Ipomoea
I hope you are blessed
with a heart like a wildflower.
Strong enough to rise again
after being trampled upon,
tough enough to weather
the worst of summer storms,
and to be able to grow and flourish
even in the most broken places.
with a heart like a wildflower.
Strong enough to rise again
after being trampled upon,
tough enough to weather
the worst of summer storms,
and to be able to grow and flourish
even in the most broken places.
Despite all the time he has spent searching the shadows for monsters and beasts, he has never thought to look beneath the waves.
Ipomoea stares down at the water and, at first, does not see the Emissary hiding below it. He sees only the bits of escaped paper spinning, sinking, drowning; the remainder flutters in the air before him, barely caught in his telekinesis. There they tremble (much like his wings), as if they’d like nothing more than to follow the rest of the letter down into the dark water. He almost lets them, but then —
But then the waves are pulling back, and two bright eyes are smiling up at him.
He blinks and there she is, teeth as bright as the foam cresting each wave, sharp as the rocks they collapse against. Her smile feels like a knife, cutting straight through to his melancholic heart and twisting. He wonders if her plan is to cut the sadness away like a disease; but he already knows, if Anandi were to sink her teeth into his skin it would not be for whatever heartbreak she found there.
Ipomoea has heard rumors that the Dusk Court Emissary was a kelpie; a part of him has even prepared for meeting her. And yet now, coming face to face with her, he realizes there is nothing he could have done to prepare himself for this. Still he smiles back down at her, despite the way his wings trembled to look at her.
“I would say setting a memory to rest is sometimes worth a scrap of paper.”
He thinks of all the paper lanterns set loose into the sky from these very cliffs, can see them fading away into the night still when he closes his eyes. And he wonders how far the wind might have carried them — was it far enough for the wishes tied to their blanks to come true? For the hurts woven into their canvases to be eased?
It had not been far enough for his; perhaps his had sank in the ocean, had drowned and multiplied in the sea. But he hopes it was far enough for others.
“Do you have any memories that need laying to rest Anandi, Emissary of Dusk?”
He is not so sure he would believe her if she said no.
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“speech”
