and behind the declared war,

and the rubble of beautiful, patiently

    workt moonstones, agates, jades, obsidians,

turnd and retrund in the wash of

    the tides, the gleaming waste,

    the pathetic wonder,

words turnd in the phrases of song

Boudika presses her forehead against the cell bars until the rust on them streaks her bald face in grime. There is a repetitive dink, dink, dink as her horn taps against the bars of her prison. She thinks she is alone, and in her first night of misery—imprisoned by her own people, by the people she had served, fought for, nearly died for!—her mind turns angry circles on itself.

How had he betrayed her?

What had she done, to earn that betrayal? Tears well in her eyes as she thinks of the nights they had shared, late, discussing strategy or their fathers or their dreams. She knew everything about him! They were everything but lovers; they were deeper than that, they were companions, and she knew he felt the same. She had been so certain, when she told him that she was not Bondike, had never been Bondike, but always Boudika—yes, she had been so certain he would not be bothered by the change, by the minute difference between a masculine “e” and feminine “a”.

Boudika simply didn’t understand why it had to make a difference.

The tears flow in earnest, now, as she glances out at the moonlit sea. The prison stands above the ocean on the cliffside, made of black cliff-rock. It is the second oldest building on Oresziah, after the church, covered in lichen and runic symbols. The windows beyond her cell are barred rather than glassed, and the cool wind howls angrily into the cellar where she is kept. Boudika shivers and ruts her head against the bars. She knows she should think of escape but she knows, more intimately, more personally, she doesn’t have anything to escape to. 

A sob wracks her body.

“My people say tears are simply the ocean in our bodies trying to get back to the mother sea.” 

The voice shocks her from her reprieve—Boudika starts, her eyes flicking anxiously around the cellar. 

She is a fool for not seeing the silhouette in the cell next to her.

She is a fool for forgetting that he, The Prince of a Thousand Shapes, was also imprisoned.

He looks at her through the bars and she sees the blood streak down his forehead from his Binding. An ornate sun has been burned into his flesh with gold and copper wiring, and the wiring itself still rests upon his brow like a crown. He is the king of the desolate; the King of Losing Everything. 

“I—I don’t understand.” It is all she can manage.

His sea-eyes glitter, almost mischievously. They are gem-bright even in the dark, in the same way the sea shines even in a black night. “You will, one day.”

— — — — 


By the time they make it to the cave, Boudika has no energy left. Unlike Tenebrae, Boudika did not have to wait for monks to punish her sins; the sea did it gleefully in the form of waves that rose, mountainous, above them. With each terrible crash Boudika, with a powerful coiling of muscles, rocketed them to the surface once more. This process was repeated again, and again, and again, until what must have only been an hour or two became a lifetime of atonement. She has now crawled, half-drowned, into the cave nestled deep within the cliffside. It offers far more shelter than the land would, in such a storm, and she knows it intimately. It is the cave she has sought refuge in time and time again, upon discovering her new powers, upon neglecting her role as the Night Court Champion of Community—

As Boudika thinks it, she is filled with even more remorse. What does that even mean, anymore she wonders. Her actions would suggest that it means nothing.

She lays at the entrance of the cave silently. Her eyes are closed, and her mind is a repetitive rush and whir of the waves, the crashing, the thunderous boom of the storm. Boudika feels as if the weight of it rests evenly across her shoulders, until she remembers that is where she bore Tenebrae’s weight. Somehow she breathes out and sea water sprays from her still-soaked nostrils. She transforms from a crocodile into a mare and stumbles, somehow, to her feet.

The transformation feels like how she imagines it would feel to push something opaque through the heart, something leaden. It feels heavy and as she begins to walk toward the back of the cave—it winds, deep, deep into the cliffside—Boudika experiences a weariness she has not felt since the last time she went to war.

It makes her wonder if, perhaps, that is what is waged between herself and Tenebrae. Perhaps they are at a war of sorts, one she has never known. Is it a war of wills? A war of… Boudika doesn’t know. Even looking at him in the darkness fills her with embarrassment and shame. The resonant echo of the crashing ocean reminds her of it, too. There is a part of her that believes if she is what she acted as—a monster—she should have killed him, to be true to herself and her nature. She should have drowned him for his refusal to… to—

To what?

And she remembers Amaroq beneath the magic water of the island, the way they had been suspended there in the ribbons of Boudika’s blood as she became him. A water horse. Even as she thinks it she feels as hollow as the cave they inhabit. Even as she thinks it her chest aches ferociously, and her eyes well again not with sea water but tears. Luckily, it is dark, and she is still leading him further into the shelter. 

At last, Boudika reaches the end of the winding cave. The hard purchase of stone has given way to softer, black sand. She cannot see in the absolute darkness, but has frequented the cave often enough to know the exact location of the flint. The last time she left the cave she had arranged the fire starting materials neatly, for easier access, and it was useful now in her absolute exhaustion. With trembling telekinesis, Boudika reaches for tinder and flint and starts a small, small fire in the dark. Within a few minutes, she feeds the fire with wood stashed upon a deep, drier nook in the wall. Eventually, it is light enough she can see Tenebrae across from her, and the cave reveals itself as a simple dwelling safe from the storm outside. Still, his face seems marblesque, carved beautifully from rough stone into something smooth, and furious.

