To leave behind the family she had cultivated ─ those borne of blood and those gently tended to until they flourished, from Nordlys to Sovereign ─ had not been a choice that the Scholar woman had come to lightly. But they had understood, just as they had always understood her desire to learn. Just as they had always loved her wandering heart.
“Juxta condictum revertar me,” Jahra had told them ─ Aehra, Aelin, Avallac'h, Campion, Soln ─ in lilting Nordlysian, her throat burning tight with emotion and her deep sapphire eyes heavy with the threat of tears. She had meant it, of course; the intention would always be to return to her family after satiating whatever incandescent desire has scorched a beacon within her chest. And they had let her go.
It's at the sea she gazes now, those sapphire blues peering at the distant pastel horizon. There is no other land in sight, nothing beyond the rock spires that she can see except for the endless sky and the endless sea. But still, she imagines that Aehra sits at some coast far south of here, staring into the same tumultuous water as she. Waiting, mother and daughter, to be reunited again, but still excited for the adventure that will inevitably unfurl before both of them separately.
“Salvus erit: iuvenes, heroem finxit,” Jahra whispers to her daughter over the churning tide before pivoting her finned, blue-grey body away from the sea and towards the rocky outcroppings that protect the edges of the mainland. Despite the warmth of the day (or, perhaps, because of it), she does not find any nearby company from who she could acquire answers about this new world she has found herself in ─
But there is no hurry.
At least not when she has nowhere to go.
@ any the flowers chorused, "bloom now ─ bloom free" ─rise, again
Boudika rises dripping from the sea; in a wild toss of her head she displaces dangling strings of kelp and, gnarls of fishbone. The woman who once kept her mane cropped so close no longer bothers with such aesthetic concerns; no; the copper-bright strands hang limp and tangled. She snorts once, twice, three times—and each exhalation sprays saltwater from the orifices. It drips from her eyes and she tosses her head, shakes her body, sends droplets flying wayward through the air.
One might assume the transition from water to land is shocking, or disorienting. But Boudika carries her momentum from the surf, striding out into a gallop as her hooves hit the shore. Each long stretch is thunderous, powerful—and as she runs free and bright along that summer shore, she catches an unexpected scent; it fills her nostrils on a breeze and is then gone, but not before she jerks to a stop.
The water horse may never grow accustomed to the visceral urge to hunt; the bloodlust that fills her with strange, primordial hunger. Boudika staves it off with fish, seals, sharks, and always the wistful hunger returns for more, more, more. The kelpie licks her lips and abandons the shoreline, venturing into a fortress of cliff-tossed rocks. They are jagged; the sand squelches underfoot; gulls careen overhead. The world, for Boudika, remains in sharp focus. It is not difficult to follow the tracks of another horse and, after a few minutes, Boudika trails the other mare to where she wanders toward the mainland—
Words fit poorly in Boudika’s mouth. The sea is singing, singing, singing her back—but somehow, choked with water, with want for something irresistible, Boudika asks tremblingly, beautifully:
“Hello. Are you new here?” Boudika does not know what strange instinct drives her; she presses closer, lifts her head. Her ears twitch and face toward the mare, and for all intents and purposes her body language is open, nearly inquisitive. There is something foreign about the mare, something Boudika imagines she once expressed herself; and yet she bears all the markings, the fins, of a water horse.
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
This is not the first time he has come to the edge of the world where the sea reaches out into nothingness.
But it is the first time since she asked him to find her, if he wants to.
He doesn’t.
And yet he does.
He comes because of her, not for her. Tenebrae steps out, up to the edge of the cliff and gazes down, down to where the ocean crashes into the earth.
Tenebrae is stark against the pastel sky, all light sinks into him. The Disciple draws all to him like he has swallowed a star, leaving only the black hole behind. The world trembles around him, it trembles for him. At his back Veneror looms like the cross from which he will run.
