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I P O M O E A
He was still looking at the painting—as if Ipomoea thought by staring at it long enough and intensely enough, he could convince the oils to tell him their secrets, the story by which they were made and arranged so aesthetically. It was a silly notion, and a naive one: paintings couldn’t talk, nor could their painter once he had passed away and gone. But like a child, Ipomoea still wished—and sometimes, pretended—they could. It was his imagination he could thank for such things, borne in the desert when he’d spent more time indoors, sick and daydreaming, than outside playing with the other foals. It occupied his mind when his body was so often sick, for with it even his studies of Delumine history could not be called dull, so rampant did his mind run. He could spend hours alone in his room still, daydreaming about the life a famous colonel might have led, or imagining a world as a flower saw it, slow and steady, dependent upon the sun and the warmth and the rain. Days often went by unnoticed when he forgot to keep track of them, Ipomoea becoming so immersed in his readings and fantasies that he became oblivious to the passing of the sun. Not that he was alone in his musings; the entirety of Delumine seemed content to do the same, slumbering away in far off worlds within their books and their stories. It was only on trips like these, when he left the walls of his home, that he realized time had not stopped for the rest of Novus. Truly, it seemed the equines of Dawn were the only ones not caught up in some grand love affair or insidious plot. They were of a slower breed than those of the hot deserts of Solterra or the passionate fires of Denocte, flames that had caught hold even of Terrastella. He could taste change in the wind here, far from home; but Ipomoea knew better. The winds would someday turn north. Delumine could not stay out of it all forever. The thickly carpeted floors absorbed the sounds around him, so that the corridor he found himself in was strangely muffled and quiet. He didn’t hear the footsteps of someone approaching; he only heard her voice, speaking so softly and so near to him. His knees locked, head lifting a few inches in surprise as he turned towards the unexpected disturbance. But her appearance flooding his eyes calmed him, the worry washing away from his bones and muscles as he relaxed back into his stance. “Yes, it is me,” he greeted, voice equally soft. And just like that, his heavy, somber thoughts from a moment before were gone, and he was lost in the girl with the baby blue eyes and the red rose tucked in her hair. He wasn’t about to question why she was here—that was what Delumine about, wasn’t it? Going out into the world for the sake of learning more, being more? Although truly, the entire Court had seemed to do poorly at that in recent years, the Emissary was no exception—he would only be thankful that fate had put them in this room full of paintings together. His mouth opened to say so, to let her know in too many words that he was happy, quite happy, to meet her in these strangest of places, but it wasn’t his voice that filled the room. One far deeper and far more commanding overshadowed his own, stealing both his words and her attention. A strange emotion—jealousy? no, there was no resentment within him—tipped his lips into a frown, fleeting as it was across his lips. He hid it, tilting his flowered crown in respect to the Night King as he entered. “With a style like his, it would deserve to be shown to the entire world,” he agreed, his voice hushed as if they stood in a library, rather than an art gallery—drastically different from the commanding voice of Reichenbach. Old habits died hard. “There’s so many to choose a favorite from… you seem to have built yourself up quite the collection, your Majesty.” His scarlet eyes followed Reich’s, traveling around the small room as it inspected each framed piece, a full circle made before settling back on Ixion’s. A shiver trickled like ice water down his spine, raising hairs in its wake. With his eyes stubbornly held on the backdrop of stars and galaxies, Ipomoea dared, like he never had before, to question the King. “Or maybe he just hadn’t seen enough?” His mouth shut soon after, clipping the end of his sentence short, but it was done. He couldn’t take the words back, nor would he have wanted to. Subtly, he stole a glance at the gypsy man, but the attention was no longer on him. He breathed an internal sigh of relief. But one ear still tilted in the Night King’s direction, carefully soaking up his interaction with Messalina. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much; he hardly knew the pale-skinned dancer, having met her only a handful of times before. The feeling was foreign to him, he couldn’t place it: so it stayed, big and ugly and intrusive at the front of his mind, as if taunting him. ’There’s just something different about her.’ Drawing himself up, he made himself turn back, ruby red eyes searching for her sky blue ones across the room. Now wasn’t the time to hide behind his hair and flowers; the feelings weighing heavily on his mind (and heart?) told him to be bold. And he resolved to listen to it. @messalina @reichenbach ahh this will be fun <3 also po what u doing man |
neverrmind art
