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+---- Thread: [P] the water-born don't fear drowning (/showthread.php?tid=4408)
the water-born don't fear drowning - Boudika - 12-15-2019
Listen.
Listen, listen.
The sea is singing. Do you hear her?
A mare stands on the seashore. The surf laps at her ankles; foam twists about them, enticingly. And out the ocean darts, back and away, to the dark and mysterious depth that contains everything. Then: a pause. Then: she comes back, sweetly, licking at the mare's ankles and hooves.
The moon is not full; it is somewhere between, bleeding the light from everything. Beneath her silver brilliance, Boudika is only two colours: black, and darker black. Her face and legs are the only thing that differ. Her face and legs; they are the colour of bone-white death, the same shade of a blanched face, the colour of fear.
She stands listening, listening:
To something like a heartbeat,
to something like a song,
to something fathomless,
ageless,
eternal,
forever,
more.
It is a conversation with a god. Her ears flick forward, entranced. The sea goes shush, shush, shush against the shore. She steps forward—
it bats at her knees, now.
Further, further,
at her chest.
With a keening wail, she dives beneath the surface.
— — —
When Boudika emerges, the seal’s life-blood drips down her chin. The thing struggles in her jaws but she spits it on the shore where the sea sings a eulogy.
She stares at what she has conquered; what she has killed. And does her blood not rise to meet the ocean’s crescendo? Does it not rush in her ears, in her mind?
Listen…
Listen,
the sea is singing, the waves against the sand, a shush, shush, the crash of water against the shore. Listen, listen; the sea is singing! There is death beneath the surface. There is a monster outside the waves, with flanks heaving like a tiger’s, dark and striped and slick with salt.
Boudika senses him as she feasts. She senses him, as if through a dream;
does he know how heavily he breathes, or the intimate tempo his heart?
She does.
Does he know his body smells like salt, sweat; meat..?
She does.
Does he know he is answering the song?
A cloud passes over the moon.
Boudika raises her head from the carcass. She says, in a voice that rushes with the tide, “Hello again, shadow-caster.” Her mouth is a ghastly grin.
Can you hear it? Can you hear it?
@Tenebrae
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Tenebrae - 12-16-2019
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
This is not the first time she has come to him with blood upon her lips.
Tenebrae smells it upon the air and where it lays itself upon his tongue. It tastes of metal and sea-salt and life ebbing away with the tide. He takes a breath so full of sea-brine air. He listens to the keening of the sea, so like a straining violin.
He listens to his feet as they pad upon the shifting sands. In the moonlight each grain is as ash and bone, the curve of the beach like a rib reaching out from the crags of its earth body and out into its starlight blood of sea and spray.
She is a chip, a dark fracture in the unblemished perfection of this midnight beach of bone. The seal falls limp from her lips and lies open and broken upon the sand. Its blood seeps out in a dark, dark stain - black as ink. He might have faltered - if he were any other man.
But he is not any other man.
There is nothing normal about Tenebrae; from his creation to his monastic life to the magic that runs through his ebony veins. There is no amount of blood that can sicken his constitution. The Stallion’s eyes lift from her mauled catch, rising up through the blood that falls from her lips - again, again. But this is not her blood, Tenebrae knows the smell of the blood in her veins and this is too full of blubber and fear.
His gaze finds the curve of her lips that reaches and reaches and reaches. They stretch beyond where they once stopped, they grow long and thin and sharp as a knife edge. Ah. There are no thorns between her teeth now. Her teeth are thorns sharp and drenched with a hunter’s prize.
Here he now sees the low, low crimson - once like fire that now glows like embers. Her fire is burned out, drenched in salt-water and kelpie-magic. Ah yes, the monk knows what she has become. Her gaze is like thorns along the muscles of his throat, his spine, digging, digging. Oh Boudika.
“Hello warrior-girl.” Tenebrae murmurs lightly as he stops a distance from her and her quarry. His darkness reaches beyond him. She dares to reach and reach and touch with bold fingers along the curve of the smile that splits Boudika’s cheeks. Darkness cuts itself upon the points of sharp, predator teeth. “When did you swap your flowers and trident for the ocean and teeth?” His voice is darkness that pours like whiskey into her ears, into the space between them.
The ocean pulls at its girl’s slender limbs and the Stallion’s darkness plays with the moonlight upon the crests of its waves. Shadows fall into the scultped lines of her face, carving her finer and finer, more angular, more predatory. The sea frames its prize and breathes its victory out across her skin and into his ears.
Wariness sings a song of salt and smoke in his heart - his heart that beats its rhythm out for her, for her, for her. He thinks she can hear it, in the way she looks at him, no longer coy but wild and deep and ravenous.
She was the girl who opened his pledge-blind eyes. Who roused temptation in his soul and had him strangling himself with regret.
