Rhoeas will always recognize another monster before Ipomoea does.
Perhaps it is because he is something of a monster himself — a creature made in magic, pieced together with plants and bones. A half-life, a half-soul, a half-remembered heart that beats in pollen instead of blood. So when he sees the girl, with her haunted eyes and the deepened hollows above them, he bumps his shoulder in warning to Ipomoea’s.
But Ipomoea has never been good at seeing the monsters around him.
The proof of it was in his heart, in his Regime, in his love; it was in the shape of a unicorn who left trails of rot and ash behind her and still, he had invited her into his forest. It was there in the cells below Delumine where Emersyn wallowed in her own transformation. It was there in his daughter’s eyes, perfect though they might seem to him.
If he sees the guilt in Sereia’s eyes as another warning it is lost somewhere in the guilt building up in waves in his own heart. So even when his bonded rakes one antler along the trees he is stepping forward to meet another monster in the meadows.
“I thought maybe I would ask if you have forgotten yet what you wanted to —“ his voice cuts off when she steps back from him. A frown flashes like a shadow across his face.
He could count the spaces between Sereia’s inhales and exhales.
Ipomoea steps forward again, hoping with bated breath that she does not retreat in kind. “Are you well, Sereia?” He thinks he does not need to hear her say it to know the truth of it. But still, he asks. And still, he hopes —
it is the only thing he has left, he thinks.
~
"Speaking."
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