Denocte has never bloomed for Boudika before tonight; the city has never dropped her Venetian masks to reveal the intricacies beneath the smoke-shrouded streets. But for the first time, she feels as if she sees Denocte, as if Caligo walks beside her along the cobblestones. Perhaps Boudika is only more receptive to the heady scent of skin; the burning of frankincense; perhaps it is only because her senses seem so much sharper than they once had been, and every movement, no matter how imperceptible, entices her with something almost like lust. The copper-headed mare watches the shadows that entangle themselves in the corners of bonfires and 

her eyes trail the sensuous dancers by the flames. Boudika can feel her teeth against her tongue and the sharp reminder is enough to steel her nerve, even as she weaves between the fires like a tigress, always on the edge of the light. More strangely still, however, it grounds her; it whispers along her skin with all the knowledge of a lover’s touch, you belong here, as if she hadn’t before, as if her remaking ensured her belonging. This is the first time Boudika, the Champion of Community, had returned to the city since her becoming. This is the first time she has walked the streets, adorned so handsomely with moonstone, since she learned the taste of flesh and blood.

Her fear is what has kept her away; her fear that she could not control herself and her insatiable urges. There is a part of Boudika that understands she is no longer polite company; there is something artistically, painfully base about her now, something carnal and wanting. It shows in the predatory, metallic reflection of the firelight in her eyes. It shows in the way the younger dancers shy from her silhouette, instinctively, as if they know a tigress is near.

It takes Boudika longer than she would like to decide why it is they stare at her, now, when they never had before. Eyes linger and whispers follow the half-seen glimpse of her, with her tigress stripes, with her bald face catching the firelight in a way both ghastly and beautiful. 

Boudika knows why they stare, though. 

She is inconsolable. 

There is a raw edge to her expression, her being, like a tragedy; it is there in the shape of her mouth or the glint of her eyes. It is there in the way her hair hangs long and tangled, windswept, smelling of the sea. Denocte’s smells of bonfire and incense do not cling to her; it is all hard salt and water. She is inconsolable in the way she looks half-wild, transformed as if by grief or some daemon, some inner turmoil and power. No one speaks to her for the same reason. She is terrifying and beautiful and strange.

It is not until later in the evening, when the partygoers have drunk their fill of honey mead and flavoured wine that the Denoctians dare approach her. She is a tragic backdrop; a shooting star; something tameable and strange. Boudika had not felt her control waiver until the first stallion asks her to dance, embolden by the liquor on his breath. She rejects him politely, in a clipped tone, and is already back-stepping when he steps forward to press his telekinesis against her shoulder, urging her toward the throng of sensual, entwined bodies of dancers already entranced with one another. “It’ll be fun, I promise.” he is quite handsome, and—

Boudika’s teeth are long and sharp in her mouth. She does not want to speak, or expose them, so she remains quiet. He presses closer to her, unbeknownst, mistaking her silence for indifference or insecurity—

“Dance with me, Red,” and even the nickname is charismatic. Boudika presses back. Boudika follows him into the throng and for a moment they twirl. She lets him lead her. 

He smells heady; her mouth presses into the nape between his shoulder and his neck. He is laughing, and golden-skinned. The flesh of the stallion is warm. Decadent. There is something in the salty smell of his sweat and the sweet-rich odour of the liquor on his breath that reminds her, distantly, of overripe plumbs in the summertime, the way they bruise, the way they flesh sloughs from the seed. There is something in the memory that makes her mouth water, and it is not the flavour; it is the precise and indescribable tension of the plumb’s skin against one incisor, the way it feels to press just so against a ripened fruit, how—

her lips press into that nape now, and the stallion laughs high and pleased, unknowing to the tigress he holds like a woman, like a lover—

she is sweating now, and it smells rotten like the sea on a too-hot day, rotten but natural, metallic, hard, hard—

there are many bodies now, all of them, pressing her—

the heat of the bonfire is incendiary—

the heat of the bonfire pools everywhere her skin is soft, vulnerable, the armpits and breastbone, the loin, the ankles, the throat, the eyes—

the golden stallion is endless, limitless, she feels his pulse again beneath her lips—

her nostrils are full of that vivacious, lively scent, all salt and skin, some kind of woody cologne—piñon or juniper?—and the sweet, sweet wine—

oh how sweet would he taste?