“Ah, Boudika.” He sighs with a smile and a laugh, for her, for him. “How am I to defend against teeth?” And in his voice is the clash of trident and shadows and upon his lips is a smile as black as the ocean’s deep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Boudika - 12-16-2019
There is no light to blind her; no jewel-bright flowers dangling from her lips; no gleaming trident, no sword of shadows. For the first time in her life, it is only her; it is only her, and there is something girlish, nearly innocent, in the way she stares at him with wide, thoughtful eyes. Boudika is unsurprised when he does not face her with fear; she is unsurprised when his shadows dance, almost playfully, along all the hard, sharp angles of her mouth. It pleases her, even, to be faced with such courage; it reminds her a bit of her own humanity.
Hello, warrior-girl.
Boudika thinks about playing coy; about dancing around the question he asks. But her new nature will not allow it. Her new nature causes her to flick her tail, toss back her head. “When the endless day broke, shadow-caster, and I swam beneath Caligo’s bright moon.”
In her mind’s eye there is Amaroq beneath the waves; there is their dance of teeth, flailing hooves, of bubbles cascading backward toward the shimmering light above. In her mind’s eye, she breaks the surface, she shares her name and something as old as time blooms in her new birth.
But Boudika never saw him again; after the island, he could not be found.
There is bitterness there, soothed only by the whispering shush, shush, shush, the cool lap of waves against her white-dipped ankles, the way the breeze does not chill her to the bone. Then there are Tenebrae's shadows; searching, darting; nearly caressing.
Why does she not mind, the touch of the darkness? The scent of blood, leaden, fills her nostrils; but even with a full stomach there is something dangerously enticing about the beat of his heart, steadier than it ought to be. Boudika is nearly offended as she steps over the carcass, toward him. There is no fear, hot and nearly sensual. (She’s learned, in some dark and animalistic part of her self, just how sensual fear can be; just how it calls her, opening up chaste and willingly, even in its unwillingness.)
“Perhaps you don’t, Tenebrae.” Boudika uses the voice of a coyote cajoling a dog from the warmth of the fire; teasing, tempting, dark, dark, dark. Boudika licks the blood from her lips, from her teeth. Her smile edges down, down, down. There is something leonine about her even now; her tail lashes her flanks and Boudika laughs, too. She is close enough to tempt herself; but in the nature of all predators, her lazy confidence suggests disinterest.
Don’t run she thinks.
I could not help myself.
But Boudika knows he won’t. That is why she presses the issue; why she steps closer again, dragging a hoof lethargically across the soft, wet sand. Boudika could nearly touch him now. If she wanted. If she trusted herself not to be overwhelmed by the heat of his skin, the way all salt—sweat or blood or both—wants to return to the sea. This is why she asks in a voice as achingly full as a wolf’s howl, “Do you still believe I won’t hurt you?”
@Tenebrae
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Tenebrae - 12-16-2019
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
When the endless day broke, shadow-caster, and I swam beneath Caligo’s bright moon.
Tenebrae cannot help but smile. Oh, he cannot help but see the scene of her ending and becoming. There is violence in Boudika’s death but is it not in everything? It is there in the bleeding sunset, in passion, in the ravaging of the sea. So Tenebrae does not stop the smile that curles the ebony of his lips. It is dark, dark like Denocte’s soul. “Sounds perfect,” the Stallion murmurs for though she is changed, though his tongue begs for the fire of her to return, bright as a spark, he revels in the ritual of her becoming.
The shadows press upon her salt-slick flesh and feel the way she stills beneath their touch, allowing. Curious, feline, those shadows weave between her limbs and wonder what they felt as they ran across the bottom of the ocean. Tenebrae feels their restlessness, they tremble into the threads of his being that wind together within him, holding him tight, ascending him up, up into the living and existing.
“Is your trident gone for good?” He asks, almost a lament. He does not dare to wonder why a warrior girl with teeth, a taste for flesh and a weapon would be any more appealing to him than the leonine creature before him. Was she not dangerous enough? Should his heart not be racing?
As if she knows, as if she yearns to hear his heart skip, Boudika steps. She steps delicately, sensuously over the seal carcass and moves, no, prowls toward him. Her face is bone white, long and graceful, her curves are not curves but the undulations of the sea, the twining of a river as it bends and winds its way out to sea. It curls around mountains and hills and carves the valley into its image and there is nothing that can stop it - nothing that can stop her.
She has his heart stumbling now, she has this man leaning back, back away from her. His shadows adorn her. They become the dark of the coals her crimson skin lights. She is the rippling heat of lava tumbling into the sea and Tenebrae is but the smoke the parts as she melts the world.
