joys. Every day he feels a little less like Ipomoea and a little more like a thing upon which others rest their lives like hats on a coatrack. Every day he sinks a little further, a little deeper, a little harder, and when he listens to the winter wind tapping out a rhythm of branches and snow against his window, it sounds only like come home.
I am home, he had told it one night, as he watched an owl glide through the stars. And the words had felt like a lie long before they left his lips.
The island is not home, but it feels close enough to pretend. It feels like magic, like dreams that know how to make themselves come true instead of relying on the stars that fell dead to the earth. It feels like a world in which he can remake himself over and over and over again, as many times as it sinks into the sea and drowns its own bridges, only to let a new one surface in its wake. It feels like almost-violence, and almost-softness, and that twilight place between shadow and soul that he has come to love.
It feels like a unicorn whose horn sits more like a weapon than a thing of beauty. It feels like a flower girl with a knife by which to tear worlds apart.
It feels like an orphan who has learned that a home is wherever he chooses to be.
“Florentine.” Her name is a sigh on his lips, and he wonders when he started to sound more like winter than spring (when he looks back he thinks it must have happened over time, slipping a little more into it with every bloody bone and dead-star he found buried in the snow.) But his eyes, oh his eyes still know how to smile even when his lips have forgotten.
There are a thousand questions begging for space on his tongue (where have you been? why were you gone so long? did you find a flower for my daughters while you were away, like you promised once?). But none of them feel very important when he leans into her touch and says instead, “Better than I was, now that a friend is here. I am glad to see you.” And even when he has forgotten how to say how glad, and why, his eyes are speaking it all for her.
The snow is still falling gently, slowly, into the waves, onto their backs, frosting over his flowers and the mirrors. Winter lives inside of him as much as on the island now, with the hungry waves reaching out for it. ”The island was a field of galaxies before this. There were so many colors, and stars, and to walk among them was the closest thing to flying I’ve ever known.” He is not watching the snow fall when he brushes the tears from her eyes, and braids flowers into her mane to replace the petals that have grown impossibly cold.
”Will you tell me what it is like?” He has never asked her before. And when his wings begin to tremble at his ankles and open and close, open and close, the way he’s seen a hundred thousand birds do before —
He wonders how he was never brave enough before.
@
rising // blooming
