she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
When she imagined the shore, the powder was the most gentle hue of gold, almost earthen and muted, the humble star of the scene. The seaweed, the flowers of briny tides, was the profound viridity of any high summer foliage, freely floating in the chop. Adorning the softly rolling dunes was the outlandish weed that whispered so sweetly into the gusting breeze. This beach on this island fragmented all of these notions so effortlessly and speedily that it nearly gave Maerys whiplash when her eyes first witnessed it.
The sand she stood on now on this exotic archipelago was ice-white, so reflectively glistening in the sun on this heated mid-day. The water mere feet away was jewel green, too vibrant to be regarded as standard. Every aspect of the island hummed enchanting songs of danger and magic. The plants were intricate, each more probable than the next to be fatal. The heavens above her back were inconstant and irregular, scorching and clear one moment and hailing the next. Nothing felt sane about these lands, not the long bridge she took to get here, not the too-white beaches or too-green waters, not the strange horned statue, confusing notes or the evil-looking plants. Novus proved constantly to break all her perceptions of what it was; just as she began to understand the land, it threw her another curveball.
Today she and her dragon looked for something specific and special- a relic. Maerys hunted on the ground, looking beneath stones and under petals while Vradara, her pink-mottled dragon looked from the skies, her eyes trained on the tree-tops and higher places Maerys could not see. In this part of today, they found themselves on this strange beach, looking for the relic as the rest of Novus most likely did. Maerys was not certain it was a relic that needed to be found, but she had heard others whisper about it and decided that she could explore and learn about the land while looking for the relic; she could kill two birds with one stone.
"tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.”
It is not the relic that has Isra walking with her nose to the wind and her muscles coiling as tightly as a cobra around a mongoose. She still remembers the last time the breeze carried on it words of magic, and time, and gods. Last time the gods and magic came to destroy them all, to wipe clean a slate she knew nothing about. Last time there were stars in her eyes and hope fluttering as sweetly as any butterfly in her heart.
This time she has no need for power, or magic, or any mysteries that come by way of a stone unicorn. There is war in her eyes when the island fronds bend and sway beneath the hooves of horses whispering about hunting. They blaze when she can hear the distant scream of a monster.
No, the night queen in not hunting the relic. She has power to spare, and magic that terrifies her in the way she hasn't found an end to it. Her dragon is swimming in the sea with the sharks, and the squids, and all the other monsters that most of the mortal world thinks to fear.
Isra is hunting something more mortal than a promise of mystery. She is hunting bones and skin; she is hunting evil. And when a thorn brushes against her skin and turns into a daisy the forest knows to fear her a little too.
Soon it's the shore spreading out before her, pale as moonlight. Bits of dead coral crumble beneath her hooves and a distant part of her starts to sob for the way it sounds like she's walking on a meadow of bones. But still she walks onward, through the horses shifting through the sand and looking at shadows like they're maps instead of blots of darkness. She does not drop her nose from the wind, she does not stop hunting, and hunting, and hunting.
Yet when there is a flash of shadow on the sand that looks like a dragon she can't help but pause. Below the sea Fable starts to rise until the sun is dappling through the water, golden and warm against his scales. Isra does not know what instinct it is that makes her turn towards one mare instead of the other.
“What are you looking for?” She already knows, of course, but still she has to ask. Because just once she wants someone else to look her in the eyes and say, I am hunting evil too.
I TRIED TO WRITE STORIES ABOUT THE BOY WITH A BULL HEAD BUT THEY ALWAYS CAME OUT TOO ANGRY. LOOSE-LIMBED TEENAGE BOY WITH LEGS LIKE IRON AND SKIN GOLD, GOLD, GOLD. A NAME LIKE STARS, FISTS LIKE WEAPONS. WHITE TEETH AND YELLOW HORNS. NEGLECT LIKE A BRAND, LIKE HE EARNED IT.
What is a tiger hunter, her father had asked. When there are no more tigers left to hunt?