His breath escapes as if this is his seventh hour of battle and his body is breaking. Her smile is a vice about his lungs, it is wide and sharp and endless, endless. His darkness shatters like the sea upon the rocks of her and there is fear within Tenebrae. There is fear that has his heart fleeing like a gazelle before her leonine gaze.
It is fear, fear, fear.
It is desire, desire, desire.
She looks up to the moon but his gaze is tumbling down, down, down the column of her throat.
How am i to defend against teeth? He had asked her, but she chases his smile from her lips with a flick of her tail, tiger bright in the moonlight.
Perhaps you don’t, Tenebrae. He says nothing though his smile is like a groan across his lips for already she has him held. Already he can feel the way her teeth hold him and it feels nothing like a seal’s agony and death. It feels like living.
His ears fall back, his nape arches and the shadows billow they rise before her, as wings as warnings. They reach for her, they push at her, the press upon her, they drape themselves across her adorning her, mocking him.
Slowly, slowly he breathes out and measures his every exhale - holding back desire and the fear that spirals below. Boudika steps toward him again, slow, slow, carving the sand beneath the toe she drags. Hunger, hunger rises ravenous and dangerous between them.
Tenebrae’s eyes snap up from her leg, up to the glow of her ember eyes and the horns that spiral, spiral. Run, Run, Run, the word presses into the space she leaves between them. What would it be to run? A part of him longs to, just to see what this new nature of hers might do. Already she has met him with a trident and now, now she is something so wholly more dangerous, alluring.
His vows whisper along his soul, echoing into every part of him. He was not made for girls, only a goddess and her night kingdom. He was made only to crave the wild of the sun, not the wild of kelpie girls. He is made to swallow the sun.
He is a Disciple and safe in such knowledge he no longer leans away but stands up, warrior tall before her. Slowly, slowly he smiles as he meets her question full of lupine glory. “No.” He murmurs reckless and yearning. There is a violence within him that rises to meet and match hers, he knows only prayer, only war.
It is craving that has him reaching forward, that has his head tilting, neck twisting as his lips reach out to the corner of her too long smile. “Well then, I had better know what I am up against,” The monk says as he moves to touch her, like his darkness had, to feel the line of teeth behind her mouth.
“I am no seal, Boudika.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Boudika - 12-16-2019
Why don’t you just touch me?
The question of a warrior-turned-dancer-turned-monster.
Boudika asks it in the way her gaze devours him; her eyes study each hard line, each angle, as his magic explores her. Oh, yes. She devours him with her eyes. She savours each smile he gives, and nearly sashays into the embrace of his reaching, prodding, curious shadows. Each flick of her eyes beneath her long lashes, the absolute dilation of her pupils; it serves to illustrate a beastly point: Boudika stares at him like a piece of meat.
Does he not realise how he smells?
That alive, heart thrumming in his ribs, he is so much more tantalising than a corpse? Orestes’s words are on the tip of her tongue, nearly an apology, nearly an explanation. It’s in my nature.
“It was perfect.” The way she says it, almost a question, an unfinished sentence. Her teeth feel like a promise in her mouth; she tongues them where he cannot see, and says, quietly, “I could show you.” There is nothing darker than the sea, shadow-caster. Don't you know the moon makes her dance?
“My trident will never be gone for good.” It is a simple admission. Boudika does not mind sharing it. Even now she sees it in Isra’s castle; even now she knows where it rests, waiting for her with more patience than a lover.
Yes.
His heart, his heart.
Oh, it is so strong. Boudika ducks her head, her ears pin; and then turn toward him, wickedly sharp, wickedly pointed. It beats, beats, beats. She hears the rush of blood with the shushing of the sea and together they make The Song, and she listens with fierce delight. Boudika wears his shadows with pride; she laughs the moment her approach causes an undulation within him; and that laugh grows as sharp and high as a gull.
Yet Tenebrae stands. He stands tall and straight as any pine; she nearly loves him for it, in the way the tiger loves the strength of the stag; in the way the tiger loves the strength of another tiger. As always, Tenebrae is shrouded and looks like no mere stag; the shadows come from him; and those that exist by themselves strain about him, as if seeking approval, as if dancing to a song that only they can hear. There is something more than fear; Boudika senses it, she remembers it as the tension that existed between herself and Amaroq.
Something like want; something sweet as sin.
Boudika can nearly taste it. He presses her with magic; her muscles strain but she feels, she knows, magic is nothing for the thing that writhes within her like life itself.
Then he settles himself. Breath by breath. Boudika listens to it. Her eyes drop from the sky to him, him, him; and they stay fixed there with pinpoint intensity. His eyes skip from her legs, her eyes, her spiralling horns.
No. Well then, I had better know what I am up against.
Just like that the game is up.
Do you know hunger like the hollow pit of a fruit, gutted out? Do you know hunger like something that was once full, but is now empty? Do you know hunger like death does, looking at life?
