my heart is so full of flowers
At first Ipomoea came to the towers only to see the patterns the tulips made, planted in their rows so far below him. To see how the world looked, in the way the steeple, or the bird, or a god looking down might see it. He came to remember.
His footsteps sound like hollow things on the staircase and, for once, there are no flowers blooming beneath his hooves. Mice gather in his shadow but only stare as he passes. Dust lining the steps stirs but does not rise, or form itself into shapes, or breathe as a living thing might. It all settles in his wake, and falls to silence as it watches him climb. And the silence, too, feels like remembering.
Remembering when he had raced through this very castle as a boy, coaxing a songbird to fly on its mended wings. And the gentle press of a cool cloth to his fevered forehead, and the quiet of the gardens where he rested. Remembering girls with winter in their hearts, and pegasi with flower petals in their hair, and boys whose dreams flew higher than their wings could take them.
The climb feels endless.
The remembering seems to go on forever.
It feels like a lifetime ago, when he had come here for the first time as a boy. But sometimes when he feels the rattle of his lungs, or listens to the creaking of his bonded’s ribs, or sees a black-crested bird flitting from branch to branch — sometimes he slips away into his memories.
And now each step is like a memory as he climbs. He is loosing himself in them, loosing himself in the endlessness of it, in the spiral of the stairs as they wind up, and up, and up. Part of him wants to turn back, to return to the earth and all its sand and soil and flowers, where he can fill the empty spaces in his chest with all their whispers. In his bones he can feel the call of it — the way the tether wrapped around his heart grows tighter and tighter with every step.
He almost listens to it. But as the staircase spirals on he sees a boy draped in gold and forest browns. And it is the ache of his memories, and the familiar unfamiliarity of the wildling boy’s face, that have him stepping forward to fill the emptiness with company.
“Are you going up?” he asks. His hooves still sound hollow on the stone staircase. Sand glitters like gold dust, forming into small mice and sparrows that collapse nearly as soon as they are formed (his magic feels so weighted here, too heavy to move, so far from the earth).
But he smiles despite it (despite himself.)
@
