It's been fun spending a little more time in Terrastella. The Dawn soldier guy and I went through here on the way home in the Fall, but I don't feel like I truly was able to experience it. I think I still like Delumine more, but there are still special things about this place too. For one, I can tell why they might like the dusk so much as I watch the sun set and paint all different colors across the sky. It's so pretty, especially when looking out at the cliffs.
I've been enjoying this tulip festival that Tenebrae and Bram brought me to. Shadow Man and I put together a flower crown for me to wear, which sits on my head now. It has all different colored tulips woven into it that it reminds me of a rainbow. It keeps shifting and covering my eyes a little though, so I have to adjust it sometimes. I think it looks good on me (better than phoenix flames, I think, although I still appreciate Leo's painting).
I left Tenebrae behind to walk around for a little while. I felt bad with him being blind and all, but he was with some others he knew so it seemed he'd be okay while Bram and I go. The timber wolf hasn't left my side since we got here, but I don't blame him. The island did a number on all of us. I still notice him limping when he thinks I'm not looking and I feel sorry for him. Him and Momma got attacked pretty bad trying to save me.
Anyway, there are better things for me to be thinking about. I keep trying to stop my brain from going back to those darker moments (my nightmares do enough to remind me of it anyway), so I focus now on the field of tulips. I pick a bright yellow flower that's fully bloomed and tuck it behind Bram's ear. I know it probably won't stay there long and I can't help but giggle as I look at him. He looks adorable, although his expression clearly shows his disapproval. Honestly, it just makes me laugh more.
Suddenly, his ears perk up and he's looking straight past me. I follow his gaze and notice a red fox sniffing around in the flowers. At first, I don't move because I've never seen one before. It's so pretty looking with its amber colored coat and fluffy tail. I wonder if it's come for the festival too?
Then I bound over to it, smiling ever so brightly, my face quickly turns to a frown when the fox bolts. "Wait, no! Come back! I didn't mean to scare you!" I call after it, although it probably can't understand a word I'm saying.
I try to run as fast as I can, but the fox is much faster than me. It's not until Bram catches up to me that I stop chasing it. "But… he was cute… and seemed friendly at least," I tell Bram and he just shakes his head at me. I know I shouldn't run off too far, but I can't help but get a little carried away sometimes.
When I hear a familiar voice, it makes me forget about missing out on meeting a fox.
"Po!" I shout and start to run again, but at least this time it's to meet a friend. I can hear Bram sigh and start running again to catch up with me (poor wolf).
he tulips are tapping against his legs as he weaves through the rows of them.
There’s a pattern to them, he knows — the path curves gently as he follows it, intercepts with others like lines drawn through a painting. The pieces of it are there in the flowers roots: disjointed images pressed into his skin with the laughter of their petals, a riddle he is not sure even they know. Still, he is looking for the answer to it as he wanders past them.
But it is not the secrets waiting to be plucked like tulips from the fields, nor is it the breeze that pushes gently now at his back (like it is pushing him deeper into the petals, deeper into the field, deeper into the festival). And it is not the colors he sees blooming in shades of red, and purple, and gold when he lifts his head over them like he is a scythe arcing towards their stems, and they a vessel holding back a flood he wants to release.
He tries. Oh, he tries to remember what it feels like to look only at a field of flowers, only at the flowers, and appreciate them for what they are, rather than what they could have been, or might be, or were before.
Ipomoea follows the soft purr of music and magic woven between the stalks, and tries to not think of all the ways he is different now than the last time he had come here. He does not know how to look away from all the bits of his memories that sit in his soul like petals torn from the tulips and scattered about in the depths of him. He does not know how to see the shadows of them dancing between the stalks the way he used to.
He cannot stop wondering who he might have been — what he might have been — had he stayed here. Had he stayed in Denocte. Had he stayed in Solterra.
Had he caught that ship leaving the Night court’s docks when he was only a yearling and sailed to worlds far from this one.
All he has to clutch now to his chest are a thousand what if’s, what if’s, what if’s, all of them keeping him away at night like a sonnet he can’t help but repeat. But all thoughts of those other worlds, those other Ipomoea’s living other lives, disappears when he turns his head and watches a child racing through the tulips. And he does not say anything when he goes to her — he only smiles at her when she turns and begins to run back towards him.
“Maeve,” he breathes her name into her mane, nuzzling at her poll affectionately. “Are you here with your mother?”
I can tell Bram doesn't know who Po is because he stares at us with his hackles starting to raise. After Po nuzzles me, I turn to press my nose into Bram's neck. His fur tickles as I tell him softly, "It's okay, he's just a friend." And I see the fur on his back settle again. He probably still isn't sure and I know he's just being protective, but really! It's not like I'm going off to get myself killed. Especially not after all that I went through on the island.
