IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse. 

HER HEART WEARS WISDOM SKIN AND WIT WARMED SPLENDOR, THE ECHOES OF A WAR CRY HOLDING IT'S FOUR CHAMBERS TOGETHER.

That night Boudika danced. She, in front of her stranger-crowd. She, fire-lit and golden. Only the most dedicated of the audience might notice that her usual fury was absent, replaced with a poignant, exquisite sadness. Boudika's war-drums, tonight, had been replaced by a sobbing violin, a violin that threw its pitch this way and that like a sinking ship in tall, tall waves. There was a crescendo, somewhere, perhaps. And the golden ribbons she tied in her too-short mane—or so the manager said—were tossed to meet it, and her head rose, and fell, rose, and fell. Each time Boudika threw it back, her mind was painted with the image of it slit and bleeding red, although she could not quite say why. Perhaps it was because she wore war-paint, and none of the audience knew the nature, the morbidity, of her flashing, brazen colours.

That, to Boudika, was tragic. Tragic in a way that an unmarked grave was. To them it glimmered and shone gorgeously in the dim firelight, and the air smelled of sweet liquor and the smoke of thick, flavoured cigars. Boudika wore her people’s war-colours in a way that made her feel dirty, and forgotten. She wore her people’s war-colours in a desperate attempt to cross the sea or… even more sharply, to scorn them, to scorn everything she had ever been taught.

The violin wailed a Khashran song, one Orestes had hummed between prison bars and sang gently, gently, so gently that Boudika could barely see the glint of his shark’s teeth in the darkness of the cell that neighboured hers. And he would lean hard against the bars that separated them, so that the metal burned his flesh, and he would sing to her in his siren’s song and Boudika would lean back. At first, Orestes would gnash his teeth against the burning bars—and Boudika never flinched, wanting a warrior’s end, lusting for his teeth more than his song. But then, over a matter of weeks, the violence ebbed and became, instead, an intimacy of sorrow. Their fates would forever be entwined. And they both leaned, so hard, against the bars--feeling the warmth of forbidden flesh, knowing the closeness among those who experience a very specific, unique type of pain together. And still, he sang--he sang and sang, and it was the last thing Boudika remembered of him, as they sank in the sea before she arrived at Novus. 

Listening to his song as she danced, Boudika felt the infuriating pinpricks of tears.

After the dance, Boudika left. She washed the gold from her skin and tore the ribbons from her mane, and began to haunt the streets of Denocte, as she often did when restless. The docks, at first, enticed her—but she drew away from them, toward the statue of Caligo and the glimmer of moonstones on the streets. Staring at the statue, she remembered a similar one in Oresziah’s city square. A stallion, massive and wrought of the black stone from the cliffs. The stallion had been rearing, and thrusting a trident into the stomach of a twisting beast. The beast was a Khashran in the midst of transformation, with the rear end of a horse and the front of a shark.

The Caligo statue was very different, Boudika thought, and turned away. Both images: the one of Caligo behind her and the dark one of her memory, were a far cry from the tragedy of the violin. However, her skin crawled with the feeling of being watched; with something seeing through her. Boudika had shrugged off the urge to pray more often than once, but that did not change the statue’s cold-hard stare creeping at the nape of her neck. But Boudika knew only how to shrug it away, and continue into the darkness of the Night Court. There were jugglers and street-dancers, vendors, children running painted in the streets. Dragons fluttered above her and below her, both, and occasionally she glimpsed a bright-eyed alley-cat. Nothing held her interest, however, because within her cried the sea.

There was a chasm inside her. A chasm that ached and pulled and caused her to walk circles in the city of Denocte, dark and alive with magic. Dark and enticing, seductive, safe, where there was no threat of flesh-eating horses that would emerge from the sea and wage war upon them. A war we began, Boudika remembered.

Orestes came to her again and again, in her mind, a torturous image that she could not escape. What would he think of Denocte Intrinsically, Boudika knew he would belong far better than she. He, with his raw heart and aching songs. He, with the eyes older than the land, as old as the sea. He, with that genuine laugh, sharp like a gull’s cry. And she. Sharp in a way that was not becoming. Restless as a tiger in a cage. Directionless. Alone. But what must he feel?

And the perpetual conclusion, of her tortured thoughts: he was dead. The sooner Boudika accepted that fact, the better off she would be.

A glinting knife caught her warrior’s eye. Boudika stopped mid-step; her head shot sharply in the direction of the flash, her muscled coiled to react. There was a silver mare leaning against the wall, in the darkness. Spiralling a knife. The gesture would have been threatening, if not so rhythmic, if not so mindless. Boudika approached and everything in her bristled, everything in her lusted for a fight—blood, she knew, would ease the tension of her guilt. It would clear her mind. It would restore her to violent, intense purpose.

