The black island, her homeland, seems a distant memory. Summer had never been a real season there; instead it brought torrential downpours and mornings that held the cold into evenings, everything fog, everything fetidly humid. It had always been the season of rot; bodies clogged and stinking on the shoreline, carcasses strung apart by gulls. No, summer had never been a friendly season, a season of growth and blooming—
Nothing like Novus. Nothing like the cool atmosphere of the mountains at night, where the air was so fresh the sea seemed a distant memory. Boudika carries with her the scent of the ocean; salt; kelp clinging to the leonine threads of her tail; fresh fish; baked sand. The further she travels the more it begins to fade, until her nostrils fill only with the thick aroma of the woodlands, the pine, cedar, juniper, crushed foliage underfoot. The earth turns up at her heels, a ripe and bursting odour of wet soil, fresh from a recent rain.
The trek is a long one, and all uphill. Her ascent is taken without fatigue; her lungs fill eagerly and her body, completely utilitarian, delights in the burn of muscles. Her reasons for venture so far from the sea are complicated at best, and guilt-driven at worst. Denocte is a city that took her in; sheltered her, when Boudika felt as if the world had turned against her. She had sought to repay the city by taking up the mantle of Champion of Community but, since the magic island and her Changing, Boudika has scarcely visited the city streets. It is in part due to fear—the ravenous hunger in her stomach, the nearly amorous lusting for flesh—and in part out of guilt. She had been go so long it seemed wrong to return, and, anyway…
What if they feared her? She knows her the persecution of her now-kin intimately. She knows the persecution of her breed with a firsthand knowledge, as she had once been responsible for wholesale slaughter. Her tongue slicks over her too-sharp teeth, and Boudika diverts her thoughts by cresting that final hill and—
Eventide Arch opens before her, lit beautifully by Caligo. The sky above is clear and fully visible, with a dusting of stars. Boudika cranes her neck back and admires the view; it is as if some great god sprinkled a handful silver dust across the black-velvet sky, and left it there.
There is the Arch itself. Newly constructed, the power is both ominous and welcoming. Paned glass windows catch even in the night-light; Boudika walks until she rests at the center of the open arch, staring away from Denocte and down the path that leads to the rest of Novus.
She stares quietly, almost thoughtlessly. But in her stare is knowledge that northward lay Solterra; even from here she can catch Verenor peak, and knows that to the east lay the Court itself, and within the Court—
A palomino who was once sea-speckled grey. Now, he glows luminous and golden, marked by innumerable tattoos.
Only Boudika knows better.
Boudika knows.
The Day Court Sovereign, named Orestes, bears exactly one hundred scars from her people and with his new magic, stripped of the Old Magic of Oresziah, they glow with the vigour of Solis’s blessing.
Boudika is not surprised by this; Boudika is not surprised to discover he is serving another people’s, far from their homeland. No, she is not surprised at all.
She is only surprised he is alive, and they are separated by a distance greater than the land between them, greater than what is fathomable.
Boudika finds that the openness of the arch does not matter. She cannot force herself to step forward and the sea, at her back, beckons her to return.
drinking deeply of moonlight magic and the rich golden hum,
It almost feels like a lie, to stand beneath the arch she had commissioned to be built in this hallowed place. A lie to stand beneath something that, though it is intended to represent her people—to represent their freedom—she knows it represents their goddess too. A goddess that Antiope still cannot come to terms with standing beside, with living, breathing, leading under.
But the arch itself is impressive, and it takes her breath away a little every time she looks at it, every time she stands beneath it and feels just a little smaller. Just a little less god-like.
There is something new to see and admire in its craftsmanship every time her sapphire eyes rest upon it.
Antiope passes beneath the structure, becoming shrouded in darkness by the shadow it casts upon the ground. The moon is near nexus and bright, and the light spills through the stained glass windows in a dazzling array of colors.
She keeps walking, until she reaches the middle window, until she becomes bathed in blues and teals and purples. The light is otherworldly, almost oceanic, but the scene on the window is reminiscent of Veneror: a large peak rising high into the sky, dotted with trees at the bottom. A star, large and bright, fills the top part of the window.
Oh, it is behind her and here before her, an inescapable truth. There is a temple upon that mountain that is waiting for her. If only the last temple she had set hoof into hadn’t been bathed in red and so much hate.
A sound distracts the sovereign, her ears twisting to catch it. Steps, in the grass. Antiope turns to find a familiar albeit long unseen face appear beneath the opening of the arch. She watches Boudika pause, as if waiting. As if considering. For a long, quiet moment, she wonders if the woman will go.
She does not.
“Something calling to you?” Antiope asks, wading through the dizzying aurora and into the moonlight. She sheds the colors like a cloak or a second skin, becoming marble and tiger once again. Her sapphire eyes, however, are still sharp and bright, bright, bright.