With the fire the space between them begins to warm. Boudika had not realised how thoroughly she shook, how deeply the cold reaches into her bones. She stands before the flames and continues to feed them, piece by piece of wood. She is ravenous and disgusted at her own hunger; her stomach churns and self-deprecatingly she thinks, perhaps if I were still civilised, I’d have kept meat stores in this place. But she has not. There is no food, no fresh water, only the howling sea to keep them contained. 

It is more and more difficult for Boudika to look at him squarely. She thinks of her reaction to him, when he had asked, show me. She cringes at how deeply she had misinterpreted her meaning, how vulnerable she had made herself with her confessions. Boudika opens her mouth to speak several times, but refrains, and the tension between them stretches taunt as a bow. She understands he must also be exhausted, but each glance at his face reveals the puckered and still bleeding wound her teeth had wrought. Boudika swallows heavily.

“Can you do anything besides unmake things?” Vercingtorix demands. “Can you do anything besides hurt those around you? Your father was the only one… the only one—“ he cuts off. The rising sun shines too brightly through the windows. It catches on the metallic accents of his face and turns his eyes to a raging, too-deep green. Boudika cannot look at him, but it doesn’t matter. He cannot look at her, either.

“Why didn’t you just—“ his voice cuts off tiredly. He leaves.

It is the only time he visits. 

Boudika torments herself over what he had meant to ask. 

The silence becomes unbearable. 

Her voice is small, and girlish, and terribly uncertain when she says, “Tenebrae.” 

A long pause. The storm cracks outside. The water swells at the distant entrance, and she hears it lap, lap, lapping against the stone.

“Tenebrae. I am sorry.” 

It is understated, simple. Boudika has never had usage for apologies because, even when genuine, they never repair the damage. Her father is the one who taught her that, by never apologising for anything. He had made her what she was, with his prayers to arcane gods to disguise her as a boy. Boudika almost wonders, with the storm, if those pagan deities had followed her even here. If they still own her. 

"Speech" || @Tenebrae || Eeeee sorry this is all over the place and a literal mONSTER POST 

    long gone from me,

returned anew, ghostly in the light

    of the moon, old faces?

For Thetis, my mother, has promised

    me a boat,

a lover, an up-lifter of my spirit

    into the rage of my first element

rising, a princedom

T  E  N  E  B  R  A  E

told me long ago, or I overheard Her

   telling distant roar upon the sands,

waves of meaning in the cradle of whose

   sounding and resounding power I

It does not occur to her until the quiet drip of distant water steels her from her thoughts that she is now in Tenebrae’s domain. It strikes sudden, unexpected fear in her heart. Is this what he had felt, when they floated in the tumultuous sea? Her domain. She had been so confident, then. But in the absolute darkness of the cave where she seeks out her familiar fire-starting tools she realises this is utterly, utterly Tenebrae’s. His shadows come to mind, the way they transform into whatever he imagines. She hears his quiet breathing in the dark, the dripping of the water from their bodies. It is only like that for a moment before the fire flickers to life and she can again see his face.

Boudika examines it, searching for rage or angst. But he is only watching her. She wonders, but does not ask, if he could kill this small fire in the deep darkness of their sea cave. She does not know when it stopped being hers and became theirs and perhaps that in and of itself has to do something with the ominous presence of the shadows all about them, flitting with the rise and fall of the fire’s flames.

He is a different creature here. Not so boyish, she thinks, as she examines the hard lines of his face. She remembers that he is a warrior as his shadows dance and flit to his demand. The light pours from his sigils and turns what it touches whiteish, silvery.

Boudika nearly flinches when he nears her; and nearly flinches again when he reaches out to press his lips along the bridge of her nose and then up, up, until his clears her eyes of her forelock with his mouth. He whispers against her skin and she trembles beneath against him; no longer with restraint, or fury, or anything animalistic. This is fatigue, pure and simple. She is tired of fighting.

When I first met you, you were just a girl with thorns on your tongue and a smile on your lips. I had never met a girl like you. Your smile… Boudika remembers and she nearly laughs with a cruel, hard kind of irony. Just a girl, she thinks, and marvels at it. Oh, how she wishes she had ever been just a girl.

What happened between then and now?

So much, and nothing.

She sighs in a tired kind of way. Boudika cannot stand it, cannot stand the pressure of his touch. She turns her face away. He confesses his motivations. I came to dance with you. To swim with you. And even those ignite within her a desperate, impalpable anger. It is not at Tenebrae, she realises. No, she is not mad at him. Do you wish me dead, Boudika?

How can he not see it? It is a good thing she has become so exhausted, because her frustration at being unable to explain surfaces just enough to make her leonine tail flick, to fill her with—with… well, with what? Boudika deflates before she is even fully ignited.

He does not let her escape. Even after she has turned from him he presses closer still, until the warmth of his body presses firmly against her own. She rests her cheek tiredly against his flank and breathes in his scent. But she only smells the sea.

