like a flower in the desert, I only wanted to bloom
Some mornings he wonders if he could raise the sun by himself.
He is thinking it now, as he rises in the dark and walks through the halls of the castle like another midnight shadow torn free from the rest. It feels like religion, like a new-god blinking itself awake in his marrow and chanting yes, yes, yes to every question he did not know how to ask. Like a promise written into his bones that he is only now learning the pattern to. And when he stops to look out the eastern window (always, he is looking east), it is only to wonder at the way he might hold the sun between his shoulders and rise with it.
Ipomoea knows he was made for the earth. Made for the sand and the soil and the things he might grow from them. But still — but still — there is a part of him that looks at the cold and dark horizon and thinks how much easier it might be to ferry the sun across the sky.
But he cannot look at the horizon without thinking of the desert. And he cannot think of the desert without mourning every piece of his shattered heart that he is leaving behind.
His heart breaks a little more, as he wanders the twisted roots of the castle that no longer feels like his. Now he is not sure it ever felt like his, not in the way it mattered — not in the way the desert has always felt both like and unlike his home. The ivy-and-wisteria-covered walls sigh as he walks past them, leaves and curling stems reaching out to brush against his sides like they, too, know if will be the last time they see their king of flowers.
And when they touch him leaf to skin, they whisper against him the story of a boy with flowers on his brow and wings at his heels, who had stood outside these very walls like destiny and thought himself like a tree, concerned only with sun, and wind, and water, and all the ways he might root and belong. And of a boy before him crowned with moonlight, who had learned to love the wild and left his flowers for the forest. They whisper to him of growth and becoming, of long springs and longer winters, of the wild that lives now like a seed caught between his teeth.
It feels now like he has always been that wind-caught seed, destined to never find that bit of soil to sprout in. He thinks maybe he has wandered too long, that he is doomed now to never grow into a home the way he had once wished (the way he sometimes still wishes, when he stands beneath his trees and tells himself this is enough, this should be enough, and feels more and more like it is a lie he has woven for himself. As if saying it over and over and over again can make it true.)
So now when he pulls himself from the vines tangling like chains around his legs it is with a sigh of his heart tearing itself in two.
As the horizon turns from almost-black to bruise-blue streaks of rose and gold, as the light falls on a court again-transformed into a festival, he turns at last to the fate he has been running from. He knows he is out of time when the bells begin to toll, and the morning court comes awake to witness a dawn like none before it. Blackened roses lift their heads to watch him go, and desert poppies unwind themselves like smiles raised to the dawn. He hopes he sounds still like the forest, when the doors open before him and the too-familiar paths lead him to the heart of it.
It is there in the garden (his garden, the part of the castle that will always feel like his) that Danaë waits for him. He finds her there in the bruised light, framed in almost-darkness and flowers. “Danaë,” his voice is just another sigh of the garden when he goes to her, nothing beneath the layers of music rising in the courtyard behind him.
For a moment, when there is a lull in the songs and the wind, he thinks he can hear the heartbeat of the earth running beneath their’s. He wants to sink into it, to root and grow and twist his legs into branches that stretch over the garden. He wants to be like Ellery, singing himself into a tree. For a moment he wants to stay, to run through the garden and tell every flower and leaf and vine and root to wrap itself around his heart and never again let him go. He wants — oh he wants a thousand things, but he knows he sounds more like the desert now than the flowers.
And he knows his daughter’s story will begin and end here, in a way his never can.
“I am glad —“ his lungs feel like flowers trembling in the desert sun, and when he breathes and breathes there is not enough wind to fill them. “There is no one better to be the next queen of the morning.”
Behind them the music starts again, and each note is like a hourglass counting away his seconds. So he breathes against her brow once, only once, his lips brushing the bloody spiral of his horn before he turns to face the dawn rising like a new promise over them.
“They are waiting.” He does not ask her if he is ready. He already knows he is not.
