The stag looks how he would imagine perfidy to look, were it made into flesh and then given legs to walk across the earth with.
Ipomoea sits with his back to an aspen and stares, cherry red eyes watching as the creature ambles back and forth between the trees. And as Rhoeas turns to him now with eyes that are more akin to bloody rubles than poppy flowers, it strikes him:
He had betrayed the forest when he let death weave her way through the heart of Delumine. He had betrayed his country when he took for himself a crown that was not meant for him. And now he had betrayed his own bonded when he had replaced him for another. And he had refused to allow him to die — so now, it seemed, his magic was determined to live on in him as a reminder.
Spring had arrived haltingly, cautiously; like a timid bluebird, he thought, watching as the same bird flit nervously around its tree. Once he had thought he heard love songs in their singing; now he hears only their territorial cries. But he tries, oh he tries to see the lightness of them, of their songs and laughter and life. Ipomoea tries to see only the way the light is breaking through the canopy, and the leaves seem to brighten and lean towards its warmth.
He tries to not keep glancing into the shadows. And wondering how much deeper they might go.
But spring is not the time for reminiscing on the darkness.
So he is following Rhoeas through the gentler parts of the forest, where new saplings are stretching tall and thin to fill the gaps between their parents and wildflowers create a blanket of color for them to stand upon. All the trees hang over his head in crowns of budding leaves and new growth. Moss drapes itself like a verdant wreath about his shoulders, a cloak over his bonded’s bones. The earth turns to poppies gilded in gold and grasses braiding themselves into patterns and shapes. A sod ship bumps itself against the shore of his legs. A fox kit chases after it when it turns and sails through the clearing.
Ipomoea watches them go. And in his chest his heart has grown legs and is galloping along beside them. Stride after stride it slips through the saplings of his rib bones and frees itself. Step after step it chases that freedom through the forest, through the gold-and-green dappled light. And he is left there watching, bleeding magic instead of blood, and wonder instead of violence, and love instead of rage.
Wonder crosses his mind in the flicker of a shadow, how long it might be until the river of his love dries up.
But the shadow is gone when he sees the familiar shape moving through the trees, a pale figure among the colors of his spring-forest. And he is moving towards it, towards her, even before he has decided to go.
“Sereia?” he calls her name out softly.
~
"Speaking."
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