I'M JUST THE PRODUCT OF A LIVING HELL and i don't want to live like this anymore
He’s been in the Dawn Court for nearly a year now, he realizes when the snow begins to fall outside. Raum has been vanquished by the very monster he had made, and Day Court had become considerably safer to return to -- except he stays within the halls of the library, tucks himself next to Sam at night, skulks about the shadows and watches the fox-like staff go about their days like this has become a home to him.
Has this become a home? He doesn’t know -- what makes a place a home? He knows that should Sam move on, he would follow -- and yet, he thinks he might miss the quiet peace of an early dawn, the way the birds have begun to flock to him whenever he ventures out to the courtyard.
Some of them have gone missing, recently, the ones that look like flying jewels with their bright feathers. Perhaps they had begun to migrate? It seemed rather late for that, however.
He shifts in the padded windowsill, his legs tucked neatly beneath him, and rests his head against the side of the window as he turns the page of the book he’s reading. It’s a short book, likely meant for children still learning to read, and yet he still struggles to recognize some of the words found between the pages.
Before, he might have grown frustrated, or perhaps even bored, flinging the book away to go find entertainment in the form of a fight. Now, he simply sighs, taking a brief moment to admire the way his breath fogs up the window before continuing with the task of teaching himself to read.
He’s grown accustomed to wandering the library by himself. Each corridor is familiar to him, from a time when he had spent day after day after day combing the books on Delumine’s history, its culture, its relationship with the other courts… When he had been a boy but also an Emissary, a foreigner charged with representing the Dawn to each of the other countries.
Sometimes he wonders what Kasil had been thinking, by selecting him. And then he inevitably wonders how he had become a Regent, and then a Sovereign; or what life would have been like had he stayed Emissary, or what it would be like had he never become an Emissary at all -
- It was a rabbit hole of thinking, one that could keep him occupied for hours when he had far more important, far more pressing thoughts to focus on.
Sunlight is slanting in through the windowsill, casting a long shadow in the likeness of the stallion across the floor. It was the same windowsill Ipomoea himself had been heading to and - lost within his own thoughts so that he had nearly walked all the way up to the padded seat before realizing it was already occupied - only now does he stop, arching his neck to look at the reclined stallion.
“Oh - hello,” he says clumsily, taking a step back. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
I'M JUST THE PRODUCT OF A LIVING HELL and i don't want to live like this anymore
At first, he doesn’t pay any mind to the stallion approaching him -- not until the person approaching gets close enough to breach his bubble of personal space, however. His eyes lift from the page, teeth already beginning to bare towards the stranger, and he cannot help the way every line of his body screams his discomfort, screams for the stranger to back off out of his space.
“Clearly,” He grumbles at the stallion’s apology, one leg shifting to rest on the pages of the book -- perhaps hiding that the book was meant for a mere foal just learning to read, perhaps simply to keep the book open, and he shifts his body so that his good eye can be focused wholly towards the stranger.
(The boy with the strange wings on his feet is unmarred except for the ivory splashes across his pelt, and the outcast cannot help but wonder what the younger stallion might see when he looks at him -- he, who wears scars across much of his neck, he who bore the sharp mark of talons over where an eye should have developed, he who will never be able to wash the blood from his hands.
He wonders if the boy can see the monster inside him, gnawing at his ribs.)
“You’re the king, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be paying more attention to where you walk?”
(Truthfully, the only reason he knows this is the king is because there aren’t many horses walking around with wings on their feet and flowers in their hair. He isn’t even entirely sure where he’d picked up that information from.)
For just a moment, all Ipomoea can do is stop and stare at the stallion.
A frown creases his face, and he has to shake his head (as if to shake water or cotton from his ears, because surely Mathias was not speaking as quietly as it sounded to him) before the words and the tone they were spoken in begin to process. And then, before he can stop himself or question the retort, he answers.
”Most people pay attention for me,” he says quickly, and only after does he stop to think how defensive it might sound. He was rarely the one to need to move around others - even walking down the hallway, or the gardens, or the courtyard, people tended to move before he had a chance to do so himself.
He smiles, more to himself than to Mathias, realizing how accustomed he’s grown to it. The smile quickly turns apologetic,
”But you’re right. Please, call me Po.” He steps forward then, this time deliberately, affably, trying not to peer down at the book the stallion holds beside him but unable to help himself.
”Who are you?”
He draws his eyes slowly upwards, trying to pretend he doesn’t see the rigidity in the stallion’s eyes. Trying to pretend that seeing it doesn’t make his own stomach begin to turn, and the monster in his own chest begins to growl.