Why don’t you just touch me?
His violence rises to meet hers; but Boudika is no warrior that he can caress. She is not a girl with flowers in her mouth, or a trident by her side.
I am no seal, Boudika.
Everything is still. And she is no woman.
She stands trembling beneath the feel of his touch; perhaps if Boudika were older, a little wiser, it would not undo her so. A sound escapes her, neither moan nor gasp nor cry but something that is all of those things and none of them.
Now her heartbeat undulates.
Now the sea sings in her veins and the darkness fills her to the brim with wanting, longing, hunger.
Boudika does not play games anymore.
With the sudden intensity of a shark attack, of a crocodile lunging from the deep, she twists her head and extends forward. It is a sideways snap meant to lodge his face firmly in her mouth, with particular care not to place her leopard seal-like teeth in the soft pits of his eyes. The gesture of it is the sick mockery of a killer’s kiss; and if she succeeds it is with the soft pricking of those teeth against his skin, the taste of blood, the thrum-thrum-thrum of her heart beating, beating, beating—
I could show you.
Some things are too perfect to eat.
Have you ever held something sweet in your mouth, just to savour it? Tonguing over the hard edges; letting the taste melt, melt, melt on your tongue? Have you ever tasted something so rich it would last for an eternity?
Some moments are too perfect to let go.
She wants more. Boudika twists her neck, twists, twist, twists, ducks her forelegs down to drag him to the sand.
You want to be an offering?
You want to be a sacrilege?
I could show you.
@Tenebrae || “speech”
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Tenebrae - 12-16-2019
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
I could show you.
Boudika says sweet like temptation. The words are soft as they fall from her tongue. They curl and drift and tumble into his ears. He smiles, amused, enthralled by her words, by the idea of becoming other beneath Caligo’s midnight.
“Mmm,” He hums as if he considers it, as if her words are temptation. “No, Boudika,” The Disciple breathes, soft as a sigh, coarse and flammable as whiskey. “My goddess would not approve. She made me to eat suns... not flesh.” He knows, he knows how he tastes upon the air, he feels her gaze upon him hot with the breath of desire, sharp with a tiger’s hunger. He smiles, daring, bating, relishing.
There is a violence thrumming within him. It rises in answer of her gaze. It is as violent as he has seen in the gaze of any war-drunk man. Yet there is something beautiful in her gaze. There is the primitive urge of need, of survival, of wanting and having to hunt. Tenebrae knows that hunger, it is like the insatiable need to chase the sun, to pierce it from the sky and swallow down its every shard of light.
Her desire is flesh. His is light.
Together they crave.
Together they hunger.
The sea laughs for the two violent creatures that stand upon her bone-sand shore.
“She made me to swim in shadows not water…” He trails off as he watches her, as he imagines her suspended, cradled by the wild salt of the ocean. He can see the wild rise of her hair, an undulating halo of crimson about her face, her tail twining about her limbs. It is a beautiful image. It is a forbidden image. Yet such restrictions do not stop him demanding to know, “What is it like to swim in the darkest parts of the sea?” Where the light cannot reach. Where darkness reigns supreme? By the gods he might let her turn him just for that. He steps nearer, wanton.
Why don’t you just touch me?
Her eyes ask him, not once not twice but over and over. Though he is a foolish man, with no experience or knowing of desire or lust or all the other wants of the flesh, he does at least see that there is nothing simple in her question. Tenebrae knows that to touch her is to invite death. To touch her is to kiss violence.
So he does.
His lips touch hers. It is a kiss, a caress, wicked with daring. It is brimful with desire.
He wants and she wants. Together they want: desire and violence, suns and meat. They are Nature and portraits of her savage, primitive beauty.
Boudika trembles beneath his kiss. Tenebrae can feel it in the hum of her teeth beneath her lips. She releases a sound - it is a song for the sea - uncontainable, wild as waves. His lips might have smiled (where they touch over the corner of hers) if she did not strike like a cat.
Her mouth pulls from his and parts, baring her teeth as she lunges for his face. But Tenebrae was waiting and wanting. He spins away, fast, fast, but she is no woman and her teeth find a line across his face. They cut a line from beneath his sigil, diagonally across from the corner of his eye down toward the other side of his lips. Blood glows from the line, white, white with all the light that he has swallowed.
But Boudika is not content to merely cut. She clasps him at his throat and twists. He resists, his muscles bunching, the darkness hissing, at her gall. Yet he goes down and the sand sprays beneath their flailing limbs. The sand meets him as he lands with a grunt. His forelimbs lash out for her, once twice, reaching for her chest. Yet there is a smile sharp and dangerous with daring upon his lips. It is lit by his light-glowing blood that falls into the corner of his lips.