The voice breaks Boudika from her reprieve. She turns to come face-to-face with the current Denocte Sovereign and to do so unsettles her deeply. Isra. Time for Boudika had transpired strangely after the magic island; after being Made. It had slowed, focused, intensified on some aspects of her life, and had forgotten others. The Eventide arch should have more firmly reminded her of her obligations; and if it hadn’t, than Antiope certainly did.
The mare seems more magic than mortal as she walks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of reflected colours. Yet Antiope emerges on the other side as a woman with piercing, otherworldly eyes. Those, Boudika thinks, belong more surely to the masterpiece than to flesh and blood.
Again, time has treated Boudika unfairly. She had waited too long to reply; instead she has turned her crimson eyes on her Sovereign assessing, contemplating. At last she answers. “Yes. That is one way to put it.”
There is a madness to the sea. An irrefutable compulsion that insists, and insists, and insists. Even if Boudika had tried to forget Orestes, the sea would not have let her.
“There is something from another life who is in Novus—and I have known it for quite some time. But I have been afraid of confronting them.”
Confronting.
The word seems harsh, overtly so.
“Not confronting, but… someone I need to apologise to. I’m not even sure if he remembers me.” This admission is harder and, perhaps, unwarranted. It is also a lie.
Boudika knows, for certain, he will remember her. The two of them are irrevocably bound.
The kelpie shakes herself, again, from her thoughts. She turns her attention more fully to Antiope.“And to you, as well, I owe an apology. I have been quite a… failed Champion of Community.” Perhaps Boudika had been a fool, in the first place, for renouncing the traits that came easily to her: violence, war, intensity.
Outside of those things, she was cripplingly shy, despite her best intentions. Despite all her time in Novus, it still seemed as if her friends were few and far between and... as much as she devoted herself to Denocte, she was not it's inherent Champion.
drinking deeply of moonlight magic and the rich golden hum,
Antiope considers Boudika carefully, and in a strange way. She knows Boudika, yes, but something seems undeniable different about the woman. Perhaps it is just that the sovereign has not seen her in so long, that she seems changed. So she looks at her both with eyes old and new, both as a stranger and someone familiar.
The red and black woman does not speak for a long moment, as they look at each other. Her reply is vague and curious, and Antiope doesn’t immediately reply, giving Boudika the time she needs to find the words for what she wants, or needs, to say.
“When I came to Novus, I left many behind,” Antiope says, taking a step closer, turning to glance up at the arch. At the gold plated ironwork that sprawls over its stone surface. “I did not speak to them, even see them before I left, so I am not sure what I would say to them if they ever ended up here.” In a way, the Denoctian sovereign thinks that she understands Boudika, even if their situations are not exactly the same. What would her sisters think of what she had done, if they were here? She does not know.
When the woman speaks again Antiope turns back toward her, eyes like sapphires. Eyes like seas. “You owe me no apology, Boudika. Perhaps, it is not all on your shoulders. Have you thought that it is your community that has also failed you?” She does not say it, but maybe her eyes ask it, keen in the dark. Has anyone checked on you, kept up with you, been your friend?
“What would you like to do, Boudika?” And it is there. An out, perhaps. But of what? Her perceived failure as a Champion, or the court? Antiope glances toward the pass, which stretches into the dark to her left. To her right, beyond the arch, are bonfires and lights, guiding and protecting all weary travelers and adventurous locals alike.
It occurs to Boudika that they might be friends, of only Boudika were to remain consistent enough to allow it. That they are not so dissimilar. When I came to Novus, I left many behind. I did not speak to them, even see them before I left, so I am not sure what I would say to them if they ever ended up here. Boudika finds strange comfort in this fact; that she is not the only one with an entire life extending beyond this country, this time, this place. The water horse only nods, quietly, with understanding. There is nothing else to say.
You owe me no apology. They regard one another eye-to-eye. In another time, another place, Antiope would be a Sovereign Boudika would be proud to serve. Have you thought that it is your community that has also failed you?
Boudika smiles a quiet, nearly shy type of smile. It occurs to her that she has not belonged to anything in quite some time; perhaps that is why the sea could so easily serenade her. She had never felt so alone, as she had in the streets of Denocte.
“I would like to become a citizen, Antiope.” Boudika’s eyes follow the Sovereign’s to the arch, full of light and magic. There is a moment her heart swells fiercely with adoration for it, but she—she has never belonged, not truly. Denocte is the court of misbelonging; but there is a difference. “Let us walk back to Denocte and discuss it more. I admire your compassion, Antiope.”
And so the two striped mares depart the arch, side-by-side, and journey back into the city. By the time they reach the first fire lit building, they have reached a decision: Boudika will become a citizen, and allow a more able member of the Court to take her position as Champion of Community.
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