we all eat lies
Maybe there was a time, once long ago when he had stood in a forest raining in golden colors and thought only of the warmth of it against his skin, when he did not intimately know the way sand burns in the sunlight. If there was he has forgotten it now, forgotten it as though he had always been a desert-creature raised between these sandstone walls. Now he feels only a grim understanding blossoming in his soul at the whispering of the sand against his skin. He can feel the petals of it tapping against his heart like the wings of a teryr learning how to fly for the first time.
There is something terrible in the feeling of it, in the way it buries down into each of the cracks of his soul.
The sand is still whispering to him when the stranger appears at the end of the canyon (and at first he thinks it only the flowers, only the petals, only the life). And the whispering grows louder, and louder, and louder still instead of fading away into the dust.
The magic is growing teeth like cactus spines and setting them against his throat. When he swallows he can feel them scraping all the way down, can taste the blood and the dust and the rust of it. And he does not smile as the stranger approaches, does not pull away from the sandstone wall that is running now like blood down his shoulder. He only watches the man come closer, and closer, and something in his eyes is begging him to continue walking, to leave him where he stands, to save himself because Ipomoea feels less and less every day like the savior he had once wanted to be —
he doesn’t.
His voices is gentle, and softly wondering, and Ipomoea’s teeth ache because he wants to snarl, and rage, and roar like a lion into the desert (like the lion that had chosen Orestes, Orestes, the man borne of the sea, the man who returned to the sea and left a city broken behind him.) He wants to bare his teeth to the sun and scream at it in a way he has never screamed before — the way he might have, had he stayed in the desert where he was born.
He wants to carve the light from the sun and ask each golden shard of it am I enough now? do you regret it now?
But the sun would not care. And he knows, oh he knows he would not find his retribution in its ichor. He knows in the way that all things born from the desert know that he was owed nothing, deserved nothing, would be given nothing.
He would have to take it, if he wanted it. And he wants it — but he is not sure he wants to want it.
“Your king is missing,” his voice trembles like the last leaf clinging to a birch tree in a storm, “and you wonder if everything is alright?"
Your king, he had said. Not our king. Orestes had never been a king to him, not even when he had pulled the flowers from his mane and pretended to be a citizen wandering the gutted streets of a capitol torn apart by a tyrant and his monster. And he wonders if he will ever start to feel soft again, if he will every smile, really smile, again. He wonders if he will ever look at a stranger of this Court and feel more than distrust rising like an ocean in his chest.
He hopes he will. For the sake of the stranger caught in his wrath.
There is something terrible in the feeling of it, in the way it buries down into each of the cracks of his soul.
The sand is still whispering to him when the stranger appears at the end of the canyon (and at first he thinks it only the flowers, only the petals, only the life). And the whispering grows louder, and louder, and louder still instead of fading away into the dust.
The magic is growing teeth like cactus spines and setting them against his throat. When he swallows he can feel them scraping all the way down, can taste the blood and the dust and the rust of it. And he does not smile as the stranger approaches, does not pull away from the sandstone wall that is running now like blood down his shoulder. He only watches the man come closer, and closer, and something in his eyes is begging him to continue walking, to leave him where he stands, to save himself because Ipomoea feels less and less every day like the savior he had once wanted to be —
he doesn’t.
His voices is gentle, and softly wondering, and Ipomoea’s teeth ache because he wants to snarl, and rage, and roar like a lion into the desert (like the lion that had chosen Orestes, Orestes, the man borne of the sea, the man who returned to the sea and left a city broken behind him.) He wants to bare his teeth to the sun and scream at it in a way he has never screamed before — the way he might have, had he stayed in the desert where he was born.
He wants to carve the light from the sun and ask each golden shard of it am I enough now? do you regret it now?
But the sun would not care. And he knows, oh he knows he would not find his retribution in its ichor. He knows in the way that all things born from the desert know that he was owed nothing, deserved nothing, would be given nothing.
He would have to take it, if he wanted it. And he wants it — but he is not sure he wants to want it.
“Your king is missing,” his voice trembles like the last leaf clinging to a birch tree in a storm, “and you wonder if everything is alright?"
Your king, he had said. Not our king. Orestes had never been a king to him, not even when he had pulled the flowers from his mane and pretended to be a citizen wandering the gutted streets of a capitol torn apart by a tyrant and his monster. And he wonders if he will ever start to feel soft again, if he will every smile, really smile, again. He wonders if he will ever look at a stranger of this Court and feel more than distrust rising like an ocean in his chest.
He hopes he will. For the sake of the stranger caught in his wrath.
not at all! <3 I'm sorry you caught him in a less-than-stellar mood