Boudika holds him, feline and strong. He laughs gently as he lies, applauding her, he relishing her. His blood leaks from where her teeth hold him. The shadows twist and turn and form into a trident, a dark doppelganger of her own. He points it towards her throat, toward where her pulse spikes like his and makes their breath rush, rush, rush.
Tenebrae, Disciple of Caligo, a Stallion Made to Swallow the Sun, lies pliant beneath her. “Do I taste good, Boudika?’ He wonders what light-drunk blood tastes like, “Can you taste sunlight? Or are we all just meat and bone?”
The seal lies still and open beside him as Boudika kneels like a god between them. Tenebrae dares her, dares her to feast and to kill. “I will be a greater meal than the seal, at least.” He says low, low and hot like the crimson of her skin. Hot like lava meeting the sea.
His shadow-trident presses between them warning, warning. “Have you killed more than a seal yet, warrior-girl?” He asks, soft, soft, soft as shadows trail along the line of her cheeks.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Boudika - 12-16-2019
It is the first time she has ever been kissed.
That is the thought that runs current-smooth between her actions; as he spins away from her and she marvels at her speed, her quickness. As Boudika marvels at her ability to catch him anyway, and press him to the sand like a sacrifice she remains this: a girl who has never been kissed before this strange shadow-caster, daring her.
There have always been barriers between her and the things she loves, the people she loves; there has always been duty, more firm than any physical prevention. There had even been the bars of prison; the weight of her own guilt. Reasons to refrain; reasons to turn away. Perhaps Amaroq had been close, by splitting her open and letting her taste the sea. But even he had not…
Tenebrae had, like temptation incarnate. There ought to be a barrier between them now; but she holds his throat between her teeth like one might clench something half-gone, something too good to let go. His blood is unlike anything she’s ever seen; it is like the blood of a god, dripping hot—hotter than normal—between her teeth, and streaming like liquid sunlight might.
His forelegs have battered her chest; his hoof has torn a crescent-shape mark across her breast, not so unlike the sigil he bares. It drips, drips, drips and is blacker then black.
Yet the Disciple laughs where he lays.
Tenebrae had the gall—and she trembles, still, with want that no longer seems to affect him. Was it a game, she wonders? Had she fallen for it anyway?
Why is she still trembling?
Perhaps it is because he does taste good; and her answer is another sound like the one before, neither moan not gasp nor sigh nor scream but the sea, ragged against the shore. He tastes like her becoming; he tastes like sunlight feels; he tastes like the calm sea; he tastes like salt, want, need. Perhaps it is because where she holds him between her jaws she can feel his pulse and that they are connected, one life into another; perhaps it is because the way his grey skin parts for her is its own kind of religion. Perhaps it is in that Boudika knows, ominously, one bite is not enough; she needs more, she wants more, with a kind of desire that pains her.
Boudika feels the prick of the trident —her eyes role toward it. Now there is anger brewing within her; he has stolen her own weapon, and for a moment the irony strikes her with a bone-deep bitterness.
Have you forgotten? a snide voice asks her. It is her own. That you were once a killer of your own kind? Have you forgotten your own nature?
Boudika watches it, watches it; she flexes her jaws; shifts them just enough to apply a threatening bit of pressure, more, more, until his breath becomes a strained gasping. Boudika has only ever experienced one thing more beautiful than this moment, and it was her own becoming.
Yet—the anger rises, and rises, and rises like the tide does. Slow, and then all at once. She spits him from her jaws and rises in a rear, all in one fluid motion. Boudika stamps at the sand near his face and draws away, lips peeled back into an ugly snarl. It is lit by his own blood.
“Would you like to know, shadow-caster, what it is like to swim in the deep? Where light is a memory? The ocean already swallows the sun; there is no need for you.” If he had missed her fire, it is here now. It is raging in her eyes. “I have spent a lifetime killing more than seals. You forget I have been many things before I have been free. And I will not have you make a game of my nature.”
Boudika is ugly now; her nostrils are thin slits and she already half-belongs to the sea. She pins her wickedly long ears and bares those wickedly long teeth. “Are you so tired of your discipline that you bring your boredom to my life?” Boudika paces and angry, restless line; her tail lashes; her flanks heave like a tiger’s mid-hunt. She does everything she can to not think of what it had felt like to have his throat between her jaws.
She hates the way her mind goes back to the press of his lips against her teeth; and how the memory feels like the branding of mockery. The sea goes, shh, shh, shh and Boudika spits his shining blood from her mouth. Suddenly she steels herself. Suddenly she is as hard, sharp, and apathetic as the edge of a gleaming blade. “Or is it that, try as you may, you cannot devour the sun?”
@Tenebrae || “speech”
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Tenebrae - 12-17-2019
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
He bleeds and she bleeds, each of them ripped open by their encounter; together they are exposed.