She has become his punishment and yet, he fears she might taste like his salvation. Ah, treacherous thoughts breed as vipers within him. They bite as his soul where it lies cradled in religion, gilded with holiness.
Yet what part of him will she leave holy? His prayers no longer feel earnest, he feels the ache in his knees now where once he felt nothing as he prayed to Caligo within her temple.
Whom is he to worship if not Caligo? Before him the ocean is too much like an altar. He turns, away from the water and the girl who commands it, who fills up every part of him that Caligo relinquishes. He wishes the goddess would not lose so easily. He dares not think that it might be he that prizes Caligo’s grip free from all the places that she holds him.
A woman turns from where she watches the sea. The wind carries the taste of salt from her skin. It drowns him. Air is not enough, not any more. Tenebrae follows her as her thin, sea-film fins catch the light and glimmer, sunlight across waves. She is the tide coming in, the monk little more than flotsam in her flow. He follows, closer, closer, until, until…
Boudika rises from the sea. All in him turns to darkness and conflict. He stops approaching the girl with her trident of sea-green horns. The monk inhales and all of his breath is filled with the wildness of sea-salt. The kelpie licks her lips - how many times had he seen such a gesture? How many times had he seen blood upon her lips: his, a seal’s, her own…? The monk stops, a swallowing darkness stood sentinel above the beach. Boudika and the girl come closer. They are creatures of the sea and should be so far from him, a man who should concern himself with gods and the celestial bodies of the sky… But all he watches is the ocean. He is Icarus, his wings are melted and the sea is rising, rising to meet him with every passing moment.
He feels Boudika’s teeth about his throat, over her scar where the is skin is puckered and twisted and tight. His body is hers, his soul Caligo’s and Tenebrae stops, torn. Boudika smiles at the woman, the girl who watched the sea as if a part of her is lost there. He thinks he might know how that feels.
The kelpie speaks and it is ocean song: salt and pearls, sea-spray and coral. They are innocent words that fall from her tongue, past her too-sharp teeth. His own teeth grit and his shadows billow like a gathering storm.
He turns, back to his goddess, back toward Veneror where his piety waits and his brothers who do not stray like he. He has not come for Boudika, he has not.
Though she turns her back to the tumultuous sea in search for what civilized hub the mainland may have to offer, the perpetual crash of waves against the shore calls to her. She keeps one ear tilted back towards the sea, soaking in what she can of the rhythmic sound for as long as she can ─ before she is far enough away for the white noise to fade, it's joined by a familiar rhythmic thud. Jahra turns her sea-colored head to peer over her shoulder, a sapphire blue eye meeting the frame of the tri-colored stranger just as the woman speaks.
Jahra halts and pivots on lanky, sand-coated legs to face the woman. She smiles, almost melancholy, and offers a nod that results in purple tendrils of mane falling around her trio of horns. “Yes,” the word falls from her lips hoarser than expected and Jahra clears her throat with a small, apologetic smile, “I've just arrived.” The common tongue feels foreign falling from her lips; years have come and gone since using it was a necessity ─ her family had always opted to use ancient Nordlysian, even after departing from their homeland, if only to feel closer to the community that existed no longer.
“My name is Jahra,” she tells the woman with twisted obsidian horns and expressive crimson eyes. There is a level of recognition that the finned woman experiences as she analyzes this stranger's open body language; her own would have been the same, had their roles been reversed.
She opens her mouth again, makes to ask after their whereabouts, when the sapphire-eyed woman spies the stallion for the first time. He is bright against the backdrop of the dark and foreboding ocean. His eyes glow, and they look upon the red-painted woman as if thirsty for a clean drink of water that will never come. She shifts her weight against the moist sand beneath her to better view the pair. “What is this place?” she asks, loud enough for them both to hear, as her perceptive gaze moves between the two ─
A kelpie, she suspects, and the unrequited.
@Boudika & @Tenebrae the flowers chorused, "bloom now ─ bloom free" ─rise, again
