in the garden
i will die
i will die
H
e is never a king when he comes to the desert. The sand has a habit of eroding it all away like sandpaper erasing features that were not his own (not meant to be, not in the way his birth had dictated). Of grinding him back down to his sun-bleached bones as a reminder, or a lesson, or a return to the hunger he grew up with —Hunger starts in the belly of all things, with a sharp curl eating away from the inside out — but it lives between the teeth of feral things. It clings to the backs of them and leaves the rest of the mouth hollow, and wanting, and waiting. And ready, always it is ready.
He can see that hunger in her smile.
And he can feel it in the way the red dust at their hooves spins itself into coyotes grinning back at her.
They press in silently against him as he follows Amaunet up the canyon path, a sandstorm beneath each step. And he follows the trail of feathers and blood racing along ahead of them like lions. He follows the sound of death, and of life, and survival, and the memories of teryrs screaming over him that night he was left in the desert.
It is not Ipomoea the king who follows her into the almost-blackness of the cave (so much like a tomb.) It is a boy who had, in another life, fought his way back into the tribe instead of being consumed by the sands. To him it is not death he is walking into —
Somewhere his heart is breaking as much as it is being reformed in this moment.
Once he might have left flowers blooming at the mouth of the cave. Today he only lets the shadows of it consume him. As they walk on, he does not look at the girl with violence gilding her wings. His focus has become a sharp thing, a hard thing living on the hush, hush, hush of the creature that does not yet realize it is waiting for them. The red dust muffles the sound of his footsteps as they creep deeper into the cave. Each step stirs a bit more of the gold weighing down in his soul.
There is a part of him that knows this cave, that knows the rhythmic sound of the creature’s breathing that guides him now through the labyrinth. He leans into it, lets it guide him like a wolf to a limping deer. And when he sees the cracked bones lying scattered about the floor, no graves or stones left to remember them by, he feels the stirring becoming a storm in his chest. Slowly, slowly, the beating of it begins to match the beating in the elder teryr’s chest.
In the darkness there is a shadow, deeper and larger than all the rest. Ipomoea can feel its breath warming his face as he edges along the wall of the cave; he can smell the rotten meat clinging between its teeth.
It would be easy enough to steal a white-and-brown barred feather from its back, or haunch, or rib, well enough away from the curved beak that is still stained with blood (even in the darkness, he knows it is there).
But near the head are where the feathers turn russet, almost bloody. And he cannot look away.
@amaunet "speaks" notes
