the war of flowers blooming
Ipomoea is following that silver-blood river as it flows up, up, up into the heart of the city. He lets it lead him past the other horses filling their bellies with it, and he does not stop to tell them that it will do nothing for their thirst, or their hunger, or their hearts. He can feel the truth of it resting like a stone at the bottom of him, while his lungs tremble and his steps echo on the bone-bright floors. And still he walks on, and the further he goes into the the labyrinth of the city stretched out like a carcass before him, the more he begins to wonder.
He wonders how the river is not raging. How it flows so gently past the weeping walls and the screaming ones, and does not stop but for death.
And he wonders how the horses can stand there, smiling and drinking, and never stop to wonder what it is they are drinking from, or why it runs so thick, and hot, and lurid like a vein.
Maybe that is all it is.
There is a moment where he wonders if he cuts the artery in enough places, if it would be enough for the island to bleed out. If the island would collapse like a mortal, bones and muscles and organs trembling for want of blood. Nothing that lives, lives forever — and the island, he knows, is living. The truth of it is there in the silver water that fills them up and only waters the root of their craving to grow from sprout to flower.
It’s there in the weeping walls, that spill out their blood like tears if only to hide the screaming of the walls beneath them.
But he is not a unicorn with blades made to tear out the island’s veins. And so he only follows it, all the way up, and up, and up to the weeping wall where it begins. And there is where he finds his daughter, carving out the sobbing and the screaming like its sorrow is her own.
The island’s blood is warm when he steps into its river at last, and reaches for her. “Danaë." Her name is a whisper beneath the weeping of the wall, but still he steps deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the sorrow until he can touch her cheek as gently as a butterfly against a flower.
He does not ask her what she is doing (he already knows — the same way he knows that if he had a horn, he would bury it into the wall beside her’s.) Instead he only sighs, and listens to the island crying out all around them. There is a story to be found in its sorrow, and in its rage — if only they learned its language.
“Why do you think the walls are so sad?” he asks her. And again he starts to wonder —
He wonders how the river is not raging. How it flows so gently past the weeping walls and the screaming ones, and does not stop but for death.
And he wonders how the horses can stand there, smiling and drinking, and never stop to wonder what it is they are drinking from, or why it runs so thick, and hot, and lurid like a vein.
Maybe that is all it is.
There is a moment where he wonders if he cuts the artery in enough places, if it would be enough for the island to bleed out. If the island would collapse like a mortal, bones and muscles and organs trembling for want of blood. Nothing that lives, lives forever — and the island, he knows, is living. The truth of it is there in the silver water that fills them up and only waters the root of their craving to grow from sprout to flower.
It’s there in the weeping walls, that spill out their blood like tears if only to hide the screaming of the walls beneath them.
But he is not a unicorn with blades made to tear out the island’s veins. And so he only follows it, all the way up, and up, and up to the weeping wall where it begins. And there is where he finds his daughter, carving out the sobbing and the screaming like its sorrow is her own.
The island’s blood is warm when he steps into its river at last, and reaches for her. “Danaë." Her name is a whisper beneath the weeping of the wall, but still he steps deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the sorrow until he can touch her cheek as gently as a butterfly against a flower.
He does not ask her what she is doing (he already knows — the same way he knows that if he had a horn, he would bury it into the wall beside her’s.) Instead he only sighs, and listens to the island crying out all around them. There is a story to be found in its sorrow, and in its rage — if only they learned its language.
“Why do you think the walls are so sad?” he asks her. And again he starts to wonder —