Yet it is Boudika who holds him to the sand, her teeth a vice within his throat. Sharklike she grasps him and from her mouth she feels the fleeing of his blood. He feels its white-hot trickle as it runs down the grooves of his throat. The tide washes in, reaching, reaching for its kelpie-girl and her second prize.
Each place where she pierces him is blistering pain yet Tenebrae is supplicant beneath her hold. He waits with his heart thundering within his chest. Does Boudika feel it where her teeth sit over artery and vein?
Her chest bleeds, he sees the crescent moon glow crimson at her breast. The irony is not lost on him and along that slender curve the moonlight smiles, turning her blood to glittering rubies. Her moon begins to weep its blood-bright tears and Tenebrae watches it until it trickles from his view.
The monk still smiles, though it is more a grimace from the pain of her hold, as he waits, waits, waits to see what her next move is. As he lies, he wonders why he is so still, why he waits quiet as a lamb in this leonine girl’s jaws. He craved a fight, did he not? He craved her attack, to see the beauty and strength of the kelpie she has become. Yet now he does not fight, not when he sees the crescent moon across her breast.
Maybe it is because of the way she trembles? The way she seems both dangerous and fragile in this moment. Their want connects them - it was his kiss upon the corner of hers, it is her teeth within his throat. He wonders if she will kill him. Does she tremble with the indecision of it? He lies still, wondering, waiting, instinct gathering in his limbs, his chest, his soul as suddenly her grasp tightens, tightens, tightens. He will not die at her hands, but neither does he fight her, he waits, waits, wondering.
She spits him out like dirt. His wound is gasping with the loss of her teeth, her hot breath and the cold air that replaces her - or maybe it is him who gasps and groans and chokes in his breath. Boudika rears back, a hoof striking beside his head. Sand sprays up her limb, across his face and she stalks away. Behind her he rises, through the tearing pain of the bite across his throat, through the lungs that grasp frantically at air, through the ire - a rage he cannot explain, that he has no name for.
Riled and leonine, Boudika paces as if he cages her, but he is no mere spectator. He lunges after her and his shadows rally. Tenebrae stalks her as if he were he silhouette; her moonshadow Disciple. He feasts upon her fury and lets it be as gasoline to his.
Ah but then she speaks. The words rip from her snarling lips and they are worse than the bite upon his throat. The Disciple tracks her, ominous and black, as hungry as she was. Within him his magic blooms, it rises ravenous as it swallows down the light about them. Darkness comes thick and abysmal deep. There, there is the fire in her eyes and he wants to swallow that too. She makes him thirst and no longer is it merely for fighting.
Each word is a whip across his flesh, a reprimand for a reckless man too trained in war and religion and not enough in life or women. If he flinches, it is hidden in the darkness he makes. The darkness that at least knows better than to touch her now, though it tracks her, reaching above, around, behind - but never meeting the black, black crimson of her skin.
He smiles, not with a game, no longer with delight. It is a smile as ugly as hers. IS this what they make each other? Ugly and broken? They bleed for each other and the sand paints their exchange upon its moonlit beach in white and crimson-black. She turns as wild as the sea, more mythical as he watches her and never has he beheld a creature that looks as other as he so often feels. Her nostrils are fine slits though they gasp at the air, her ears are fallen towers that crumble long, long into the feral tangle of her mane. Her lips peel back, back and her teeth glow white with his blood. Her lips- lips he now knows.
Do not make a game of my nature… She snarls as wicked-wild as the sea.
A game… a game… Suddenly Tenebrae recoils as if struck by the tsunami of her words. He peels away from her - away from the wound upon her chest, the gleam of blood upon her lips, the way she stalks feline across the beach. The spell shatters.
“It was not a game.” He murmurs, rough as gravel, even as he wonders, was it? But the memory of her lips upon his, the sharp of her teeth feels more than a phantom. He wanted a fight. No, he wanted more. The spell eekes away and he is left raw and exposed. He does not turn back to her but looks to the mountains, to where the Disciples live; He looks to Caligo’s seat. It was a game and he was as foolish as Adam. A fool to think it was ever about the want of the sun and not about lust. The ache of her bite mocks him, a righteous scar of punishment to warn a foolish monk of his vows.
Are you so tired of your discipline that you bring your boredom to my life? Oh her words are well timed and now he flinches. Now he feels the full gravitas of what he has done. He hears the sand as it bears her, still stalking, still hunting behind him. The seal lies forgotten.
Hunger still blooms wanton within him. But it feels rotten and he resists, resists, resists. He does not turn to the warrior girl, the kelpie-girl, no matter how he longs to. He has made his vows nothing in the wake of her. He was foolish to ever think he was in control.
