There was a time when all this distance between them would have felt unnatural. A time when he would not have worried about all the things Andras did not say but that he can read now like a book arching across his skin. It was a time when there were more flowers in his blood than rage.
But sometimes he thinks that Ipomoea, the one who bruised as easily as violets, was buried now beneath a mountain of cut-off rose thorns.
He is not sure he will survive them.
So he can almost forgive the look in Andras' eyes, even when the buried parts ot his heart are still screaming we cannot live like this. And he lets that silence between them drag on, broken only by the sound of branches shivering beneath their veils of ice. The holly reaches out for him in all that space, leaves brushing against his check. And he tries to keep the storm out of his eyes when he turns to his warden.
He does not tell Andras and tell him that he doesn't need to worry, that he is going to become enough of a monster so that he won't have to.
Because there is still a court that he needs to wake up, and the monster hiding in his closet is only a reminder that there are more monsters out there, always there are more. Isra had told him so, when she ended a war only to go out and find the next one. He had not understood then, but now —
Now, when he should be fine but isn't, now he knows why.
And when he says, “We can't go back to who we were before,” it sounds like, I told you there was a storm coming. “We can only move on." And that too feels like a desert flower dying beneath the weight of all the frost of a hungry winter.
He wants to tell him that it's okay to be angry, that he can turn that anger into a sword and cut out his own boredom, his own pain, his own fear with it. He wants to tell him that it would make them more similar if he did. But in the end he only steps closer and brushes their shoulders together like the promise he does not know how to speak.
"It would seem there's an open sent on the Council now," he says when he goes back to his work. Bits of broken leaves and branches fall at their feet like tears. "Do you want it?"
It almost sounds like a joke, like the laughter he has forgotten how to make. But it's not.
But sometimes he thinks that Ipomoea, the one who bruised as easily as violets, was buried now beneath a mountain of cut-off rose thorns.
He is not sure he will survive them.
So he can almost forgive the look in Andras' eyes, even when the buried parts ot his heart are still screaming we cannot live like this. And he lets that silence between them drag on, broken only by the sound of branches shivering beneath their veils of ice. The holly reaches out for him in all that space, leaves brushing against his check. And he tries to keep the storm out of his eyes when he turns to his warden.
He does not tell Andras and tell him that he doesn't need to worry, that he is going to become enough of a monster so that he won't have to.
Because there is still a court that he needs to wake up, and the monster hiding in his closet is only a reminder that there are more monsters out there, always there are more. Isra had told him so, when she ended a war only to go out and find the next one. He had not understood then, but now —
Now, when he should be fine but isn't, now he knows why.
And when he says, “We can't go back to who we were before,” it sounds like, I told you there was a storm coming. “We can only move on." And that too feels like a desert flower dying beneath the weight of all the frost of a hungry winter.
He wants to tell him that it's okay to be angry, that he can turn that anger into a sword and cut out his own boredom, his own pain, his own fear with it. He wants to tell him that it would make them more similar if he did. But in the end he only steps closer and brushes their shoulders together like the promise he does not know how to speak.
"It would seem there's an open sent on the Council now," he says when he goes back to his work. Bits of broken leaves and branches fall at their feet like tears. "Do you want it?"
It almost sounds like a joke, like the laughter he has forgotten how to make. But it's not.
@
”here am i!“
