even after they have been stepped on
Ipomoea is thinking of the desert when he looks at Orestes. And he is thinking of all the ways he knows the dunes more clearly than their king from the sea does, and how he recognizes the buried agony that the Last Prince had not been there to witness.
But he had been.
And perhaps that chip is only a bit of bone broken off from his rib, or his jaw, or his femur. Maybe it is the part of him that wakes at night and looks east (always, he is looking east) and wonders if he was the Sovereign of the wrong Court. Perhaps it is the part of him that never learned how to leave the desert behind that looks at Orestes now and rages at the way he cannot leave the sea behind, either.
Maybe, it is because he sees the similarities between them that has him hunting to find the differences, to find all the ways to hate a king to settle that dark pit growing in his heart day, by day, by day.
But when the tour ends and he bids the foreign Sovereign a good day, all the promises they make feel like so many dead leaves tearing themselves from their winter branches.
"Speaking."