What is a tiger hunter, her father had asked. Without the tiger?

The echo in her mind: nothing, nothing, nothing.

Boudika did not expect to recognise the mare. But she did, in a way that she recognized people she heard spoken of, and in a way that she reocgnized those who frequented Denocte's docks. Her morning runs often ended there, where she would stare forlornly at the ships and imagine passage to her home that was no longer a home. This mare, however, was different than most. She was a blade, personified--hard and silver and, somehow, seductively mysterious. The words came out before she could help herself. “You’re the captain with the gutted kelpie on her ship.” A statement, devoid of emotion. And Boudika's face was her warrior’s face. And Boudika's eyes were her demon’s eyes, glinting red in a bald face. It would not be difficult to see Boudika for what she once was; for what she would always be, no matter how-guilt ridden, how pacifistic.

"Copperhead" knew how to gut a water horse, from stem to stern. She knew how to pin their throat with a trident in such a way that it did not kill them, but pinched the blood of the jugular so that darkness overtook them, swift and inevitable. Was that not how she had captured Orestes? She knew what their hot breath felt like against her skin. She knew the lust of their songs. But she also knew their love.

Their beauty.

And thinking of it, the image of the ship in her mind, Boudika felt irritated. You have no right to display them as such hideous things. For water horses were many things; but even in their death throes they were beautiful.

SHE RISES LIKE ATHENA ON A NIGHT OF VICTORY DANCING. SHE RISES LIKE THE BLOOD MOON IN A SKY OF A THOUSAND STARS BURSTING

HOW WE FORGET
tomb came from swell, swell from the rise of sea - a wake from an opening in ice. A ship - lit by a canopy of clouds under the cupol of night - appears perpetually in the act of changing course. 

HERE IS WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU: ICARUS LAUGHED AS HE FELL. THREW HIS HEAD BACK AND YELLED INTO THE WINDS, ARMS SPREAD WIDE, TEETH BARED TO THE WORLD. (THERE IS A BITTER TRIUMPH IN CRASHING WHEN YOU SHOULD BE SOARING.)

The silence would have unnerved her if it were not a tactic Boudika had used herself, in the past. Certainly. She would have been squirming beneath the silver woman’s gaze; uncomfortable as the silence grew, and grew. For those eyes bore into her, and they were glacial; eyes that belonged not to the sea but to stone, unmoving, unamused. There was a predatory smile to accompany the stare. All teeth and, also, ghastly—not unlike the creature her ship depicted with so little tact. Boudika’s anger simmered; but anger was, perhaps, the wrong word. Was it disgust? Was it intrigue? The emotion rolled within her stomach, and more than anything, it seemed a little righteous. But Boudika could not be righteous; Boudika knew this, more intimately than any other truth. You have no right to feel this rage.

“An interesting reputation you keep, Silver Captain.” But Boudika had not heard of her reputation. The word “captain” was spoken with the tight regard of a soldier for a general, with no intonation or expression to suggest sarcasm. Merely a straight face, apathetic—or—murderous?  Boudika did not know the woman’s name. She knew nothing else about her—and yet, what Boudika knew was enough. The ghastly carving remained in her mind and it soiled her trips to the docks; to Boudika, the silver captain was a much a part of the myth as the ship itself. She did not need a name, or an identity; the carving preceded all of that, spoke louder than any words the woman might share. Explained. Reckoned. 

The knife hung in the air. 

Her eyes settled on it, in the way water would before a storm; so, so still. What existed within her then was something primordial; something feral. It was years and years of seeing knives or fangs and knowing that survival could hinge on a nanosecond reaction, on a reaction that was not thought but pure, visceral physicality. And so her eyes were indifferent but burning; her eyes were a tiger’s eyes. 

There was nothing more violent than a knife suspended, a knife ready to sentence. You have no right to feel this rage. 

But Boudika was not afraid. There was little left in the world that would unsettle her; unnerve her. Only the sea in a storm. Only the sea on a calm day, beseeching. The woman was smiling in a way that should have been terrible. She was smiling in a way that ought to have evoked something in Boudika; but the huntress cocked her head, and a lion paced behind her eyes. The Captain's expression was one of ugly cruelties, and perhaps that only emphasised Boudika's dislike. She disdained cheap smiles; malevolent smiles; and the thought drew Amoraq to her briefly, violently, but it was not the same. 

Boudika returned the trick; a long silence, a rotting silence that ended with a vague answer. “I don’t want anything.” I want to burn your ship. I want to never share my love for them; my hate for them. But those were things she could not say. And to see the anger in her eyes as hate would be a mistake; it was jealousy, insipid and unsuited for such a proud creature. Possessive, disgusted.  “I think there are better ways to show a myth, or a story, or a killing. That’s all.” 

