e lingers in the prairie longer than he should, long after the tolling of the midnight bells signal an end to the night.
The smell of spices and lavender and bonfire smoke still drift across the ground as smoke, the sound of hoofbeats pounding the grasses flat (pounding his heart flat with them). But the music is fading now - just the lingering strains of a lone lyre playing as a shadow of the tempos that had once reigned over the other festivities - and with it, all of Denocte seems to quiet. A pair of mourning doves descend in the spaces between the booths, walking side-by-side as they look for left over bits of bread and fruits.
It had always amused him how different his court was from Denocte; how those of Delumine would just now be rising to greet the day, even while the night court was at last slipping between their sheets. There was something fascinating about watching the court at this hour: it felt like he was looking in on a private part of their lives, a part often unseen by the rest of Novus. A couple weaving through the festival stalls exchanged a passionate kiss before parting ways; two young stallions supported a third friend between them as they stumbled off to a shared home; a mother stopped to buy a sweet pastry from a merchant’s stall, which she split between two drowsy-looking children. It was another side of the night court, a side he felt oddly privileged to witness, making him feel a certain closeness with the southeastern realm, rather than apart from it.
As the mare herded her children back towards the city, Ipomoea approached the merchant. The pastry window was mostly-empty now, and fewer treats lined the miniature shelves; but still the man smiled at him.
"Most of my wares are gone, sir," he began to apologize, "but anything you see here is fair game."
"Sold out means a successful night." The man smiled wider and bobbed his head. There was something warm in the aged lines on his face, something that had Ipomoea smiling back.
By the time he leaves the stand he has a small wrapped lemon cake and steaming rose tea, and his pockets are several coppers lighter. But with the distant Arma mountains brightening in the distance, and the lake shivering like a mirror nearby, winking at him from afar as he wanders through the stands, and the beginnings of birdsong echoing in the distance - the night court is beginning to feel more like coming home again.
don't ask if I'm happy, you know that I'm not
but at best, I can say I'm not sad.
She has kept herself from going back for so long that when she does, it is like ripping off a bandage when the wound is still scarring.
It hurts.
Aghavni's breathing comes in slow, even twos: in, out. In, out. In, out. But for all the good it does her, her heartbeat is still like a dove's, so quick she can hardly tell when one ends and the other begins. She starts to feel dizzy after a time, and slams down a copper piece on the nearest food vendor's booth, her telekinesis shaking as she takes the candied apple, her smile wobbly as she nods to the merchant and continues walking, walking, walking.
The caramel has yet to set, and drips a snaking path of sugar after her.
Her hooves click evenly (in fours) down the cobblestones, and festival-goers whisk their trailing hems out of her way, and fire dancers shake their jeweled limbs, and then she is at the winding alley that leads down to the White Scarab.
Her heart is in her throat. Aghavni has never understood the metaphor before but she thinks she does now, as she hesitates by the mouth of the alley, her leg lifting, then dropping, then lifting again, until in frustration she bites into her apple and forgets it is hot and whimpers as she scalds her tongue.
There is no one waiting for her there. Not Father (who is across the seas), not Minya (who disappeared into the night), not August (who had followed her to her castle and stayed). The Scarab is not her home anymore.
But it has never stopped feeling like one.
Caligo's night has pulled a blanket across the sky, and the smoke from the bonfires curdles across the dark to snuff out the stars. Where she stands, the shadows gather so thickly she thinks she is choking. Raggedly Aghavni takes another bite of the apple and moves her legs until she is walking away from the alley, her steps mechanical until her eyes squint under bobbing lantern light, where there are eyes that linger and faces that gawk attached to them.
Her hair drapes like a pale sheet over her neck. She had left her gold spikes in Solterra and she feels bare without them, a child again, all grey eyes and black curls and silent tears. She should not have come alone, and without telling anyone. Maybe August would have accompanied her. At the very least, she could've made Kite come with her, however much he muttered about the countless tasks he still had left to do. ("Poor Kite," she'd say to him, her eyes widening in pity, "I should pay you more." To which he would spit, "You don't pay me at all. I am doing this for your father.")
