It feels strange to step into the meadow, after wandering the forest for so long.
It seems to him as if he blinked and then winter were over, and spring were gone, and had taken summer along with it. As if the flowers had only bloomed for a weekend, and he were too busy to tell them of their beauty. It was the first spring he had gone so long without seeing them. One day the trees were unfurling their fresh, green leaves after a winter that had seemed like it might have gone on forever; but then the next day they were already trading in their verdant robes for ones of red and gold. Ipomoea was afraid that tomorrow he might wake up and find only a forest full of skeletons again.
A unicorn had told him once that seeing the first spring flower each year made the whole winter worth it. But he had wasted his spring away as if it had never happened, and now winter knocked on his door again.
So he steps away from the forest at last, and when he comes upon the first light-flower that looks more like a star belonging to the night sky, he makes a wish upon it. And as he lowers his face to the flower, close enough to brush his cheek against its unfurled petals, it sings a promise back to him. For the first time in what feels like far too long of a time, Ipomoea smiles.
He follows the trail cut into the tall-summer grass, and for once does not wonder where it might lead him. He is not thinking of blood and bones when he comes upon the cherry wine sitting in a goblet - nor is he thinking of baptism or communion when he pours from the wine and washes his throat with it. All around him the lights are shining brightly enough to chase away the worst of the shadows, and both the forest and winter seem far enough away to be a dream tonight. With each step he takes that leads him deeper into Illuster, deeper into the light-flowers that laugh in the wind and tickle his sides, with each step not-star he lowers his muzzle upon he sheds another worry.
And soon enough, the flame inside of Ipomoea’s heart is beginning to swell again. After so long of it flickering and stuttering and nearly putting itself out, he almost doesn’t recognize the feel of it.
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
Spring ends, Summer ends, and with the coming of Fall, borders are splayed wide. Fear that was so heavy from martyrs and tyrants, spread through poachers and death, dissipates as the festivities and breath of Autumn enters into every Court across all of Novus. When the ships return bearing Isra and her resurrected people, returning Michael to her side, and Asterion rises from the grave, Moira turns away from it all, if only for a week or two.
The Emissary knows she should stay within her own court, but she travels North. Quiet and slow is her journey while Neerja stays within the walls of Denocte, telling her beloved, strange cub of all she misses. The phoenix does not falter, does not stray from her path, her journey. She has been to Dusk and she has been to Day, and now, Moira once more journeys into the reopened arms of Delumine. When she comes it is dark and fragrant, but something calls, somewhere sings. There is a humming over the fields, a light soft as her stars and just as bright. Like a mirror of the moon, the Illuster Meadow smiles, twinkling with pale, glowing flowers.
It is the cosmos come to earth.
From petals she plucks the stardust, lets it shimmer before her. Golden eyes light up, light up as they have not in months, and she feels laughter, feels wonder inside of her soul. It bubbles like a quiet brook, barely a trickle when there is a draught, but opening back up when the storm seasons come. It tickles her ribs, lightly running feather-soft fingers over her spine, slipping gently into her hair to massage her neck. She does not realize she is smiling until her cheeks ache from it, she does not realize there is laughter dappling the flowers, her laughter, and tears upon her cheeks until she hears it, feels their moisture.
There is release that is taking over and the Tonnerre girl is totally unprepared. For a moment, two, three, countless more, she stands there simply marveling that she can still laugh, can still smile. Something about the magic in the air, the light on the ground, the feeling that she's walking in space, it all makes her giddy, makes her softer.
Moira always meets him softly with something of love on her mind. He always finds her unexpectedly in the strangest of ways. On a beach with a tiger trailing them and determination in her heart. Now, in a field of flowers with his noise pressed into stardust and serenity filling his face. Slowly, she leans her dark nose down, gently pressing their cheeks together as she dips her lips to brush against the petals and say hello.
With a murmur of breath she says "Hello again, Ipomoea." Again, she reaches within herself and pulls light from the petals. She sprinkles it along the man's dark face until he shines like the not-stars that pull away his worries, too. "You haven't changed much."
He feels warm, despite the cool autumn evening. He feels warm, like the first thaw of spring, ice slipping away from pine needles like so many tears being dried. He feels warm, whether from the wine or the magic or the simple joy of greeting an old friend — maybe it’s all of them, or something else entirely. Maybe it is only his heart relearning a song it hasn’t sung the notes to in years.
When Moira presses her dark cheek to his he smiles, and he presses back into her. “Hello again, Moira,” he echoes her, as stardust stains their lips and collects on their eyelashes. Every time he blinks he sees silver, and stars, and wishes all falling together in the meadow.
He wants to tell her he has, he has — in more ways than he can count. He wants to ask if she can feel how hollow his chest is, how each heartbeat echoes in all that empty space. He wants to peel back his ribs and show her the scars — from the cuts he’s made, from the sacrifices, from the violence of others. Oh, if he could he would show her all the things that have happened since he last saw here, starting with that morning in the desert and ending in a small cottage sitting at the edge of this very meadow. It’s all there, right on the tip of his tongue, begging, slipping —
But tonight is not the place for sharing nightmares and terrors.
So he swallows it down, all those knives and thorns and blood. And he smiles, and he says nothing of the bits of bone buried somewhere here in the meadow (and the bodies he thinks the flowers might be growing from.) Let tonight be for making wishes, he breathes onto the flowers. They shiver in response, dance beneath his breath. And Ipomoea wonders if the magic that had turned them to silver spun from light contained the power to grant wishes to orphans.