Boudika is quiet for a long moment and she reels in her thoughts. She had not forced herself to reckon with her own motivations in… in Boudika does not know how long. Something within her had broken, she supposes, when Vercingtorix first appeared in Novus and Amaroq had disappeared. How she had wandered the beaches a newly made water horse and sought… not her mate, but her creator, her partner, her—

And anyways, he was gone. Gone. Gone, gone.

When they had first met, she had only been the General’s daughter, drunk on the islands magic, a place unregulated and without rules. She had been dangerous, and brilliant, and full of all the newness Novus had shown her. Isra’s kindness. Denocte’s acceptance. Amaroq’s attention. Tell me why, he asks. Does he not know how impossible of a query it is? But in the darkness, and pressed so tightly against him, Boudika can now smell something besides the sea: his blood. She owes him an explanation.

“Everyone leaves, Tenebrae.” She admits it quietly, with a voice naked with emotion.“Everyone always leaves.”

It is difficult for her to continue, but she manages slowly, deliberately, to explain. “I was turned—willingly—by a water horse, a kelpie, although I have never called them that. I saw it as my fate, my due—“ she breaks off. Boudika does not know how to explain her motivations, unless she explains everything, unless she revisits the dark corners of her own history.

“I am from an island far away called Oresziah. It is a magic island, where those who land on the shores cannot leave them. My people were trapped there hundreds of years ago, and to escape they turned on the magic that kept them there, the magic of the water horses native to the island. We eradicated them, systematically, and I am… I am the generation that finished it. But I was disguised there as a stallion, with magic, by my father—he had only I as a child. He was a General and his ambitions rested on having a son, with our culture being strictly patriarchal—and anyways, I kept that secret for over half my life. When it was revealed, I was imprisoned.” Boudika paraphrases it. She rushes through the details, the origin, as it remains something she does not want to face. ”I was imprisoned with the prince of the water horses, the very same prince I had captured and sentenced to death. We were kept together for over a year, and—I learned all about them. About their culture, and their history, and their magic, and—how we were the monsters, not them.”

Boudika sighs again. She does not… well, she doesn’t want to share it, the past that explains her actions now. She struggles to articulate it, to voice it without feeling selfish or self-conscious. “They sentenced us to death on an unseaworthy ship in a storm. But when I awoke, it was on Novus. I came to terms with the sins of my past by deciding, eventually, to become the very thing I had attempted to eradicate—his name was Amaroq and, well, I had assumed—girlishly, and foolishly—he and I would be partners. That he would teach me to be what I am.”

But he disappeared. He left her. And she was alone, utterly, save the sea—the sea, which laps at the far end of their cave. The sea, which rages outside and calls her back, always. “He disappeared, though.” Boudika does not share Vercingtorix’s brief appearance in Novus, or how she think Torix killed Amaroq. She does not share the hurt of that wound. Boudika draws away to deliver the last part—the true explanation. She looks Tenebrae in the eye to say:

“I didn’t want to be alone. I will not lie about my feelings for you. You are polarising. You do not fear me. And you sharpen me, my wits, my actions. I wanted to dance with you…and when you came to me in the sea, so far from shore, I thought you were asking for—“ and this embarrasses her. This is a bold assumption she should not make, and so she changes it, she elaborates. “I wanted you to ask to be Changed. That’s how it’s done, you see. You’re pulled below the surface and I strike you but the instinct is, if you are meant to be Changed, that you draw blood as well—you bite back. But you didn’t.”

Boudika is embarrassed—terribly, terribly ashamed—to admit her actions, and come to terms with her mistake. She had never thought herself capable of such an unsolicited act; she had never thought herself capable of behaving as monsters were rumoured to behave. But it hadn’t been like that, in her mind. She had been trying to show him something beautiful, something special and secret, held close to her heart, something that to be understood must be experienced… And perhaps, in doing so, in trying to show him, she had ruined his perception of it forever. Her voice is small and sad again when she says, “I am sorry. I should not have been so bold. I was not processing it then like I am now. I am just—“

Lonely. She thinks of meeting Anandi in the storm, how if she had chosen to be changed by a different water horse perhaps, perhaps she would not feel this way. But it was always meant to be Amaroq and she thinks of the moment he had changed her off the coast of the island, with the ice of his magic curling in the water and her ribbons of blood dancing about it. How the moon had shown and her heart felt full and how she had thought, and decided, she would never feel so alone again.

The silence after bothers her; it drags from her tongue the last, vulnerable admission. In a voice raw with it, with her loneliness and despair, Boudika admits:

“I just wish I wasn’t so alone.” The firelight flickers against them; it transforms them into softer beings, beings of starlight and flame. She longs to press against him again; to close the distance that she has opened. But her admissions leave her vulnerable, and not only does Boudika fear rejection, she expects it. "I never meant to hurt you. I wanted to share with you something extraordinary, but I didn't know how to ask. The storm... the sea... the ability to swim, and understand, and know. It is beautiful, but difficult to convey, difficult to ask. I just wanted to share it with you."

"Speech." || @Tenebrae

come back to the shores of what you are

come back to the crumbling shores