He is thinking it now, as he rises in the dark and walks through the halls of the castle like another midnight shadow torn free from the rest. It feels like religion, like a new-god blinking itself awake in his marrow and chanting yes, yes, yes to every question he did not know how to ask. Like a promise written into his bones that he is only now learning the pattern to. And when he stops to look out the eastern window (always, he is looking east), it is only to wonder at the way he might hold the sun between his shoulders and rise with it.
Ipomoea knows he was made for the earth. Made for the sand and the soil and the things he might grow from them. But still — but still — there is a part of him that looks at the cold and dark horizon and thinks how much easier it might be to ferry the sun across the sky.
But he cannot look at the horizon without thinking of the desert. And he cannot think of the desert without mourning every piece of his shattered heart that he is leaving behind.
His heart breaks a little more, as he wanders the twisted roots of the castle that no longer feels like his. Now he is not sure it ever felt like his, not in the way it mattered — not in the way the desert has always felt both like and unlike his home. The ivy-and-wisteria-covered walls sigh as he walks past them, leaves and curling stems reaching out to brush against his sides like they, too, know if will be the last time they see their king of flowers.
And when they touch him leaf to skin, they whisper against him the story of a boy with flowers on his brow and wings at his heels, who had stood outside these very walls like destiny and thought himself like a tree, concerned only with sun, and wind, and water, and all the ways he might root and belong. And of a boy before him crowned with moonlight, who had learned to love the wild and left his flowers for the forest. They whisper to him of growth and becoming, of long springs and longer winters, of the wild that lives now like a seed caught between his teeth.
It feels now like he has always been that wind-caught seed, destined to never find that bit of soil to sprout in. He thinks maybe he has wandered too long, that he is doomed now to never grow into a home the way he had once wished (the way he sometimes still wishes, when he stands beneath his trees and tells himself this is enough, this should be enough, and feels more and more like it is a lie he has woven for himself. As if saying it over and over and over again can make it true.)
So now when he pulls himself from the vines tangling like chains around his legs it is with a sigh of his heart tearing itself in two.
As the horizon turns from almost-black to bruise-blue streaks of rose and gold, as the light falls on a court again-transformed into a festival, he turns at last to the fate he has been running from. He knows he is out of time when the bells begin to toll, and the morning court comes awake to witness a dawn like none before it. Blackened roses lift their heads to watch him go, and desert poppies unwind themselves like smiles raised to the dawn. He hopes he sounds still like the forest, when the doors open before him and the too-familiar paths lead him to the heart of it.
It is there in the garden (his garden, the part of the castle that will always feel like his) that Danaë waits for him. He finds her there in the bruised light, framed in almost-darkness and flowers. “Danaë,” his voice is just another sigh of the garden when he goes to her, nothing beneath the layers of music rising in the courtyard behind him.
For a moment, when there is a lull in the songs and the wind, he thinks he can hear the heartbeat of the earth running beneath their’s. He wants to sink into it, to root and grow and twist his legs into branches that stretch over the garden. He wants to be like Ellery, singing himself into a tree. For a moment he wants to stay, to run through the garden and tell every flower and leaf and vine and root to wrap itself around his heart and never again let him go. He wants — oh he wants a thousand things, but he knows he sounds more like the desert now than the flowers.
And he knows his daughter’s story will begin and end here, in a way his never can.
“I am glad —“ his lungs feel like flowers trembling in the desert sun, and when he breathes and breathes there is not enough wind to fill them. “There is no one better to be the next queen of the morning.”
Behind them the music starts again, and each note is like a hourglass counting away his seconds. So he breathes against her brow once, only once, his lips brushing the bloody spiral of his horn before he turns to face the dawn rising like a new promise over them.
“They are waiting.” He does not ask her if he is ready. He already knows he is not.
I love you all and I will greatly, greatly, greatly miss being Dawn court's sovereign. This thread will be the start to the coronation and will eventually be opened to anyone to post in, but I'd like to get a few more posts in with just Po/Danaë first. ♡
