even after they have been stepped on
If there’s any peace in the quiet the snow has created across the field, Ipomoea does not feel it. He misses the brightness of spring, the melody of birdsong drifting from the tree line, the whistle of wind as it weaves through the wheatgrass and the poppies. The white is blinding; the silence is deafening; and Ipomoea picks his way gingerly as if he’s afraid that at any moment the ice beneath his hooves will snap, and the cold will swallow him.
But he tries not to think of that, as the cold seeps into his hooves and snow clings to his fetlocks. Ipomoea tries to think only of the map Emersyn had drawn out for them, with its red dots and red x’s breaking up the green of the treetops. He memorized it upon the first time seeing it, and while the thought of adding more to it makes him sick -
- He knows there is no other choice, if they hope to resolve the mystery once and for all.
Perhaps Maerys had been right, perhaps there was more they could be doing. But if there was an easy answer, Ipomoea and his regime had yet to find it.
“No,” he tells her, and although his voice is little more than a whisper it seems impossibly loud beneath the quiet of the trees. Ipomoea casts his eyes towards the canopy, catching a glimpse of Maerys’ dragon through the interlocked branches. Shrugging his shoulders, he continues. “The snow hasn’t helped - it covers any tracks we may find, and who knows what else may be buried beneath it.”
Although he wouldn’t admit to it, sometimes he wondered what the ground they were walking over during the patrols looked like. Was it bloody, covered in bits of feathers and flesh that had been hurriedly cleaned up? Were they following the tracks of a poacher without realizing it, stepping into his very hoof prints? The thought sent a shiver crawling down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold.
He looks sideways at her, as they trudge side by side through the snow. “We’ll find something soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow - but with all of us looking, they won’t be getting away so easily as they think.” And he tries not to let the word soon sound so final, like even considering the words will somehow create another pit filled with discarded parts and red, so much red.
@Maerys