“And you look as radiant as ever,” he tells her when he looks up at last. “I’m glad to see you here.”
He runs his muzzle down her shoulder, leaves a mark of silver shimmering alongside the softly-glowing stars of her skin. “I should have known I’d find a little bit of Denocte here in Delumine tonight. It suits you, Moira, the lights.” And the happiness, he does not say — but oh it’s reflected there in his eyes already.
you, like Rome, were built on ashes, and you, like a phoenix, know how to rise and resurrect
◦ ☄ ◦
Silence is ripe, a fat plum waiting for her to bite into, juices already seeping from the top, splitting the sides until it's near rotten. And she does bite after its spell grows thin, when webs are cleared, when his eyes are made up of stardust replacing those storms. Her lips peel apart like a song, pale teeth flashing as lightning in the sky instead of a girl on the ground, and there is a smile on her face that he has not (nor has she) seen for ages and ages. Stardust tickles his lashes, making his eyes glow brighter, inhumanly so, and she cannot help but run phantom hands along his brow, painting a crown, painting a story in light, until he is resplendent and decked in the glory of the heavens come to earth.
She would stay here an age if she could, staring at him like this. Of course, she's only just arrived, so she wonders who's to say that she can't? Only their breaths are between them, their breaths and their thoughts that dance like lovers. His of growth and death and macabre tales she would curl next to him to hear if only he would tell. Ipomoea is a man of secrets, he wears them well and they make him heavy, make him mortal. Hers are of a song long forgotten, a home and a love that was her first (oh, and she would be her last, wouldn't she? it was always destined. always). Moira was always half realist half dreamer, and tonight her head is stuck in the clouds.
"I would never turn down a chance to see you," she confides with that same glowing smile. Warmth unfurls like a lotus where his lips press to her skin, painting her in the silver she always wished she wore more than the red of her. It shimmers, mockingly, next to the white of her neck, the same white that dapples her left wing. Tonight, she decides, it is alright to let that go. It is alright to be red in a world washed with white. Like a blood-red stain upon the meadow, Moira stands out as a sore thumb. Only when her back sparkles, twinkling as merrily as her eyes, does she start to look a part of Ipomoea's flowers. She winks at him then, sharing a secret that only the two of them know, his conspirator, his secret keeper.
When she leans close, when her wing is a caress along his spine, covering him, holding him near, she speaks more softly than before. Tonight, she would be his song, she would be his melody. Tonight, she would unburden his heart if he would let her - he'd done the same for her with no price to ask, no favors in return.
That is what a friend would do, isn't it?
Golden eyes are cast forward, they do not look up as she speaks, but the gravity is there. Like two planets orbiting one another, she pulls him in again and again. "Are you well?" Are you truly alright? she inquires because even the stardust shining on his lashes and upon his brow cannot hide the weariness that paints darker circles under his luminous eyes.
@'ipomoea' | "Speaking." | this took forever to get back to you, thank you for waiting ! <3
Every silver streak he paints across her skin is a priomise, and every glowing flower that opens as he passes to lay moonlit pollen against his ankles a reminder. All this time Ipomoea has been counting the people he has lost — and he has spent so long looking for them in the faces of those who were still here, he had forgotten to be counting those who were left.
It feels like it was only yesterday that he was returning home with a desert wind at his back and sand filling the chambers of his heart. He had learned something about himself, there in the desert; and he had learned something about what bravery meant, and honor, and the difference between right and wrong, and all the things they were supposed to teach you as a kid.
He wonders now how different things might have been, if he had had parents to tell him so. He wonders if the flowers and the forest might not have gone silent, when he first invited not one monster, but several, all the ones that lived inside of him and surrounded him, all the ones he had invited to make their homes inside of him. They haunt him still, when he looks back and thinks of all the monsters he had not recognized, and the perilous what if’s come creeping in to sow doubt. Questions that make him forget he learned how to be brave once, shooting arrows at a willow tree and pretending it was a basilisk.
And yet, none of that seems to matter anymore when Moira confides in him with a glowing smile. And that is reminder enough that she is here — that they both are here, together, and tonight, oh tonight that is all he needs. So he leans into the press of her skin to his, wraps himself in her embrace like he is not a star but a wish.
He does not tell her that he hasn’t been sleeping — but he knows she can see it anyway, in the way she searches the depths of the shadows beneath his eyes. Ipomoea hopes she can not see the way they cut down to his soul when he smiles, and presses his lips to her cheek. “Sleepless nights are only a part of the job.” And they are, he tells himself, they are — because how else is he supposed to care for his city, and his people, and his forest?
Again he finds himself choking down the nightmares. Again he stops himself before he can say I’m afraid I’ve spent so long hunting monsters I might be becoming one. Again he smiles as he leads her through the patterns carved through a field of silver poppies.
Because once Ipomoea had learned how to fall on his sword to save others the point of it, and he has not yet learned how to stop.
”I think we all needed this festival of lights. The world has only felt darker and darker since —“ he knows he doesn’t need to finish for her to know (she was there, on the island, in the burning markets, in the war against Raum.) ”Sometimes I wonder how we are supposed to move on from it all.”