The tiger hunter. The tiger hunter, in a world with no tigers left. The tiger hunter, with all the guilt and blood on her own hands. Boudika stood in the shade of the trees just off the beach, her eyes a blood-red that did not belong to the island of blue and green and jewel-bright birds. Could time bring him back? She wondered, again and again. Is that what finding the relic meant? Her mind was full of his words, of her own sense of not belonging.
It is in your nature, Orestes had said.
The shade of the trees dappled her, although it offered little coolness. The island was hot, humid—sticky. Boudika felt as though it would never wash from her skin, again, as though it had seeped into every part of her with its strange magic. Her eyes searched the beach restlessly, although her body did not move. The mare stood stoically, with a soldier’s discipline—and there her mind caught, aggressively, you are not a soldier anymore—and not a tiger hunter, so what? What was she? Her eyes stuck on the sea, as though all of her searching for a relic were actually for a man who could appear, at any moment, out of the tossing sea. Her heart swelled with disappointment when each equine that passed was a stranger or, worse, a familiar face of Denocte who she did not know the name of.
And eventually, she regained her morale. Her search was not as futile as she made herself feel. What favour would you ask a god? The question returned to her, unbidden. The question that had driven her across the bridge to nowhere, to the island she now felt stranded on. Boudika was afraid to return across the sea and, perhaps, she never would.
Boudika began to emerge from the shadows and, in doing so, happened to catch sight of an equine that at first appeared nondescript. Only a unicorn. And then Boudika saw the light glance off a scaled stomach, and she recognized the Queen of the Night Court.
Everything within her resisted the urge to approach as Isra engaged in conversation with another mare. But Boudika could not help herself as she crossed the same bone-white beach, coral cracking underfoot. The water hurt her eyes. Why did the water always hurt her eyes?
Before Boudika could decide what to say, she was standing besides Maerys and Isra, catching only, the tail end of the words looking for. And on Boudika’s tongue: tigers, magic, monsters, time but none of it could be said, not aloud. The question was not for her and, even so, her truths were too heavy to admit. It would be like speaking iron, each word dragging her down into something obscure, something dark.
So Boudika did not speak, until standing there, wordless and uncertain, became too humiliating. “I like your dragon,” Boudika admitted to Maerys, at last, staring at the strange of creature with a famished expression.
And what she could not say, what she did not say, was she had heard of Isra’s strange magic. How the world changed at her touch, blossoming like so many flowers. What she wanted to say, but could not say, was how badly she wanted to know if that touch could change her into some shape that would not feel the pain of her guilt so acutely, so terribly. Boudika wanted to be close to the magic that reminded her so much of a monster who was no monster at all, but only a shape-changer, a lover of the sea, strange and incomprehensible and beautiful.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THEY BUILT YOU YOUR OWN NIGHTMARE? DO YOU EAT THE OTHERS OR DO YOU EAT YOURSELF? BULL'S BELLOWS SHAKING AN ENTIRE FRACTIOUS ISLAND; A GIRL IN THE SHADOWS WHO'LL WEAR STARS ONE DAY. A SISTER'S RED SWEET MOUTH AT THE ENTRANCE TO AN ENDLESS MAZE, STRING DRIPPING BETWEEN MILK-WHITE FINGERS. MERCY, SHE WHISPERS INTO THE NIGHT TERROR, EYES FLICKERING. I'M SENDING YOU MERCY.
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
Maerys wasn't awaiting another to approach her. Out of the sheer number of visitors, why would one address the child? Maerys was taking in her simplicity, silver-haired and mule-skinned, though those with unearthly shades and attachments should've amassed more inspections and comments. Vradara navigated high above her back, and she believed most strangers would reasonably not promptly notice the scaled creature. Her height was tinier than standard, by no means a bulky brute. In reality, it very well could've been her monotony that attracted others to her on this multifaceted island. Only the ax that lay on the floor only a couple yards away would call for inquiries, though Maerys did not assume strangers would even notice it.
What are you looking for?
