IPOMOEA
let's be wildflowers
F
or seemingly endless days, he had waited.Waited to see a change within the castle of sand and sandstone. Waited for the silver king to leave the safety of his walls. Waited for the desert to rise up like a wave and take back its home.
Waited for the statue that he had tucked within his pack to breathe again.
But the bird had yet to regain his color, had yet to take to the skies in triumph. And Ipomoea’s anger and sadness alike had yet to abate.
So he watched, and he waited, and he made a trail of flowers that crossed the Mors. Back and forth he went, circling the court until trails of wildflowers hemmed it in like a massive, many-tiered fairy ring. And it was those flowers that whispered to him, the closer he got to the city, of the tragedy that was taking place.
Senna had called him a fool for doing something when other’s wouldn’t; he had told him the food he’d brought to fill the empty stomachs of the starving wouldn’t make a difference. But Ipomoea knew something the red noble did not - only a man who had never gone hungry would think feeding the poor was useless. But Ipomoea knew that it made a difference to each foal that had walked away with a full belly.
Ipomoea had not left. The desert had welcomed him like its old friend, and there he had made the army Senna had mocked him for not having.
They followed within his shadow now, hyenas and coyotes snarling and baring their fangs, gazelles and antelopes and bighorns wielding their horns. Overhead an elder teryr soared, its wings a whisper on the wind. And when it opened its mouth and roared, its voice was Ipomoea’s, brandishing his anger for all the world to see.
A part of him trembled at the sound of it, and for a moment it seemed as likely for the beasts to turn their claws upon him as they were to turn upon the crow walking through the Court. But then the flowers reminded him to be brave, and Ipomoea lifted his head higher. So he walks, and the flowers grow in his wake, and the miles of sand disappear beneath his hooves until, at last, he stands before the city.
He steps past the sand-daubed walls, and through the arched gates. Into the dead and silent city where even the wind feel flat and all the world seemed to hold its breath. It was not long after that he saw the first statue, frozen in the street ahead of him.
Ipomoea hardly dared breathe as he approached it, did not allow himself to recognize it for what it was until he stopped and looked the old man in the eye. Looked into his grey and unseeing eyes. Each strand of hair on his beard was sharp and defined, as if a carver had paid careful attention to it. His eyelashes were short but equally detailed, and the delicate edge of his ear seemed impossibly thin. His head was cast back over his shoulder - and Ipomoea did not need to wonder about the last sight he had seen.
He stood and he stared at the stallion, at what was left of him, and for a moment he was not sure how to feel. He thought, for a second, that he too had been turned to stone - for his heart was nearly as still as the statue’s, and he felt nothing - and it was a struggle to turn his own head and gaze towards the center of the city.
When at last he did, he heard the screams and saw the trees beginning to rise over the tops of the buildings. His heart hardened, and he forced his legs to carry him forward.
Forces himself to remember the old man’s face, and the faces of each additional he passes that stand like sentries in the street, guiding his path. This way, they point with their eyes, each still cast back towards the heart. He forces a little of Bexley’s grim humor into his smile, and a bit of Isra’s cool determination into his stride. When he enters the jungle she’s made the trees embrace him like their old friend, leaning in towards him, draping their vines across his back, and he lets them. He lets them knot themselves into ropes and arrows and sharp, twisted hands, ready to let themselves loose at his command.
“You’ll have to turn me to stone, as well,” he calls out to the basilisk, when he sees the beast there beside the silver man. His voice is strangely calm, masking the sound of his rushing blood.
“Or else I’ll never stop.”
And he stays within the embrace of the jungle, daring the beasts - one of them, both of them - to come and find him.
@Raum @
