༄
—
M
ovement. Everyone is in motion, dancing with friends, jumping through a blaze, laughing, cajoling, reaching out to a new court with new faces. There are eyes that are unsure and insecure, suspicion rooted in the heart of them, but still they come when their sovereign does. Ipomoea leads his people to a sea of light and fire under the stars and presses them like petals into the pages of people. They are a swarm of parasites leeching off another court - each seeks to gain something it didn’t have before. Whoever said they could not have symbiotic relationships must never have known about nature and relationships.
Or relationships at all.
Some work.
Some don’t.
His own laughter is bright, tinkling. Golden eyes gleam with everything but the truth as they dance with the people. Tall. Small. Wide. Thin. It matters not here, not on this eve of celebration and renewal of strength.
Iron must first be burned and hammered before it is cooled, forged in the belly of a beast before it can bite them back.
And a beast rises. Leather wings drop them to the earth. Golden feet take them to a fire. A skull is all anyone would see. Alecto has seen the face of death and did not fear it. He does not fear the reaper now as he approaches.
With an offering of a glass of cider, he stands beside the fallen giant. Quiet. Observant. “You and I, we are made of the same skins.” He breathes the words into the world and they become truth. Every bead of sweat from the heat of the fire is another grain of history being made. There, the one who wears the charts of Alecto’s skin lies quiet and small. There, the one who is the night come alive is a giant to the other being.
There, they are simply alive.
and in the sagging of your skin and sloughing of your voice, i found redemption, i found a choice
