even after they have been stepped on
There are no ripples, no disturbances to mar the moon’s reflection in the pool. It floats across the water like all the garden had been made for it, as if all the plants, all the creatures, as if Ipomoea himself were here only to watch it dance. If his mind wasn’t still thinking of haunted things, and if his heart wasn’t still so heavy beneath the weight of it, maybe then he would have been content to watch the moonlight spin new dreams.
As it is, he only frowns down at his own reflection in the pool and whispers to it, “What do you want from me?”
The whisper of leaves against skin makes him lift his head, turning in time to see the unicorn making her way down the pathway. She, too, seemed spun from silver as she steps towards him, her pale form nearly glowing in the moonlight. And for only a moment, Ipomoea wonders if the overgrown pond and the moonlit unicorn are only a fever dream, or his mind playing tricks on him. But for her voice, he might have pinched himself to try to wake up.
As it is, he only watches quietly as she comes towards him, feeling the thud, thud, thudding of his heart against his ribs now.
“There’s company enough while I wait,” he says quietly. Night blooming flowers are growing around his hooves, pale petals reaching hungrily towards the sky like they, too, long for the moon. If he could, he would let them grow tall enough to reach it. But they, like him, stay anchored to the soft grass of the earth, a bed for all the falling stars that fly too high and too fast.
The night is too quiet. Besides the sound of their voices echoing off the water, and their footsteps along the bank, there is nothing. There are no more loons to raise their voices, no crickets sing a chorus in the background, no fish to break the surface of the water to spy on them.
“Do I know you?”
@Mesnyi
"Speaking."