Her voice came out light, airy; and now the biting tone was there, in full. “There is no tact.” For a moment, brief and pure, Boudika wondered if the captain saw her as a pacifist. A naive and ignorant girl. It would not be a lie, in the moment—but if her entire life had been stretched out, observed, it would certainly be misleading. She had finished a genocide. She had slaughtered—by her hand or not—the everlasting Prince of a Thousand Tides and somewhere, in the dark sea, she imagined he rotted at the ocean floor bound in iron chains and covered in gold. An entire species of water horse; forever condemned; forever dead. She knew the ones that remained were Bound in slavery far from the sea, with muzzles of gleaming metal. 

To see the carving was to see a tiger cartooned; to see a beast brought low, disrespectfully, ignorantly, and her people had always accomplished such feats only through the glory of hard-wrought metal and the blood of their own children. To see it shown so cheaply was a disgrace. “And what is it you captain, Captain? Where do you sail, on your pirate ship?” A hope, iridescent and foolish, rose in her: Oresziah? and already Boudika knew she did not want a woman such as this anywhere near her homeland, as traitorous as it may have been. At the thought of Oresziah, her anger deflated--the twisting monster of her jealousy was slain.

Perhaps Boudika felt so strongly because she saw herself in the woman's cool eyes. They are monsters, she had believed for so very long. There is nothing beautiful about them, except in death.

And then there was Orestes. Orestes, with a soul larger than life could contain. Orestes, with his reincarnations, with his old, old heart. Orestes, who was the sea. Orestes, who had forgiven her. Orestes, who she had loved when he sang. And in her mind was the last song, the lost song, as her head fell below the waves and her world went dark. In her mind, was the song that lead her to Novus. And her stomach twisted because once, once, she had hated them too. 

THE WAX SCORCHED HIS SKIN, RAN BLAZING TRAILS DOWN HIS BACK, HIS THIGHS, HIS ANKLES, HIS FEET. FEATHERS FLOATED LIKE PRAYERS PAST HIS FINGERS, CLOSE ENOUGH TO SNATCH BACK. DEATH BREATHED BURNING KISSES AGAINST HIS SHOULDERS, WHERE HIS WINGS JOINED THE HARNESS. THE SUN PAINTED EVERYTHING IN SHADES OF GOLD. (THERE IS A CERTAIN BEAUTY IN SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE AND WATCHING FROM THE CENTRE OF THE FLAMES.) 

AT NIGHT, IN BED, MY LIES EMERGE AS PEARLS
The first, in midwinter, Tahitian gray and silver, cold against my throat, was born a foreign object, perilous inside my chest. I slept all night to ease the pain, and while I did, I made it round, lustrous.

HERE IS WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU: ICARUS LAUGHED AS HE FELL. THREW HIS HEAD BACK AND YELLED INTO THE WINDS, ARMS SPREAD WIDE, TEETH BARED TO THE WORLD. (THERE IS A BITTER TRIUMPH IN CRASHING WHEN YOU SHOULD BE SOARING.)


Her reflection wavers, nearly imperceptibly, in the gleam of the knife. 

And Boudika experiences something strange, in that nearly undetectable glimmer of light and colour. We are not so different. Wasn’t that clear from their locked stares, the meeting of an unmovable object and unstoppable force? Wasn’t there a battle of equal wills, in their stretched silences, in the cruel humour of the silver captain’s smile, or the apathy of the tiger’s eyes? Was there not something to be said for Boudika’s jealousy, her anger, her emotions that for one moment were directed at this creature she recognized as the same and utterly different? I hate them too, her throat closed around the words, around tears, around a scream. Because that was untrue. I love them.

All because of a carving. All because of how intimately Boudika knows what it feels like to drown. 

An interesting reputation is necessary. 

In her mind: locks of her crimson hair falling to her father’s short, strokes of a knife. You cannot give them a reason to doubt you. The whispers, of the boys at the academy: didn’t you hear, her father, the general—when Bondike was a colt, the general took him to the sea and pushed him under the waves, and left him for hours, for th—the Khashran… and they came out of the sea, but didn’t take him? Vercingtorix, almost smiling, in the way that he did, when she drew blood in a long line on his cheek during a spar: you’ll always be faster than me. Her father, after the capture of Orestes, staring at her with respect for the first time in her life: you dove off the cliff, after them—and Boudika, not knowing to say whether it was out of fear of failure or love.

What is reputation? The academy, again, when she was punished for speaking out against an instructor—the weight of the rock sled as she dragged it, inch by inch, across the courtyard. The spectators as they watched, cheered, celebrated. She was the first of her class to complete the task. The only one who had not collapsed from exhaustion, to be dragged to the infirmary covered in sweat. Years later, her father: you took the Prince of a Thousand Seas, you took him by yourself— days, weeks, months later: walking down the Main Street of the city, as those she had fought so hard to defend threw rocks and stinging copper coins, screaming, betrayer, betrayer. The weight of the iron on her back could have been a cross. The way Orestes had first looked at her with the hateful apathy of a shark. The way he had later sung to her, the way he said, always said, it is in your nature. 

