we’re trapped in a garden of endless flowers
Beyond the light of the party, beyond the sandstone walls and the crystal glasses and the music that sounds like endings instead of beginnings, there is the desert. And that desert is violent, and wild, and calls to his heart in a way the forests and the flowers never will. There is a part of him that wants to turn to the darkness waiting for him between the dunes, to lose himself in the endless raging miles of it instead of watching a hundred people pretending they are only dancing and not just trying to feel alive.
There is grit between his teeth. And cactus spines wedged into his hooves. And his heart is slowly gathering sand like an hourglass, like he’s one second away from being buried alive.
It feels like a prophecy being fulfilled, every time he steps back into the desert.
But Thana is here, and that is enough to draw him into a palace he has no desire (no right) to be in. And his daughters, with their perfect, still-fragile skin that barely holds back their immortality and magic are snarling like wolves in the corner of his vision when he presses his cheek to her’s. And if he listens long enough to hear the way his heart leaps violently at every discordant note the music makes (like a crescendo for his daughters’ hunger-notes), it is lost in the feel of her skin against his own.
He leans into it, into her, and the song that exists only when they are together. Flowers that are blooming and wilting. Leaves unfurling and reshaping like flesh and form. Hearts that have been starved of touch and then given it back all at once, in colors and nerve-endings and hunger.
Everything else feels like a river running swiftly away beside it. And Ipomoea, who has learned to wilt and bloom and rise and fall at the same time, is letting it carry him.
“And they are perfect,” he murmurs when she widens the distance between them. And instead of closing it, or turning as she turns at the sound of horns tapping against horns, he only watches the way the light plays against her jaw, and turns the violet of her violent eyes almost-golden when she turns to look at their daughters.
There was a time when he might have run from the killing-look in her eyes. But that was a time when he had tried all winter long to save a garden of roses (and at the end of it had had only one left, that had gone grey and bent in its sorrow of being the last one to die). A time when he had feared the way his heart beat violently each time he turned to the desert, before he remembered that his dreams had only ever been chasing and being chased by it.
Now he knows that same look lives buried beneath the petals and the roots of his own heart.
He reaches out then to trace the light along her shoulder with his muzzle, and he forgets all about shifting sands and rotten leaves. There is only the press of life closing in around death (or is it the other way around? He’s never sure, when he’s with her, which of the two is winning — if either is winning at all), both in the touch that exists between them and in the look in his daughter’s eyes as they close like young gods around a mortal.
And through it all is his heart, speeding up and slowing down, skipping and leaping and trembling like flowers in a storm, unsure if their roots are deep enough to withstand the wind. "I know him," he whispers against his skin, and all he hears is the tap, tap, tapping of horns against one another.
And he knows if there is anyone in the room who should be afraid tonight, it is Vercingtorix.
But still his heart lurches when a ruby-red horn spirals down one as dark as night.
"wilting // blooming"
@thana
There is grit between his teeth. And cactus spines wedged into his hooves. And his heart is slowly gathering sand like an hourglass, like he’s one second away from being buried alive.
It feels like a prophecy being fulfilled, every time he steps back into the desert.
But Thana is here, and that is enough to draw him into a palace he has no desire (no right) to be in. And his daughters, with their perfect, still-fragile skin that barely holds back their immortality and magic are snarling like wolves in the corner of his vision when he presses his cheek to her’s. And if he listens long enough to hear the way his heart leaps violently at every discordant note the music makes (like a crescendo for his daughters’ hunger-notes), it is lost in the feel of her skin against his own.
He leans into it, into her, and the song that exists only when they are together. Flowers that are blooming and wilting. Leaves unfurling and reshaping like flesh and form. Hearts that have been starved of touch and then given it back all at once, in colors and nerve-endings and hunger.
Everything else feels like a river running swiftly away beside it. And Ipomoea, who has learned to wilt and bloom and rise and fall at the same time, is letting it carry him.
“And they are perfect,” he murmurs when she widens the distance between them. And instead of closing it, or turning as she turns at the sound of horns tapping against horns, he only watches the way the light plays against her jaw, and turns the violet of her violent eyes almost-golden when she turns to look at their daughters.
There was a time when he might have run from the killing-look in her eyes. But that was a time when he had tried all winter long to save a garden of roses (and at the end of it had had only one left, that had gone grey and bent in its sorrow of being the last one to die). A time when he had feared the way his heart beat violently each time he turned to the desert, before he remembered that his dreams had only ever been chasing and being chased by it.
Now he knows that same look lives buried beneath the petals and the roots of his own heart.
He reaches out then to trace the light along her shoulder with his muzzle, and he forgets all about shifting sands and rotten leaves. There is only the press of life closing in around death (or is it the other way around? He’s never sure, when he’s with her, which of the two is winning — if either is winning at all), both in the touch that exists between them and in the look in his daughter’s eyes as they close like young gods around a mortal.
And through it all is his heart, speeding up and slowing down, skipping and leaping and trembling like flowers in a storm, unsure if their roots are deep enough to withstand the wind. "I know him," he whispers against his skin, and all he hears is the tap, tap, tapping of horns against one another.
And he knows if there is anyone in the room who should be afraid tonight, it is Vercingtorix.
But still his heart lurches when a ruby-red horn spirals down one as dark as night.
@thana
