in the garden
i will die
i will die
H
is heart is still pounding in his ears. It consumes him now; the beat of the sand, of the desert, of life that is coursing through him. And as he settles into the rhythm of it, he does not stop to think of the way that it moves differently here than it does in the forests (but oh, it does. It is more violent here, more reckless.)The desert had always had a way of making him feel more alive.
In his teeth is the feather, and in his heart is the song he should have learned in his youth but is only now beginning to sing. And that is enough to make him forget that he is supposed to be a king of flowers, of a court a world away, of anything. He is no king here — and Ipomoea cannot find it in himself to mourn the death of a crown. It had never meant to him what it did to others.
But in the sound of her wings snapping open, and the air filling them with a sigh, there is that same song of life. He lifts his head over his shoulder as she takes to the air, and for the first time he smiles. He smiles around the feather in his teeth, and it is perhaps a wild smile; a smile that belongs not to the king of Delumine, but to an orphan of the desert.
That smile does not fade when the teryr comes rushing out of the cave with a war cry on its lips. That smile turns to knives in his chest when every bit of his magic rises to meet the challenge echoing over the canyon walls.
Ipomoea turns back to the canyon path at a reckless speed. But for every misstep the earth is there to forgive him; it fills in his path for him, widens the narrow cut in the sandstone, smooths the way. It cleaves a hollow into the wall to shelter him like a mother holding her child close.
When the adrenaline fades from his blood he will feel the fatigue setting in, on his long walk home. But for now he only feels the glorious rush of it as he races down the ever-widening path that leads him to the bottom.
But when he looks over his shoulder and sees the teryr throwing itself into the sky after the Davke woman, he only sends his mourning doves after her. And until his hold on his magic slips they swarm around its sides, before its eyes, between its teeth — and when at last they collapse, it is only to turn back to grains of sand that pepper the teryr’s eyes.
By the time they do he is at the bottom, sheltered by the earthen walls.
@amaunet "speaks" notes