how sweet?—

her lips, his tender throat, and his eyes so darkly hooded beneath long, lovely lashes as he says, “We could go elsewhere?” —

but he does not know she wrestles with a beast and the beast has teeth long and sharp drawing blood within her own cheeks—

she cannot speak, she cannot speak, 

she cannot pull away, and there are bodies everywhere—

her mind is full of the feeling of a perfectly ripened plumb, the press of an incisor against the skin, the burst of juice beneath—

And then, she sees the sigil. 

Perhaps she should have been thinking of pomegranates all along. 

@Tenebrae 

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There are so many things that should catch her eye and Boudika knows it. There are so many other things that she should be looking at when he brings his billowing shadows and charged confidence. There is a part of her that ought to flood with shame or anger; with ire or guilt. Instead Boudika blinks long and slow; instead her heart flutters in her chest in a way that is neither girl nor monster but some bemused in-between. 

There are many sweet things to eat this evening. 

There is the golden stallion, displeased. He steps forward as Tenebrae places the pomegranate aril in the tangle of golden hair, half possessively. But just as Tenebrae looks at nothing save the copper-headed mare, Boudika’s eyes feast upon him. Oh, there are certainly those that are hungrier, that were born hungrier, that were born with a hollow pit of wanting. The air feels electric. The air feels like the tension of a fight, of a storm. 

She recognises it in Tenebrae's eyes. It is the first time he seems familiar and Boudika shows Tenebrae everything she has learned from his hungry shadows; as his darkness laps the metallic gleam from the stallion’s skin, Boudika’s eyes reflect the brilliant light of Tenebrae’s sigils and leave his flesh wanting for nothing.

The golden stallion clears his throat. “Maybe I’ll catch you later. It seems you have something… unfinished… here.” And there is a heaviness to the stallion’s words; Boudika cannot tell if he is jealous, or hurt, or simply savvy enough to realise the entire time they had danced she’d been a tiger disguised as a girl. 

It is only when he is gone that Boudika realises just how close she came to ending his life. It is only when he is gone that she realises, unwaveringly, her eyes had laid claimed to the puckered white scar on Tenebrae’s throat. Seamlessly, the wild dancing continues around them, as water runs around stones. Seamlessly, the band playing a wild, haunting tune. Feverish. Impassioned. Boudika steps nearer Tenebrae; she steps close enough the heat of his skin touches hers.

“If I’ve learned anything from men,” she says. “It is that they rarely satisfy you.” Her tone is barbed; laced with venom; needing an antiseptic.

Boudika steps inward, to his shoulder, so they are aligned limb-to-limb. She turns her face toward his ear and whispers so only he can hear, “You owe me a dance if you’re going to frighten my partner.” 

It is not a question.

There is no pool of water to separate them this time. There is no hungry sea to call her back. There are only the bodies that surround them, pulsating, a current and a throb. Everything, a rush of blood. Everything a brilliant, beating heart. The bonfire flares and flickers; it cries towards the sky it cannot reach and sends embers flaring, dying, into the dark. The music is in her. The crowd becomes her. And Boudika feels the hunger of a huntress, and of a woman, for the first time in her life.

And in feeling it she realises it is the only kind of piety she understands. "Do you have no pomegranate for me, my keeper?" Her voice curls around the alias; half mockingly. She wonders how long his eyes had trailed her; he wonders how long he stood at the border of the festivities, waiting, watching, to see if she could resist temptation.

He couldn't. 

And Boudika knows it.