The matron was captivating, brown, and beautiful as she spoke. Along her gut was the blue of cichlids in freshwater. Her eyes were the same hue, though far more impressive as they looked upon Maerys alight with questioning. Her horn grew from her brow in a spiral, both intimidating and imposing. (And though Maerys knows not of this, the strangers magic and companion were far more stately and noble than she could imagine.)
Maerys merely reflected on the inquiry for a moment as she did not know what she hunted for precisely- a relic. It could be anything for gods could be fickle beasts. A pebble, a gemstone, a palace, another horse? This surely was not the cleverest way to misuse free time, but Maerys was enamored with the idea of it all. First a bridge, then an island, these were not the most disturbing parts of this narrative. Maerys had traveled to many lands with bridges and islands. Yet after this was the figure of a unicorn and a cryptic announcement, added onto only by a dawn court yearling.
"Nothing, anything, solutions, articles," she rattled off quickly before sighing softly. "I knoweth not." Did anyone?
As these words left her lips, another had joined them. So intrepid and easy, her tasseled tailpiece moved softly to the swing of her dense body. Reasonably she would be something others tittered at if she weren’t already deftly created by the gods. A banded horse- copper, ochroid, bay, coal. How could that be? Beautiful and dangerous, both a weapon and a temptress. The pale child was fascinated.
This secondary stranger, dual-horned and moderately more intimidating than the original, praised Vradara, the fiery dragon creating great rounds in the air, a silhouette against the bright sun. The only acknowledgment the commentary received from the scaled beast was a distant screech as she proceeded gliding through the draft tides. Maerys smirked affectionately at the sound, her mauve eyes resting on the second stranger. "Yond outcry is an I thank thee,” came Maerys' swift response, but she was not done there. Not from a place of malice or contempt, the girl felt a twinge of desire to correct the stranger. "Though I has't to sayeth, the dragon is not mine own, your company now is not with a slaver.” Maybe it was incorrect to chide a stranger, one who had years of experience above the girl, but she believed that the mare would see where she was coming from. There could’ve been an existence where she fancied gaining authority with a raised whip – instead, she preferred a reality where she toiled side-by-side with others; where each worked with a spirit of respect and love to benefit the other. There could have been a way to show others that their soul was not owned by themselves but rather bought with nickels and dimes. Instead, she laughed and sang with her comrades, exchanging the prettiest of her ways and learning from the errors of others.
The girl was many things, but silent, when she believed she shouldn’t be, would never be one of those things. Though she did not want others to worry about their word choice too much around the girl, she would make her opinion known if she felt pressed to do so by any means. "Maerys, they call me,” she announced to the both of them after a moment, hoping that the others would not find her correction unneeded and cumbersome, but rather helpful and perhaps insightful and offer their own names, allowing the conversation to recommence.
M A E R Y S
@Boudika @Isra sorry maerys really just.. took over
"I discovered metal inside me where my heart should be.”
Isra does not want to feel jaded as she watches the younger mare search through the coral beach. She doesn't want to have all these words stinging at her lips like a hundred, hateful hornets. But they're there and they itch. At her hooves some of the coral starts to turn to ore and iron. The metallic taste reminds her of dreams, and brine, and all the sharp edged cracks cutting through her heart. Her hooves drag across the dead coral (bone coral, pale coral, although she can only think of it as dead). She tries to make her magic turn it back, but she's still too much like a lion today to make anything so lovely as the white beach.
Another part of her heart breaks.
“What solution would you find on the shore?” Because how could she not wonder? Isra wants to find a solution too-- to war, to the way her heart aches, to all the hollow places of her that nothing seems to fill anymore. And even though she moves closer Isra doesn't offer to help. There is nothing on the beach she's looking for, that steady war-drum beat of her heart has already told her so.
Yet when she watches Boudika join them, she can't help but think that the mare, with grace in her steps and a banked fire across her skin, might know a little bit about the ache and the hollowness. Isra smiles but it's full of ashen memories and a promise that she won't turn the island into a cage. If there are monsters here, Isra has told herself that she will be the only one of her city hunt them. She'll leave the wonder and the magic for them, but none of the danger.
