[AW] but to be fearless in facing them,

[Ipomoea]

in the garden
i will die

A

memory leads him to the canyon. It sits there like a seed caught fast between his teeth, waiting to root or rot. And for the first time, Ipomoea is not sure which it will do.

He can hear the echo of it when he presses his shoulder to the canyon wall and feels the red dust beginning to tremble beneath his skin. And it’s there in the cry of the elder teryr as it passes overhead, reaching out with one wing to trace the canyon it passes through. 



Ipomoea only stands taller when its shadow passes overhead, and lifts his face to the sand that rains down over him. And with each grain of sand that peppers his face, he remembers —

he remembers the burn of the desert against his cheek, when trial after trial saw him knocked into the sand. And he remembers the feral faces of the other Davke children, smiling as they returned from their hunts (hunts he was not permitted on, not anymore, not after he was branded as weak.) His brother had brought him back a knife once, the jawbone of a coyote carved into a blade. He had pretended to not see the teeth adorning its handle.

But most of all, he remembers the sand.

And it is because of this that he recognizes her when the desert lavender shivers and tells him she is here — it is the way things borne of the desert will always recognize others who come from it. Ipomoea does not need to pretend anymore that there is anything besides teeth waiting for him when he turns to climb the paths cutting through the canyons. For a moment he just looks at her hoofprints, for a moment he knows it is not too late to turn back. What does he know, after-all, about these feral games?



But he knows how to burn now, and there is that new-magic rich in his veins begging him to find the depths of it. And he has learned how to be as thin as a the shadows stretching between each blood-red wall, and just as unyielding. Once, he had known the sound a coyote makes when it joins its pack in the hunt and today he will relearn it.

It is what the desert, and the magic, and the rage that still crashes like thunder against his ribs demands of him.

Maybe that is why when he sees her and steps onto the narrow path with her, all he does is nod and look ahead to the place the elder teryr had made its roost. And his heart settles into the song the desert had never sung for him —

not until now.

@amaunet "speaks" notes

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