@Tenebrae 

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It is always the darkness that tries and keeps them separated, blooming up like flowers, like a thousand incomprehensible shapes. In this way it nearly reminds Boudika of the sea; caressing; hungry; all consuming. It wants so many things at once and colours her with dark, dark, dark—or is it that it robs her of the light? And just when Boudika thinks she has pushed him too far and his darkness might consume her after all, he laughs aloud; the sound is rough and for a moment, inexplicably, she is reminded of Vercingtorix.

Boudika does not expect the memory; it shocks her, however, because the correlation is not that they are similar. It is that she finds the sound incredibly attractive, and for a moment she is not a kelpie, she is not a creature of the sea, she is a girl remembering what it felt to have her heart broken by the only man she had ever given it to. That is why her next comment emerges in such a snarl; it is why she is left wondering what is different about a monk.

And all I have learned is that women are never, ever worth it. 

I do not know how to dance. You pick the wrong man, Boudika. Just when she believes she has pushed him too far—and perhaps, herself—his mouth nearly brushes hers. The almost-gesture strikes her more utterly than if he had made contact; it runs her through with extraordinary tension and it feels as if she is on a hunt, as if she is stalking the reeds tiger-like and silent for more than a meal—

Boudika knows he is nothing like Vercingtorix. In his piety, he will forever be different; in his piety, he will forever be safe. And the thought is just enough to take the carnal edge from her actions; it is just enough for Boudika to lean her shoulder into him, soft rather than threatening, and she realises in doing so just how badly she wishes she could be touched. In her new form, in her new experience, she has been afraid to make contact of any kind; she has stayed from her few friends and been wandering, wraith-like, the woods and the sea.

If his tension has faded, so has hers. I have pomegranates for you, too. Boudika does not expect it, but he presents the anvils. His voice is more a growl, a groan, than what it had been before; and she sees in it her own slipping control reflected. She is not hungry as she had been moments away. I should throw them away. I should leave you. And immediately Boudika says, “Please don’t. Please.” Her voice is uncharacteristically raw; the impulse of the comment leaves her embarrassed and very girl-like her face flushes. 

If the sea were there, she would run to it. She would have the water caress her until she no longer wanted the touch of another creature; she would keen to the deep and wait, poignantly, for an answer. If the sea were nearer, she would become the surf, the waves, the hunger of the limitless beast. She would not be a woman; the salt would not feel so far from her skin. Everything is too warm; the fire; the dancers; and before the danger had been in her teeth and now, she realises, it is all in him. Do not play games with me, Boudika.

She does not mean to; but she is split between wanting and knowing, already, how these things end. When Boudika looks at him now her face is not split with an animal’s hunger; the feral, nearly unhinged wildness that had been visible mere moments ago is replaced with something tender, and young, and vulnerable.

Boudika thinks of Vercingtorix and his betrayal. She thinks of Orestes and his voice, velveteen, it is in your nature. She thinks of Amaroq and his disappearance. And the thing bursting in her chest is a wild, heady fear; the fear of life on the edge; the fear of wanting what could be knowing reality and want rarely coincide. 

Finally, breathless and rugged, she says, “I wish you could swim with me, Tenebrae.” Boudika does not meet his eyes. She stares at the pomegranates; she lets the crowd of dancers swallow them and, perhaps, their audacity is not so unlike the sea. Music rushes in her ears and everything smells of flesh and sweat; the fire gleams in places where Tenebrae’s shadows do not reach. But between them their space seems silent, subdued; the darkness makes it a private affair. And Boudika says, “I do not play games. I simply don’t know how to give my heart away.” And for a moment, transient and ephemeral, she is not the complicated intricacies of her past, or her becoming.

She is just a woman.

And in that moment, admitting her vulnerability, she has never felt so alone.