The sea speaks to him as it does to her, shh, shh, shh it sighs as it makes a mockery of his anguish. Tenebrae stands as any Disciple should. The darkness gathers to him, it adorns him, shrouds him. But he is fallen, he is sinful. Boudika. Oh wild, savage, hungry, Boudika reminds him of that.
“I am sorry.” He murmurs, his head turning slightly so she might hear above the sea and from where he stands, chastened, not looking.
I am sorry. Those words are a whip across his back. He is sorry for him, for her, for the sinful part of him that does not feel sorry but glows bright, bright like the sun. He should swallow it, he should, he should… “Your nature was never a game.” He smiles and laughs a grim, grim laugh as rough as stone. “I am just a foolish man who hungers for more than the sun, Boudika.” Tenebrae confesses darkly, darkly, her name like a dangerous religion upon his lips.
“You never said what I tasted like.” The monk murmurs.
Does he taste like sin?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Boudika - 12-17-2019
It may have been different, had he chosen any other weapon save the one she herself has used to gut so many of her kind.
It might have been different, if she did not know intimately the way a true trident would puncture the muscle of the breast and lodge in the sternum, just so—the way extreme force was required to dislodge it from bone, from the evenly spaced narrows of the ribcage. The way it utterly submerged itself into the body; the way it sought the heart, the lungs.
It might have been different, if—
If—
If she were just a girl, playing a game; but such complexity is something she is now incapable of. The intricacy insults her; a tiger is no plaything; a tiger will not be caressed, tamed, only feared, only admired. She thinks it with white-hot rage. She thinks it even as he rises from the sand to follow her, his shadows both a cloak and a promise, and her teeth click against one another. Her tail lashes; her hooves carve grooves into the soft sand, as she kicks at air, as she tosses her wild head.
Does he not realise even his love of darkness does not dim the light of his blood? Boudika is familiar now with the way his shadows eat the light, wherever it may be; she is familiar with the way they encase the scene, abysmal and heavy, as if reminding them both of their own mortality. His shadows are the darkness of death; the promise of forever.
It was not a game, the Disciple murmurs. Yet he had taunted her; not with blows, which might have been acceptable. Not with words, enticing and inviting. No. He had taunted her with a touch as soft as a butterfly’s wing. He does not meet her eyes and Boudika makes a sound in the back of her throat, nearly like the chuff of a cat. She does not believe him. Her chest aches where his hoof struck him; Boudika feels the hot cascade of blood down her breast and wonders if the pain is also her injured pride.
Does he not know how new the sea is on her?
It might had been forgivable, had she not told him.
Does he not know, how badly she wanted to consume?
I am sorry.
Boudika wants to believe him. His shadows undulate; his shadows twist and reach but do not quite touch her, and there is a bit of tragedy in that. Boudika edges away, away, away, the sea is licking at her heels again. There is something in her stomach darker than hunger—she does not know if it is fear.
You could have killed him, something whispers. Did you know this is a part of your new nature? The temptation to feast on more than seal-flesh?
His voice comes back to her. Well then, I had better know what I am up against. Did she even know? Boudika had wanted him to touch her so badly; had wanted to know the exact feel of his throat in more ways than one. Her eyes are drawn to it again, less like a predator and more like an anxious girl.
Listen,
listen.
Do you hear the heart beating?
I am just a foolish man who hungers for more than the sun.
The words bring to mind prison bars; they remind Boudika of the sin slants of sunlight that entered and with them, the sound of the sea. Orestes always just out of reach; the way the sea used to sing to him, but not to her, and now it is a constant whisper in the back of her mind.
Shhh, shhh, shhh she soothes.
And Boudika listens. She listens, because her entire life has been temptation. She knows; she knows. After all, has she not committed the greatest sin of all? Does Vercingtorix’s letter not remind her of it, and Amaroq’s death?
You are one of them.
She has betrayed her own origin; she has betrayed it for something else, something that fills every corner of her soul with the free vastness of the sea.
Perhaps Boudika recognises a bit of that struggle when he whispers, You never said what I tasted like.
Do you want to know, Tenebrae?
Do you want to know how much I liked it when you touched me,
how glad I am I did not kill you?
His laugh is the same sound that chided within her for years; and perhaps this is why Boudika’s ears come forward; her tail quits lashing; and step-by-step she closes the distance between them.
She presses the soft of her nose against his wound; traces it up, along the line of his jugular and then the sharp, handsome angle of his jaw. A molten line; symbolic of all the suns he has devoured, still burning inside of him. Her bloodied lips are against his ear now. Boudika whispers:
“Tenebrae…have you heard the story of Persephone? The god of death stole her from the above-world and Persephone’s mother, the goddess of fertility, went into a mourning so deep the world ceased to grow.” Boudika knows she is too close; and perhaps she is playing her own game now, enticed as she is with her rage.
