Every silver streak he paints across her skin is a priomise, and every glowing flower that opens as he passes to lay moonlit pollen against his ankles a reminder. All this time Ipomoea has been counting the people he has lost — and he has spent so long looking for them in the faces of those who were still here, he had forgotten to be counting those who were left.
It feels like it was only yesterday that he was returning home with a desert wind at his back and sand filling the chambers of his heart. He had learned something about himself, there in the desert; and he had learned something about what bravery meant, and honor, and the difference between right and wrong, and all the things they were supposed to teach you as a kid.
He wonders now how different things might have been, if he had had parents to tell him so. He wonders if the flowers and the forest might not have gone silent, when he first invited not one monster, but several, all the ones that lived inside of him and surrounded him, all the ones he had invited to make their homes inside of him. They haunt him still, when he looks back and thinks of all the monsters he had not recognized, and the perilous what if’s come creeping in to sow doubt. Questions that make him forget he learned how to be brave once, shooting arrows at a willow tree and pretending it was a basilisk.
And yet, none of that seems to matter anymore when Moira confides in him with a glowing smile. And that is reminder enough that she is here — that they both are here, together, and tonight, oh tonight that is all he needs. So he leans into the press of her skin to his, wraps himself in her embrace like he is not a star but a wish.
He does not tell her that he hasn’t been sleeping — but he knows she can see it anyway, in the way she searches the depths of the shadows beneath his eyes. Ipomoea hopes she can not see the way they cut down to his soul when he smiles, and presses his lips to her cheek. “Sleepless nights are only a part of the job.” And they are, he tells himself, they are — because how else is he supposed to care for his city, and his people, and his forest?
Again he finds himself choking down the nightmares. Again he stops himself before he can say I’m afraid I’ve spent so long hunting monsters I might be becoming one. Again he smiles as he leads her through the patterns carved through a field of silver poppies.
Because once Ipomoea had learned how to fall on his sword to save others the point of it, and he has not yet learned how to stop.
”I think we all needed this festival of lights. The world has only felt darker and darker since —“ he knows he doesn’t need to finish for her to know (she was there, on the island, in the burning markets, in the war against Raum.) ”Sometimes I wonder how we are supposed to move on from it all.”
It feels like it was only yesterday that he was returning home with a desert wind at his back and sand filling the chambers of his heart. He had learned something about himself, there in the desert; and he had learned something about what bravery meant, and honor, and the difference between right and wrong, and all the things they were supposed to teach you as a kid.
He wonders now how different things might have been, if he had had parents to tell him so. He wonders if the flowers and the forest might not have gone silent, when he first invited not one monster, but several, all the ones that lived inside of him and surrounded him, all the ones he had invited to make their homes inside of him. They haunt him still, when he looks back and thinks of all the monsters he had not recognized, and the perilous what if’s come creeping in to sow doubt. Questions that make him forget he learned how to be brave once, shooting arrows at a willow tree and pretending it was a basilisk.
And yet, none of that seems to matter anymore when Moira confides in him with a glowing smile. And that is reminder enough that she is here — that they both are here, together, and tonight, oh tonight that is all he needs. So he leans into the press of her skin to his, wraps himself in her embrace like he is not a star but a wish.
He does not tell her that he hasn’t been sleeping — but he knows she can see it anyway, in the way she searches the depths of the shadows beneath his eyes. Ipomoea hopes she can not see the way they cut down to his soul when he smiles, and presses his lips to her cheek. “Sleepless nights are only a part of the job.” And they are, he tells himself, they are — because how else is he supposed to care for his city, and his people, and his forest?
Again he finds himself choking down the nightmares. Again he stops himself before he can say I’m afraid I’ve spent so long hunting monsters I might be becoming one. Again he smiles as he leads her through the patterns carved through a field of silver poppies.
Because once Ipomoea had learned how to fall on his sword to save others the point of it, and he has not yet learned how to stop.
”I think we all needed this festival of lights. The world has only felt darker and darker since —“ he knows he doesn’t need to finish for her to know (she was there, on the island, in the burning markets, in the war against Raum.) ”Sometimes I wonder how we are supposed to move on from it all.”
@
”here am i!“