There is a tavern not far from the Scarab who's owner had once accused them of stealing away all his business. Aghavni had flicked a gold piece onto the counter, smiled with all her teeth, and gestured towards the few stragglers that remained while saying that evidently, they hadn't stolen enough. Her hooves head there of their own accord and she is too tired to change their minds. Perhaps with her hair down, she won't be recognised.
But before she makes it to the grimy, swinging doors, her knee knocks into the legs of a passing boy. "Oh, I apologise," she says, dragging her head up towards him, until her gaze snags on the lemon cake he holds. The words tumble out before she can stop them.
"Did you get that from Talan's father?" The icing pattern is faintly familiar, and it is too sophisticated to be done by Talan himself. She blinks, realising he might not be a local, and nods towards a nearby booth. "From him, I mean. They make very good sweets."
When she looks back towards him she smiles, but the effort, she discovers, is draining.
t was a strange thing, watching the sun rise over the Arma mountains.
There is always a moment, as the light creeps gently up the side of the cliffs, where it seems to hesitate right before the summit. The shadows lining it deepen to bruise-blue, the crisp line the morning light forms seems to waiver. When he was a boy, he liked to watch it and imagine the two gods, Oriens and Caligo, fighting overtop the mountain.
There was a time when Ipomoea would watch the sunrise like he was waiting for the sun to fulfill a promise. When he was a boy, watching the light finally cross the last rock each morning was like watching the sunrise for the first time. Feeling the sun wash over his face was like feeling the life fill him back up the same as the colors trickled slowly back into the world.
But that feels so long ago.
Now, there is more magic than blood in his veins, and Ipomoea does not need faith in the gods to know the sunrise will come anew each day. Now, he doesn’t need the morning to shake off the cold of the night. So when the black-draped mountains start to turn to lighter and lighter shades of blue, he does not even turn to watch.
The streets are shining with gemstones, moonstones and quartz and a thousand colors too brilliant to describe. Each step that he takes rings out sharply, bone against stone, the whisper of his wings over the pavement, the shush, shush, shush of his blood and magic in his ears. Between the stones a daisy blooms, blades of grass spring free. The sight of it makes something in his eyes soften, reminds him of another morning he spent in the Court, a time before the fires, the wars, before the magic in his blood turned to summer heat instead of a spring blush —
When the girl bumps into him in the dark-before-the-dawn shadows, he thinks, for a moment, that she is a unicorn. When he blinks her hair turns black, and her skin darkens to the color of the earth; a bow floats along beside her instead of a candied apple. And there, on her belly, instead of splashes of white he sees only blue, blue like the ocean, scales like sapphire gemstones shivering in the lantern-light.
But he blinks again and Isra is gone. And the girl before him smells more like the desert than the sea.
“Don’t,” he says, untangling his legs from her’s, reaching out by habit to steady her. “No harm done.” And he wonders how his words can still feel hard, can still sound hard, even when the smoke smells more like spice than burning buildings, even when the skies are clear and the storm is long since passed.
“Talon?” only now does he realize he never asked the shopkeep his name (and it makes him wonder how many times he’s been recognized by his own people, and never wondered at how many of them he could not say the same for.) But he tries to smile despite it, despite the way his magic grows thorns and wraps tight around his heart. “Do you know him, then? I suppose it’s good I found him towards the end of the night, otherwise I might have bought his entire cart.” He hopes his smile looks softer in the dark, that the shadows soften the lines of his face.
A half-beat of silence passes, and the street light falling softly across their brows makes their cheeks look all the more hollow in the night. “Were you on your way somewhere? Don’t let me keep you.”
But between the words is a whisper of stay, stay, as more and more daisies come up between the cracks in the pavement.