It must be a novelty, Boudika thinks, to have the consistency to keep a reputation. Reputations mean nothing to her, a mare who had been first a savour, then a betrayer. A warrior who had been a general’s son, and later Oresziah’s banished daughter. Reputations were illy fit words, transient, unreliable. Perception, after all, was the only reality that matters. And reputation could never survive to perception, whatever it was. The only thing that had ever changed, Boudika thought. Was that I revealed myself as a daughter instead of a son. That was all it had taken, to skin her deeds of their meaning and bleed them dry. 

Then there were the silver captain’s words, following Boudika’s deflated sense of anger, of righteousness. Her realisation, that they were not so different. Not a myth, or a story. Not a killing, either—just a warning, but not to sailors. And I’m a pirate. I don’t care much for tact. The Dark Strider. Once, the Sea Star, before my… before she went down in a storm, with the rest of my crew. I sail wherever the winds and interesting rumours take me—we rarely follow a set routes, and we seek what we can find. The story comes together between the aching silences, the stretching tension. It comes together in bits and pieces, just barely, and Boudika’s expression does not change. She knows she is too intense. She knows her eyes are too hard, too unwavering. Yet there is an honestly to the other woman that Boudika respects, that she appreciates. 

Boudika wouldn’t have caught the nearly unnoticeable shift, the pause, if not for her intensity. The other woman states: once, the Sea Star, before my… the trailing off, the changing of thoughts, the shift of the sharp smile to something raw, jagged, wounded. Boudika would not have caught it, if not for her stubborn, predatory intensity. To someone else, the threads may not connect so easily. But it is a familiar patchwork to Boudika, a tapestry, where the story of a ship sunk in a storm to a mass of water horses weaves itself. Boudika sees them in her mind's eye, with gleaming skin and bright, predatory eyes. A feeding frenzy, like sharks overtop one another. It is too easy for her to see a horse gutted, and blood blooming like so many roses in the water. It is too easy to remember what it is like to drown, lightening and waves swelling large, mountainous, crashing overhead. Perhaps this is why the woman needed such a reputation. 

Yes. Boudika understands this, more than any other thing. And perhaps she is overthinking; perhaps she is connecting constellations that do not exist, inventing a story she wants rather than knows. But her heart longs to feel not-alone, and in the brief, raw hurt of the other woman’s grief—that ephemeral, nearly imaginary shift, like light on water—Boudika thinks she understands. She knows what it feels like to rot inside. 

She only asks, “Do you still love the sea?” 

And waits.

And waits. 

Boudika is too afraid to share her own truths. Passage. Rumours. Neither. A soul who knows my hurt. But the image of the carving remains fresh in Boudika’s mind, and she knows this woman does not yet understand how to love something she hates and, maybe, fears. So Boudika steels herself, and gives a truth. “I don’t know.” And in giving it, the rest comes. “I’m from an island that kills them. The water horses. An island with black cliffs and rock beaches, rain, fog. We’ve fought them for centuries. There aren’t any here, not really. Not like they are out at sea.” But how does she also say, I miss hearing them sing, at night, from the village. I miss their ghostly cries on the beach, and seeing them run in the shape of water, moving into the shape of something else? How does she say: without them, I don’t know who I am?

The huntress stares at the other huntress. She stares, and she knows, and doesn’t know. And her throat is tight and her eyes are steely, and she hates and loves this woman in the way she hates and loves everything that reminds her of the past. The aching in her is a hollow ring, the feeling of glass shattering, the sound of it beautiful even as it breaks. She at last moves, breaking the stalemate that has erected itself between them. Boudika shifts, her muscles slack with the leonine grace of something that can kill or laze, and leans against the wall a foot or so from the other woman. The Night Court is alive around them but Boudika feels as though, for a moment, they share a grave.  


THE WAX SCORCHED HIS SKIN, RAN BLAZING TRAILS DOWN HIS BACK, HIS THIGHS, HIS ANKLES, HIS FEET. FEATHERS FLOATED LIKE PRAYERS PAST HIS FINGERS, CLOSE ENOUGH TO SNATCH BACK. DEATH BREATHED BURNING KISSES AGAINST HIS SHOULDERS, WHERE HIS WINGS JOINED THE HARNESS. THE SUN PAINTED EVERYTHING IN SHADES OF GOLD. (THERE IS A CERTAIN BEAUTY IN SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE AND WATCHING FROM THE CENTRE OF THE FLAMES.)