I P O M O E A
—
E
ven here, even in the middle of winter in a world that only knows how to take, and take, and take without care for who it takes from, his flowers still grow.Ice covers their petals like a veil, weighing down their crowns until they bend on their long stalks to kiss the ground. He wonders, as he watches them stiffen and grow still, as the ice spreads higher and higher so that they look more like crystal sculptures than living plants, if the snow is preserving them, or killing them. And for a moment, he can’t help but think that there is no difference between the two.
He almost hadn’t come — it feels almost wrong, standing in the snow and the cold and knowing this was not the court frozen in a young winter that called him king. When he looks towards the horizon he imagines the forests creeping up the edge of the Armas are his forests, the ones that run endlessly in shadows and dappled light. If he closes his eyes he can still see the sunlight slanting in between the leaves, limning saplings in a gold so bright it hurt his eyes to look at. And he can still see the flowers that bloom red and bright, even knowing they were asleep under blankets of snow.
When he opens his eyes he sees it all, as clearly as if he were standing in that spring meadow.
But then it drains away, fading bit by bit until the snow bleeds back through. And when the flowers shiver against his ankles and chant welcome home through his mind, he forgets the memory entirely.
The sky was changing by the time he walked into the Court, deepening at the call of twilight. On one side the blue expanse was nearly black, and the first stars began to shy reveal themselves. On the other end the horizon exploded with color, and the retreating sun drew golden threads across each of the clouds. The bonfire smoke cleanses him as he walks through it, changes him —
it makes his heart beat in time with the music drifting through the streets.
It makes the streets feel like home again, it fills the empty spaces between all the cracks in his soul. Each time he inhales his lungs fill with lavender and sandalwood, and there is an almost-music crying out in his veins like so many blackbirds taking flight, and oh how he strains to catch the music with his heart and relearn the beats of it. He wants to be the dancers in the streets, the fearless ones who paint their bodies with stories and hopes and look to the stars when they have a dream aching in their bones —
He wants, he wants, he wants —
He wants to be a part of Denocte.
That orphan-song is aching in his chest when he watches them. That part of him who does not want to be a king, but looks through the crowds searching, searching —
at first, he is searching for Isra, turning their dreams into reality. But she is not their queen anymore (not in title). Their new queen, with her warhammer and warpaint and warsong echoing in her veins, is not in the streets with them.
Still he searches. And he aches. And he wants. And his magic is a tidal wave in his chest that does not know how to be gentle, not anymore. He is too sharp, too jagged, to look at their fires and not feel his own fire rising bright and hot in his veins. His own dreams are still too raw to not turn the seeds in the earth to flowers when he walks over them.
Once, they had a queen who would do the same.
Now, he is not so sure.
you have dug your soul out of the dark
do not go back to what buried you
@morrighan
