even after they have been stepped on
A part of him - the selfish, bitter part of him that he liked to blame on his desert blood, the part of him that was still new and hungry - wondered at how the forest could come awake beneath her hooves, and not his. She who was not native to this wood or this world, she who’s magic was still just beginning to sprout when his was - had been - approaching its peak. And his heart is growing more and more discontent the longer he stands in the grove, wishing for all the world that he could sort out his troubles on his own.
Because she doesn’t understand why the trees had gone silent - not only for him, but for almost all of Novus for months and months. Or that the rot was not a parasite or a disease, but a unicorn weaving between their trunks and leaving dust in her footsteps, a unicorn he had invited into the Court (and whom he could never make himself ask to leave, even if he knew it was best for the trees.) Callynite did not know that there was no one on the Regime who was blameless, least of all himself.
The trees had gone to sleep for the winter. And Ipomoea had been afraid to wake them back up.
It still leaves a bitter taste on his tongue.
It had not been all that long ago that he had stood beside a lake made of glass and told himself to be brave, be brave. Or when he had walked the length of a strange island looking for gods, and hunted monsters (and men) in the sand dunes of Solterra. And for a while, he had been brave. Brave enough to return home and dare to tell his sovereign that he would be the new king, that he would be the one to awaken the Court. But something had changed, if not the moment he first crossed the border back into Delumine, then surely when he looked Somnus in the eye and failed to say all the things he had wanted to. That was the first time Ipomoea had caved since trying to be brave, and his first failure; but it had not been the last.
And now as Callynite becomes a part of the forest and he listens to her gradually changing voice, he finds himself unable to meet her vacant gaze and looks up towards the canopy instead. He can’t help but compare it to the way the forest would speak to him - her voice is too flat, like it’s not her own; her expression is too blank, like she is only a conduit for which energy to flow, and not a part of any conversation going on.
Her magic is not the same as his. And the selfish part of him wants to smile at knowing so.
He doesn’t correct her as she speaks; Ipomoea only listens quietly, and waits. And when she finally pulls away from her magic and trembles like a dying leaf caught in a tempest, Ipomoea comes forward and offers her his shoulder for strength.
“Death,” he says at last. “All they are trying to fight is death, like all of us are.” First it had been the fires; then a monster; now there was more death, and rot, and fear, and the citizens of the court were not the only ones who were tired of it.
He has to fight back the urge to leave then and there, to return to stalking the forest like the only way to defeat death was to become it himself. The shadows between the trees are calling his name, and it’s with no small effort that he shifts his gaze back to Callynite.
”But for now, the best way we can protect anything is to find whoever is still killing between the trees. The animals are as important to Viride as the trees, and each death only weakens the magic and the forest forest.” This, he is sure, she can understand; surely she’s felt it in the energy already. His eyes and his voice are steady now when he holds her gaze, and says, ”And I intend to walk every inch of this forest until I am sure there is no one left to try to destroy it.”
He can feel the branches shuddering overhead, and the roots twisting beneath the ground. And a part of his heart is still breaking for it, even while the other part is racing at the prospect of a hunt, the two halves at odds with one another. ”Will you do the same?”
@Callynite
"Speaking."