@Tenebrae 

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Boudika’s heart has always been too much. It only took her becoming something—someone—else to realise what, and who, she had been all along. Yes. Her heart has always been too much; she has always tried a little too hard to love the world, and all the broken men within it. Her father taught her best, and taught her young; how to wrap her innocent, girlish affections around a man of barbed wire and whiskey and say, you are enough, enough, enough even as he pushed her to become something she could never be: a son. And still Boudika sacrificed; and still Boudika strived; only to see him proud and happy. Then, of course, there was Vercingtorix and all his fiery, passionate intensity. She gave the most to him, she thinks; a whole chunk of heart, wrapped and bloody, every time she defended him, stood up for him, trained with him. It was there when they drank atop the citadel of their old homeland and stared at the stars; it was there when she leapt off a cliff-face to save him; it was there when she visited him day by day by day in the hospital bed, and fell more in love with someone who would never—could never—want her. It was there, always, when she lied. 

Orestes. The man who she could never not give her heart to, already too in love with the terrible sea. He had been the sea, changing as the tides did, full of anger and sorrow and a depth incomprehensible to her until she spoke with him, until he looked at her with those deep-sea eyes and tried to cover up all the ways life would hurt. She loved him and lost him because of it. She loved him and learned to become something else because he would never, ever let her shy from her true nature again; and she owed it to him, for essentially killing him. Boudika owed it to him. 

Amaroq. He was the ice and feral passion; the arctic. A different part of the sea then she had ever known, but still familiar. He had chased her and seen her and she had hated him first and loved him second, because she had been afraid of all the things he might teach, she was afraid to hear him sing beneath the too-still sea and hear the cold echo of her own heart. The last of a breed, the last, the last, the last— 

Now: 

Tenebrae. 

And he is not like any of them.

There is no sea for her to fall in love with first; no water to shield his mortal flaws. Only him, and flesh and blood and shadow. Perhaps it is because he is as chaste as she, bound by some higher order. He moves to touch her and somehow refrains an inch from her skin; instead his hot breath ghosts over her throat and Boudika trembles, strung taunt as a guitar’s wire. 

You will be the death of me, Boudika he says, and she thinks the same of him. Then: I will swim with you, and said so close to her skin, to the pulse of her blood, Boudika feels as if the words Bind them. And then it will be Boudika feeling her morals strain and fight against her; tonight she knows she will dream of things he cannot give, tonight she knows she will dream of him following her into the deepest parts of the ocean. 

Tenebrae gives her a small gift by not flinching from her touch; no, he breathes in her scent and she is and that, too, feels like some type of promise. They are Denocte and the sea; smoke-fire, frankincense, sweat, salt. Boudika nearly closes her eyes; but then he moves and the darkness dissipates with an abruptness that is shocking. 

Do not give your heart away, Boudika. 

The comment shocks her more than it should. She nearly laughs aloud, and in reflection of her earlier thoughts the girl says whip-quick, “Why have one, then, if not to give it away? If not to share it?” The question is delivered innocently, though. Without his shadows he does not seem so unreachable. Without his shadows he is there, ready to be touched, and Boudika moves uncertainty to press the soft of her cheek against the half-moon sigil at his shoulder. Only a man.

There is more she wants to do, more she wants to say. She wants to trace the supple arch of his neck, and bury her face into the tangle of his mane. She wants to lose herself in him the way she has only lost herself in the sea. But Boudika has already succumbed further to girlish wants than she would have normally; and it leaves her embarrassed in a way illy suited for a water horse, for a creature so unapologetically brazen. He had not left when she had asked him to stay; but Boudika would not keep pushing him; she would not play games. And if he belonged to Caligo, so be it. Boudika would not plead again.

“If you want to find me, come to the sea.” Boudika whispers it against the skin of his shoulder, prayer-like. Then she pulls away; it is not hard to submerge herself in the vivacious crowd and then gone, down an empty street of Denocte, running on the path studded with moonstones. She can breathe freshly for the first time; and through her mind again and again she hears

please

please don’t 

and how she had never been brave enough to say those words before now, to ask for exactly what she wanted, exactly what she deserved. And, running, the scent of him still on her skin… she is intoxicated on it. When Boudika crashes into the sea, it is exuberant; it is four long strides and a dive, and a beating heart that screams

yes

yes, 

yes—


@Tenebrae 

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