we all eat lies
The desert was calling.
He can hear it even here in the forest, where the branches muffle the sounds of the sand shifting in the distance and spring blooms in every shade of green. And between the petals of every wild flower that rises up on trembling stalks, he sees the grains of sand shining golden and bright. When he closes his eyes he can still see it, lying like an ever-tightening noose around his soul.
Even here in his burgeoning garden the desert has followed him. Even here with his magic growing roots like anchors, he cannot escape the desert forever. His heart may be a garden now but the desert was in his blood — it would always be in his blood.
For hours he stands there in a clearing listening to it. His flowers wrap themselves about his ankles in braids of color. Stay, they beg in tomes of pollen and paper-soft touches, do not leave us. But they are not enough, not today, not with every chamber of his heart filling with sand and magic like an hourglass running out of space. Not when the song that moves in blood instead of words only grows, and grows, and grows, it grows a dozen mouths and each of them set to gnawing at the forest of his ribs.
He does not remembering leaving them there, petals folding in upon themselves and crumbling without him beneath the weight of all that golden sand. Ipomoea only remembers looking up, and up, and up at the walls of the canyon opening like jaws reaching for the throat of the sky. And he remembers pressing his nose down to the trail of whispers racing along ahead of him like sacred daturas unfurling for him.
Golden poppies and carmine paintbrushes bloom against his skin when he leans his shoulder into the red sandstone walls. And they tell him the truth of it: the king that disappeared into the night, the golden sovereign who loved the sea too much to forget it. And oh, oh —
oh! How his magic rages because of it!
How it turns into a feral thing and grows thorns, and nettles, and teeth that it rakes through the bloody dust of the canyon. If he stopped then to look back at the desert flowers he would see the way they cowered before him now, the way the spaces between them were being filled with weeds and cactus.
But it is another magic that is echoing in his bones like a war-cry when the dust at his hooves begins to tremble. And every drop of that magic, every terrible mile of it blooming in cactus spines down his neck, all of it echoes that call of the desert. It's all tumbleweeds and chalcedony, the echoes of old death and agony and wounds re-opened. In it he can feel something in his heart breaking, and something deeper, something harder, rising up to fill the cracks of it. The sand filling up his heart makes him want to roar, and snarl, and lay his teeth against all of that death and pain until it submits.
He does not want to recognize this part of himself but oh, he does. It is the part of him that never left the desert, that never had a chance to grow soft.
And he wonders now if Orestes had ever known this anger, this feeling of being so close to death; he wonders it it would have been enough to make him stay and break the cycle of kings and queens who were not enough.
He wonders if this is why the desert has called for him.
He can hear it even here in the forest, where the branches muffle the sounds of the sand shifting in the distance and spring blooms in every shade of green. And between the petals of every wild flower that rises up on trembling stalks, he sees the grains of sand shining golden and bright. When he closes his eyes he can still see it, lying like an ever-tightening noose around his soul.
Even here in his burgeoning garden the desert has followed him. Even here with his magic growing roots like anchors, he cannot escape the desert forever. His heart may be a garden now but the desert was in his blood — it would always be in his blood.
For hours he stands there in a clearing listening to it. His flowers wrap themselves about his ankles in braids of color. Stay, they beg in tomes of pollen and paper-soft touches, do not leave us. But they are not enough, not today, not with every chamber of his heart filling with sand and magic like an hourglass running out of space. Not when the song that moves in blood instead of words only grows, and grows, and grows, it grows a dozen mouths and each of them set to gnawing at the forest of his ribs.
He does not remembering leaving them there, petals folding in upon themselves and crumbling without him beneath the weight of all that golden sand. Ipomoea only remembers looking up, and up, and up at the walls of the canyon opening like jaws reaching for the throat of the sky. And he remembers pressing his nose down to the trail of whispers racing along ahead of him like sacred daturas unfurling for him.
Golden poppies and carmine paintbrushes bloom against his skin when he leans his shoulder into the red sandstone walls. And they tell him the truth of it: the king that disappeared into the night, the golden sovereign who loved the sea too much to forget it. And oh, oh —
oh! How his magic rages because of it!
How it turns into a feral thing and grows thorns, and nettles, and teeth that it rakes through the bloody dust of the canyon. If he stopped then to look back at the desert flowers he would see the way they cowered before him now, the way the spaces between them were being filled with weeds and cactus.
But it is another magic that is echoing in his bones like a war-cry when the dust at his hooves begins to tremble. And every drop of that magic, every terrible mile of it blooming in cactus spines down his neck, all of it echoes that call of the desert. It's all tumbleweeds and chalcedony, the echoes of old death and agony and wounds re-opened. In it he can feel something in his heart breaking, and something deeper, something harder, rising up to fill the cracks of it. The sand filling up his heart makes him want to roar, and snarl, and lay his teeth against all of that death and pain until it submits.
He does not want to recognize this part of himself but oh, he does. It is the part of him that never left the desert, that never had a chance to grow soft.
And he wonders now if Orestes had ever known this anger, this feeling of being so close to death; he wonders it it would have been enough to make him stay and break the cycle of kings and queens who were not enough.
He wonders if this is why the desert has called for him.
