I P O M O E A
—
I
pomoea has always known there were secrets to be found in fire. In the flames, and the smoke, and the scent of incense burning, in herbs tied with wishing string, in the shed star’s silver eyes as they look up, up, up and tell them what the patterns the smoke makes between the stars means.He knows it, because he has felt them. Those same secrets that live in the earth that trembles beneath his hooves, in the flowers that turn to smile at him with pollen faces when he passes. The whispers that come to him at night when he is restless and cannot sleep, of a sleepless unknown that is calling, always calling, in the spaces between his heartbeats.
And Ipomoea is thinking of those secrets in the night-blackness now, of darkness, of shadows thick and consuming. He is thinking of rituals and magic and the sound the earth makes when it thinks no one is left to listen to it crying out.
But he is listening. And he is thinking, always now, of how easy it would be to change the world into a thing where secrets walk in the daylight like mortals walk through a garden.
He likes to imagine the sound of the earth is there in his voice when he answers, petals instead of blades, curls of smoke instead of the bite of the fires flames. “You must not believe in magic then, either,” or dreams, or prayers, or miracles he does not say. But still he wonders if Pravda has ever stopped to listen to the earth and only the earth — if he has ever found secrets buried in the gentle unfurling of a morning glory.
He wonders if he has ever felt that sort of surprise, that awe, in his studies.
Ipomoea tilts his head, pulls a scattering of rose petals from his crown, and tosses them into the flames before he turns to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Pravda. He can hear the demand in the other man’s voice, although he does not say so, and he knows that tonight he’s supposed to be a king (not a ghost looking for the memories of his past life in the flames.) So he lets the smell of the roses turning to ash remind him. He lets the smoke wash over his skin and cling to him like a promise, like he has only ever been a king who loves his Court and not an orphan who is always running, always searching.
He walks between the fires and is not looking into them. He is only looking at the faces of his people illuminated by the flames, searching for the secrets they hold in the corners of their eyes that only the firelight can reveal.
“To show you would take more than one night, and to tell you would take more words than I know.” Ipomoea wants to ask him how the grass feels beneath his hooves, how the smoke tastes between his teeth, if it makes his skin shiver like branches at the end of autumn. Instead all he does is smile with his teeth flashing like bone white flowers opening in the night and say, “if you stay long enough, perhaps I can teach you.”
He almost does not recognize the curl of hope stretching out its wings in his lungs like a butterfly crawling free. It surprises him then to feel it, to hope that Pravda will stay.
And it is that hope that makes him bump one shoulder to the paint’s like a friend welcoming him home, and ask him him, “Where did you come from?”
be a garden of endless flowers
@pravda