Po asks if I'm here with Momma and my ears droop. I feel a little bad that I'm not so I avoid his gaze for a moment. "Um, no…" I say, trailing off. I probably should've come with her, but she's been busy lately. "I'm here with Uncle Tenebrae and Momma's wolf, Bram. Momma had a lot of work to do and couldn't take me." It does make me sad when she can't bring me places, but I know traveling is hard for her, even when she's not busy. At least this time it isn't a stranger that's going to be bringing me back home.
I wrinkle my nose at him then, realizing that he's far from his own home too. "Why aren't you in Del...Delly… your home?" I struggle to get the words out. I don't think I'll ever get that word right. "Did you come for the pretty flowers too?" I know that as soon as I heard about a field full of tulips, I had to see it for myself.
round them the flowers are a blaze of color stretching from one end of the field to the other. Ipomoea knows there is a pattern to them, he knows that in the castle keep there is a tower that spirals into the sky. Standing atop the terrace and looking over the field was like witnessing a secret unfurl.
But Ipomoea does not want to unravel secrets today. He wants to live in them; he wants to admire the flowers for what they are without stopping to tell them how much more they could be.
They were already enough.
He can see the wolf eyeing him, and perhaps a part of the feral look in his eyes stirs a bit of the wild in his magic. But he forces it back down with a smile, as the wolf settles and falls into step with them. His own bonded is running free somewhere away from the flowers, away from the fields of people that always stared too long. And Ipomoea lets the wild part of him run with his bonded far, far from here.
“I have friends in Terrastella,” he tells her. Elena had invited him to their festival (and as she had come to the fire festival in Delumine, he felt it only fair he repay her visit with one of his own — and it was another excuse to see the place he had spent so much time in as a boy.) “Apparently more than I thought I did,” he adds with a laugh. It feels lighter, to laugh here — it feels easier. As if being in the Dusk Court has reminded him of something, of who he was.
Or maybe it was Maeve. He can see her mother in her; and he can see so much of the Night Court that he loves. So he smiles, and with a nod of his head he turns back to the paths between the tulips. The flowers bob on their long stalks to either side of them, a rainbow of colors smiling up at them.
Ipomoea trails his muzzle gently over the blossoms for a moment. “Which color is your favorite?”
The flower man as I think I'll start calling him now, tells me he has friends here. I wonder if he knows Elena and Elli too, but there are probably so many others in the Court that he could know. He's a Very Important Man too, so maybe he knows everyone? I would lose track of everyone's names, I think.
I know at least it was Elena who put all of this together, or at least that's what Ten said. It still amazes me that someone could take the time to plant soooo many tulips. She's a patient lady though, so maybe it was fun or relaxing for her. I haven't seen her yet, but I'm hoping I might be able to find her before we go back home.
Beside me, Bram is sniffing through the flowers again and making loud snuffling sounds. It almost distracts me from Po's question. It's a good one too because as I look around, I can't decide which is my favorite. My nose is all scrunched while I get deep in thought. The one I found for Ten was a deep purple, it almost looked as black as his shadows. I kind of liked that one, but I don't see any of those around here now to show Po. When I see a brighter purple tulip among a patch of red, I decide on that one since it's a close second.
Quickly, I bounce over to stand by the flower and poke it with my nose. "This one!" I say, proud of the choice I've made. "Which one do you like?" I ask, tilting my head then.
he flowers are soft against his cheek, when he dips his head against them. And even when he can hear their petals whispering against his skin, he cannot help but feel as though it is wrong —
— it is wrong, for something sharp to reach for something soft.
— it is wrong, to stand amongst them like he is their savior, not the thing come to pull them up by their roots.
— it is wrong, to be the contradiction that he is.
Ipomoea turns to watch Maeve bound through the flowers and he wonders if he was ever that innocent. He wonders if he could have been, had he been born here instead of Solterra; had he a mother who had loved him, instead of one who left him in the sands. When he tries to remember, when he tries to think back on his childhood he can remember only the feeling that he was always searching for something that he could not find, something stolen from him before he had a chance to learn even its name.
Now, as he watches Maeve, he understands. And he hopes she will never have that innocence stolen from her the way it was from him.
So he forces himself to smile as he follows after her, and let the tulips bump against his legs like old friends as he weaves through them.
“Ah, a good choice,” he says when he comes up beside her. “They say purple is the color of royalty — it’s a noble color, perfect for young ladies like yourself.” Ipomoea has never understood how a color could be reserved for specific people; to him a flower was a flower, and deserved to be shared.
He turns his head to regard the flowers nearest them. “Yesterday I liked blue — or a purple so deep it was nearly blue. The day before it was red, like the sun sometimes is in the mornings. But today—” he steps deeper into the fields, as if searching. Until at last he stops with a smile on his face, and leans down towards a tulip that has yet to open.
“—today I like this one."
And as he leans over it its petals at last begin to unfurl, revealing a tulip colored soft and pink at its center, that lightened into paler and paler shades of gold at the edges of it.
