Somewhere, buried deep within the folds of his heart where two magics tangle together like the roots of two trees meeting in the forest, some part of him is turning an ear into the darkness to listen.
Somewhere, buried deep in the forest where the roots crawl like snakes across the earth and the evergreen trees block the sunlight from view, there was a thing calling out to him in heartbeats instead of words. He could feel it creeping into his chest, setting teeth against those that held him back from it — to the court, to his love, to the parts of him that looked at the sunrise each morning and dared to hope. And when it echoes in the birdsong above him he trembles, and nearly turns to go to it.
He takes one step in its direction, and sees Andras’ heavy eyes. His eyes search the darkness and he sees something moving, like the movement he has seen in the darkness of the cells beneath Delumine’s floorboards. Over his shoulder are all the people he loves, watching him go.
So he rights himself on the trail after Elena. And he runs.
He runs with the dim forest light dappled like a cloak over his back, listening to the bright and lively whispers of the spring forest, reading the signs and sounds written in leaves and footsteps the way another might read a book. A flash of green moss growing from the scar of a tree (a scar a unicorn’s horn tore into it.) The trickle of water running in the secret places, hollows collecting the snowmelt from the mountains. The soft buds of new life hidden overhead, protected from the world that knows only how to take and take until life ceases.
(that is the way of the wild — to freeze the water in the streams to prevent it from running to the sea; to drive the sap from the tree hearts until they crumble; to conquer and beat down anything that stands in offence to it. To take until all that is left — is Thana.)
So he runs. And he lets all of the life of the forest run wild in his footsteps, replacing every fallen sapling and wildflower that would never awaken from their winter slumber.
Only when Elena rises on two legs before him does he stop, sliding into a rear that spins around her in kind (like they are dancing, he thinks, the sort of dance that defies the Wild creeping in.) And he thinks in another life it might have been the two of them dancing together in this forest; in a life where there were no unicorns in the wood, and no desert that whispered to him late at night.
“It’s not ridiculous,” he breathes into her neck. “Do you not believe in ghosts? I do. I've seen them.” Ipomoea knows the ghosts in one’s mind (in their hearts) were just as real as those haunting places like his woods. Perhaps those memories were the more dangerous of the two.
He leans against her as he catches his breath, listening to her whisper against him, to the trees laughing quietly around them in the song of birds and squirrels and a forest coming awake. For a moment it is all that he hears, all that he sees, all that he feels —
he did not know he needed this but oh, he did.
But always (always) the call returns. And his eyes turn to that other world hiding on the horizon (that other-him, who he might have become in another life) when he feels the sand setting teeth to his ribs again like a monster begging for escape. His breath is a sigh that is as much as home in the sounds of the forest. “I am thinking I was a fool once to not believe in fate.”
Even now he can feel it creeping along in wake of him, reaching out to drag claws down his back, to drag him back to where he belongs. “Do you believe in fate, Elena? Or destiny? Do we have a choice even when it feels as though there is none?"
Once he might have said yes, yes, yes — there was always a way. But now, with the thing gnawing on his ribs and the call echoed to him in every wisp of wind, all of it whispering that same language —
oh, now he is not so sure.
Somewhere, buried deep in the forest where the roots crawl like snakes across the earth and the evergreen trees block the sunlight from view, there was a thing calling out to him in heartbeats instead of words. He could feel it creeping into his chest, setting teeth against those that held him back from it — to the court, to his love, to the parts of him that looked at the sunrise each morning and dared to hope. And when it echoes in the birdsong above him he trembles, and nearly turns to go to it.
He takes one step in its direction, and sees Andras’ heavy eyes. His eyes search the darkness and he sees something moving, like the movement he has seen in the darkness of the cells beneath Delumine’s floorboards. Over his shoulder are all the people he loves, watching him go.
So he rights himself on the trail after Elena. And he runs.
He runs with the dim forest light dappled like a cloak over his back, listening to the bright and lively whispers of the spring forest, reading the signs and sounds written in leaves and footsteps the way another might read a book. A flash of green moss growing from the scar of a tree (a scar a unicorn’s horn tore into it.) The trickle of water running in the secret places, hollows collecting the snowmelt from the mountains. The soft buds of new life hidden overhead, protected from the world that knows only how to take and take until life ceases.
(that is the way of the wild — to freeze the water in the streams to prevent it from running to the sea; to drive the sap from the tree hearts until they crumble; to conquer and beat down anything that stands in offence to it. To take until all that is left — is Thana.)
So he runs. And he lets all of the life of the forest run wild in his footsteps, replacing every fallen sapling and wildflower that would never awaken from their winter slumber.
Only when Elena rises on two legs before him does he stop, sliding into a rear that spins around her in kind (like they are dancing, he thinks, the sort of dance that defies the Wild creeping in.) And he thinks in another life it might have been the two of them dancing together in this forest; in a life where there were no unicorns in the wood, and no desert that whispered to him late at night.
“It’s not ridiculous,” he breathes into her neck. “Do you not believe in ghosts? I do. I've seen them.” Ipomoea knows the ghosts in one’s mind (in their hearts) were just as real as those haunting places like his woods. Perhaps those memories were the more dangerous of the two.
He leans against her as he catches his breath, listening to her whisper against him, to the trees laughing quietly around them in the song of birds and squirrels and a forest coming awake. For a moment it is all that he hears, all that he sees, all that he feels —
he did not know he needed this but oh, he did.
But always (always) the call returns. And his eyes turn to that other world hiding on the horizon (that other-him, who he might have become in another life) when he feels the sand setting teeth to his ribs again like a monster begging for escape. His breath is a sigh that is as much as home in the sounds of the forest. “I am thinking I was a fool once to not believe in fate.”
Even now he can feel it creeping along in wake of him, reaching out to drag claws down his back, to drag him back to where he belongs. “Do you believe in fate, Elena? Or destiny? Do we have a choice even when it feels as though there is none?"
Once he might have said yes, yes, yes — there was always a way. But now, with the thing gnawing on his ribs and the call echoed to him in every wisp of wind, all of it whispering that same language —
oh, now he is not so sure.
@
”rooting / rotting“
