even after they have been stepped on
He watches her, as she stands in the light of her own axe, of her own making, and comes apart. As the ichor drains from her eyes and leaves behind only blue, only the storm, only a flicker of the lightning that came with it.
Ipomoea knows that feeling.
He wonders what it says of them, a king and a queen who have given too much of themselves. A man and a woman who need to dig their way out of fresh graves each morning and rise, rise, rise, if only to prove they are still alive. Sometimes he thinks his grief will crush him, that his past is there dogging every footstep he takes, ready to consume him anew.
Does she see it, too? The way time was chasing them all down, a hunter after a prized doe? And there they were again and again, coming to lay themselves down at the altar like they had forgotten they were the sacrifice to be made all along.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit. Even falling stars burn the brightest.”
He had said as much to Isra once — hadn’t he told her that? It all feels so long ago, the days have all begun to blur together sunset after sunrise. Again and again and each day, the same as the one before, the same what if’s coming back to haunt him each time he was alone.
Antiope looks down at the gifts and offerings left at Caligo’s feet and he looks with her. A bundle of drying lavender wrapped with string. A candle long burned down to nothing. A weathered stone carving whose face has been erased by time. His heart hangs heavy in his throat when he sighs.
“I think I’ve forgotten how,” he admits, whisper-soft. “I keep thinking that Oriens can’t possibly have the heart to listen to” someone like me “false praises.”
Not that he is sure when exactly his worship took on a sense of irony, when he began leaving foxgloves and rhododendrons on the altar, instead of lavender and morning glories. He thinks it may have been when he stopped cutting the thorns off of his roses. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like you to stay. Please,” he adds, and maybe there’s a bit of warmth shining in his eyes still despite the cold grip that has encased his heart.
He draws forward into the temple, feeling paper-dry petals crumble to dust beneath his hooves.
“I often come here when I feel like I’m searching for an answer I don’t know the question too. Even when they don’t answer, I find enough in the sunrise coming over the mountains.” He presses his muzzle against Oriens’ altar — breathes in. And out. And pulls away.
There is nothing stirring in his chest. No grand worship bubbling like a song from his chest. His blood does not hum or roar or beat itself like something wild against his ribs, his lungs do not tremble to take in something holy.
“Sometimes it’s better to let things simply be as they are, than to expect something great.”
He is simply tired.
@Antiope
"Speaking."