She will make him sorry.
Boudika’s breath ghosts his ear, his neck, his cheek as she continues: "The king of gods demanded Persephone returned, or else the world would end; but the god of death refused to let her go. He fed her six pomegranate seeds, as at the beginning of Time the Fates had declared that whoever consumed food or drink in the underworld would be bound there for eternity. But the kind god of death agreed to let her stay six months in the above-world… After that, the pomegranate became a symbol for fertility, and for death.”
It is only then Boudika withdraws, pushing past him, one brusque shoulder against his own. She trots toward the sea; leaping, bounding, bucking. Once she reaches the tide, chest-deep, she turns and laughs.
The sound is the high bell of the wind, the gull, the dolphin, the wave.
“You tasted like Persephone’s pomegranate, Tenebrae.”
Perhaps that means I am Bound to you, Boudika thinks but does not say.
Because the sea is calling; the sea is in her ears; and it is time for her to go.
Boudika dives beneath the waves and washes his blood clean of her mouth.
But the taste lingers. Oh.
How the taste lingers.
@Tenebrae || “speech”
RE: the water-born don't fear drowning - Tenebrae - 12-17-2019
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
He looks toward Caligo’s mountain, to where his goddess resides and his brothers uphold their vows. Unlike him. Unlike him.
Tenebrae is close to falling upon his knees in penitence. Already confessions are ripping through his mind, slipping through nerves, reaching, reaching for his tongue. He prays that absolutions follow.
As he fills himself up with prayer, to fill in and push out all the places where his new sin resides, he hears her pacing, pacing, pacing. He does not turn, though he can see her. He can imagine the power of her step, the fire of a sunset sea within her gaze.
Yet she comes to him. He hears her approach, how the sand whispers, how the sea inhales its tide and pauses. The beach stills to magnify her approach. The moon spotlights her and all is set for the moment she draws near to him and Tenebrae turns his head. Away.
But Boudika is a hunter. She steps and steps and steps, following, following, following, until all he smells is sand and salt and sea and blood. Then she steps closer still, until he smells nothing of sand or salt, but the jasmine upon her skin, the chalk of coral reefs and the salty tang of seaweed.
The heat of her skin is as pressing upon him as his shadows are upon her. The shadows that hold him, reach out to cocoon her. Boudika reaches for his neck, for where her bite lies open for her. The monk does not look at her. He does not move an inch, but braces for the bite.
Still hungry? His shadows wonder, of him, of her.
But her teeth and her tongue do not come to taste his blood. But muzzle does and oh he twitches at that touch. Yes! A part of him gasps, yes this is what the touch of a girl should bring him: pain and misery and ire. But Boudika’s game is not over. Not when she trails her touch up from his wound. It ascends, trailing along his jugular, across his jaw, up, up, up to his ear. In all of their exchange, never has his heart raced so. It is a rabbit within his chest, running and fleeing. But Boudika is there and the trail of her touch is a wildfire flame to the dry wood of Tenebrae’s body.
She whispers a story to him. It is of gods and lust and so much sin. The story weaves a web about them both. It is all a cautionary tale, is it not? Of how lust can bring worlds and gods to their end. He imagines himself the god of the Underworld, desiring what he should not have. But Tenebrae is not Hades, he is no trickster to chain and trap. Even if he is a vow-breaker.
Vow-breaker. There is ash in his mouth as Boudika leaves him. The cold steps in, unbearable in all the places her words, her breath danced warm and sweet across his skin. The sea welcomes her and she returns to it feral and mythical. He still has not looked at her. Though he leaned in as she wove her words around him, as she filled his mind with sumptuous mythology.
She laughs, free and high like the wind across the waves. The ocean cradles its kelpie-girl, it washes the blood from her wound. Does it sting like his? Does it ache with remembering? They each have a memory now, a scar to remind them of how wrong they should be.
You tasted like Persephone’s pomegranate, Tenebrae.
She turns him to stone. Is she not Medusa? The Stallion does not breath, his lungs dare not draw air. Her laughter still chimes from the cliff walls. Does she mock him now? Is this her game? She plays it well. So utterly, dangerously well. Boudika has made him a sinner and now she mocks him. The Disciple trembles and his darkness bleeds like beetles across the sand. The moon weeps and as the kelpie dives at last into the sea. The monk does not look for already he is running, and his darkness is gathering like a stormfront. He flees Boudika’s game, her words, their suggestion a chastising whip across his back.
Never, never, never.
It was lust and desire that locked Persephone in the Underworld. Such sins. Such sins. Tenebrae does not stop, because to stop is to feel the burn of guilt, the ache of desire and forget the sting of a girl’s wicked bite from a monk’s foolish kiss.To stop might be to realise he already knows the taste of pomegranate seeds.
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