you are the poem wildflowers write to spring
He does not see the smile that curls like a budding flower against Asterion’s lips — he is not looking. His eyes are turned to the statues, to the darting hare and the sly fox stalking after it, both their eyes ablaze with lantern light, each line of their face carved so delicately, so expressively. He does not see the look written like poetry in Asterion’s eyes when he is looking into the eyes of all those statues, staring back at him —but he hears it all in his voice.
He closes his eyes against it with a sigh, feeling his heart tremble beneath his ribs. His wings flutter in kind, wrapping themselves around his fetlocks in an embrace that does little to keep the chill of the night at bay — and even less to keep out the chill of his own thoughts.
Sometimes he wonders if it would have been different, had he not left for Denocte and for Solterra. Had he not come back with a dagger he was ready to point at his own king’s — his own friend’s — throat. Sometimes Ipomoea lies awake at night (surrounded by walls that do not feel like a home, but like a thief keeping a bed that was not his own warm), and he wonders how things had become so crooked. It was the war, he told himself once, the war had made him into someone else.
But he knows that is not true. It was only the war that had showed him who he truly was.
And somedays, he was not sure he liked who that was.
He is quiet for a moment, letting the flickering lantern-light fill the spaces between them. And then — “Will you walk with me a while?” Ipomoea is not so sure he would like to be alone tonight, not with the thoughts that press in like wolves around his heart.
But there is a hint of that childlike youth still in his voice when he turns to the bay and nudges a smile into his side. “They say it’s easy to wander into the spirits’ world tonight by mistake, if you don’t have a friend to pull you back from it. And,” this part he adds quietly, with sincerity, “I would like to hear about the things you’ve seen while you were gone — if you would like to share them with me.”
Around them the night grows colder, and the shadows longer, and the flames burn lower on their wicks. But the firelight finds them still, and the warm and golden glow is enough to make him almost forget that he feels half a ghost already.
@asterion “speech”
