O
n the edge of the meadows where the grass turns gently to sand, then waves, then an endless ocean, Ipomoea can still see the stars.The smoke is thinner over here, the wind sweeping it back towards the fires and the forests (and there is a moment when he looks back and sees the glow of them that his heart beats a little bit faster, and he cannot stop asking the tangled map of roots beneath his hooves if the hunger of the flames has stopped being satiated by their offerings yet. And each time, he is relieved when he feels the grass press against his ankles and whisper no. All is yet well.) And when he tilts his head back and sees the stars, and he hears the laughter and cheering in the distance, and he smells the salt of the sea washing the smoke from his face —
it feels like Denocte.
Ipomoea has always felt like his home was both nowhere and everywhere, never in any one place but rather a feeling. He had always thought it was because he was an orphan, because he had been born into a place that neither loved him nor pretended to. The desert was no place for a sick child; the Davke were no place for a boy who would rather plant a garden than water the earth with blood.
But now that he is watching two pieces of his heart meet as if for the first time, as if he is separate from it all, he recognizes that this has only ever been an excuse.
Even when his heart should be singing, and he should be laughing and dancing and looking for hidden messages in the flames, still he leaves them all behind (he is always leaving, he sees that now.) Even when his city is opening up their home still he is looking for it elsewhere. And he can feel every contradiction on his skin tonight, the way he is both smoke and char, sharp and soft, a shadow and a silver-bright flower; a king who feels like he has no home. Ipomoea listens to the waves and he is wondering how many other worlds are out there, and how many of them might feel like home for a day.
He does not know how long he stands there for before the shoregrass presses against him and whispers she is here. And he does not have to ask them who? when he feels the heat of her hooves against the sandy shore.
“Morrighan,” he says quietly, without taking his eyes off of the stars overhead. “You’re a ways from the bonfires.” And he wonders, when he feels her settle beside him, if she has come to the sea for the same reason as he —
an endless garden
