The door comes open as they knock, with a dismal creak to match its measured swing. Ipomoea waits, as inch by inch the darkness devours the sunlight that tries to enter. He waits, as the smell of rotten and sodden things creeps thickly across the opening.
There are echoes here, in all that drip, drip, dripping coming from the shadows. When he blinks he can see the trailing heartleaf shining in the window, turning the sunlight coming through green; he blinks again, and that same window turns black with mold, and a single leaf-less black stick taps against the glass. Atop the table sit two lonely cups, one knocked carelessly to the side, contents turned to sludge. Ipomoea steps inside, and his wings stir a layer of dust into the air so thick, and choked with rot, it makes him cough.
It is in this moment, when something that does not look like his Emissary peels away from the shadows, and Thana steps from behind him, that he knows which of the two is the monster. It is not the one that was made.
When she speaks, his magic is begging him to grow roots and thorns in this place, to lay a yew branch against her lips and command her to eat. He thinks he could command the long-dead vines and herbs to go to seed and live again, if he wanted, or coax the roots of the beech tree standing as a sentinel by the gate to come and tear the floor apart. He could make this place a garden, to bury the bones and the rot and what remains of a dozen lives beneath a wildflower meadow. There’s blood enough to water them through the winter, he knows.
But he only looks around the small cottage with dull eyes that have almost forgotten how to see beauty. At the organs floating in their yellow solutions, and the eyeless skulls gazing back at him, and the still-bloody pelts draped across the table. He stares long enough to forget what the room once looked like bathed in sun- and fire-light, long enough to convince himself he has never known anything but the chill that now permeates the wall despite the summer just beyond them.
He forgets the smell of chamomile and lavender - and in their absence, there is only death. And he looks it in the face not to convince himself of what Emersyn has become, but to tell the dead and dying things that rest has come at last. And as Thana’s and Eligos’ snarls begin to fade, Rhoeas sets his teeth together and rumbles alongside them. And he sweeps the rotten herbs from the hearth with one crystal antler.
”What happened to you, Emersyn?” The seawater bleeding from the wound in her neck and the rotting skin hanging from her sides makes a part of his magic rejoice. It sings to see her falling apart already, and begs for him to let it finish the job - but he does not. Not yet. The cottage groans as the roots it is built upon begin to turn over.
”What happened to the girl who sought forgiveness?”
From the doorway Andras names her for the thing she now is - and while a part of Ipomoea is striking a match to his magic and his rage, the other part of him is drowning in the sorrow of it.
There are echoes here, in all that drip, drip, dripping coming from the shadows. When he blinks he can see the trailing heartleaf shining in the window, turning the sunlight coming through green; he blinks again, and that same window turns black with mold, and a single leaf-less black stick taps against the glass. Atop the table sit two lonely cups, one knocked carelessly to the side, contents turned to sludge. Ipomoea steps inside, and his wings stir a layer of dust into the air so thick, and choked with rot, it makes him cough.
It is in this moment, when something that does not look like his Emissary peels away from the shadows, and Thana steps from behind him, that he knows which of the two is the monster. It is not the one that was made.
When she speaks, his magic is begging him to grow roots and thorns in this place, to lay a yew branch against her lips and command her to eat. He thinks he could command the long-dead vines and herbs to go to seed and live again, if he wanted, or coax the roots of the beech tree standing as a sentinel by the gate to come and tear the floor apart. He could make this place a garden, to bury the bones and the rot and what remains of a dozen lives beneath a wildflower meadow. There’s blood enough to water them through the winter, he knows.
But he only looks around the small cottage with dull eyes that have almost forgotten how to see beauty. At the organs floating in their yellow solutions, and the eyeless skulls gazing back at him, and the still-bloody pelts draped across the table. He stares long enough to forget what the room once looked like bathed in sun- and fire-light, long enough to convince himself he has never known anything but the chill that now permeates the wall despite the summer just beyond them.
He forgets the smell of chamomile and lavender - and in their absence, there is only death. And he looks it in the face not to convince himself of what Emersyn has become, but to tell the dead and dying things that rest has come at last. And as Thana’s and Eligos’ snarls begin to fade, Rhoeas sets his teeth together and rumbles alongside them. And he sweeps the rotten herbs from the hearth with one crystal antler.
”What happened to you, Emersyn?” The seawater bleeding from the wound in her neck and the rotting skin hanging from her sides makes a part of his magic rejoice. It sings to see her falling apart already, and begs for him to let it finish the job - but he does not. Not yet. The cottage groans as the roots it is built upon begin to turn over.
”What happened to the girl who sought forgiveness?”
From the doorway Andras names her for the thing she now is - and while a part of Ipomoea is striking a match to his magic and his rage, the other part of him is drowning in the sorrow of it.
@
”here am i!“