More of the shore turns to ore. She does not look at it, she promises herself she will not look at all the black blooming out in shining, pitted rings around her. The bits of her heart could not stand it. But she hopes Raum will find this shore, and that he will know each dark-as-night ring is a noose she plans to string around his neck.
Her smile falters as briefly as the flicker of a star before it shines moon-bright against her black skin again. She swallows more of that metallic, jaded bitterness.
When the younger mare corrects Boudika something in her, something full of all the blackness of the night sky in the places between the nebulae and the constellations, rises up a little like a tide. It eddies against her skin until she itches with it. Her horn aches. “I could call a lot of things mine,” She thinks of her dragon, of her Eik, of her city shining on a hill above the sea. She thinks of a thousand things etched across her heart, and that word mine, mine, mine twining between each of them like barbed wire. “but it doesn't make me a slaver. It means I would die for it.” And she can taste it on the wind-- death.
Fable rises from the sea and starts across the shore towards them. His eyes are full of searching things too, and nothing of that answer she still knows she's looking for. Below that, in the places where their souls are melded like iron and gold, is a promise that it's not their death blowing on the wind thinner than ghostly smoke.
She pauses after she looks at him and reminds herself that all of the world is not rotten, only some of it. Only some.
“I am Isra. It is a pleasure to meet you Maerys.” Even though all of her is aching and itching she means it. It's in her eyes that are still dancing with a dull echo of the sound the small dragon sang from above them.
I TRIED TO WRITE STORIES ABOUT THE BOY WITH A BULL HEAD BUT THEY ALWAYS CAME OUT TOO ANGRY. LOOSE-LIMBED TEENAGE BOY WITH LEGS LIKE IRON AND SKIN GOLD, GOLD, GOLD. A NAME LIKE STARS, FISTS LIKE WEAPONS. WHITE TEETH AND YELLOW HORNS. NEGLECT LIKE A BRAND, LIKE HE EARNED IT.
There was a beach turned to metalliferous earth beneath a unicorn’s hooves. There was a sky made small by a sunset-coloured dragon’s fierce cry. There was an island teeming behind her with the riotous, visceral cries of monstrous birds. There was a monster howling at her back, a monster that forced her forward into the shoreline, hooves just dancing at the edge of the water. There was her, leonine and pacing, red and black and eyes like pooled blood. Restless. Boudika's neck craned to observe the dragon as she flew in tumultuous circles, fearless of the island’s wanton inhabitants. Don’t you know, little beast? her lips twitched. There was more than the too-blue sky above and the ore blossoming at the unicorn’s feet like sick flowers. More than magic, more than mystery. Did Time not also contain the magnetic weight of darkness?
Glancing at Isra’s eyes, Boudika could not help but wonder if it was that pull that had brought them both there, toward the hope of something good. Boudika wanted to say: your iron will kill the sea, but did not, because on another island somewhere far away, somewhere that was as mythic to Novus as the gods, there was an island that Boudika had killed with gold. What right did she have to speak of the sea?
Boudika’s eyes snapped back to the other, younger mare. She spoke aristocratically; she spoke like a fairytale. Boudika was taken aback by the comment—the dragon is not mine own—and what could have been condescending was, instead, a kind correction. Before Boudika could speak, Isra did. I could call a lot of things mine—it means I would die for it.
Once, Boudika would have died for many things. Her father’s approval. Vercingtorix’s love. Glory. Now, her tongue felt like sand. Now, the things she would die for had already come to pass—the opportunity for sacrifice was gone, stagnant. Now she would die to take it back, and the claiming, the statement of mine hung like a noose upon her. Nothing belonged to Boudika, now. My father, my companion, my islands— none of it grew roots in Novus.
A dragon rose from the sea. Boudika's silence laid upon her like chains—she had nothing more to say about claims, about ownership, because she had none. Even the ribbons she wore to dance in were borrowed.
“I am Boudika. It is nice to formally meet you both.” the dancer stated, after a slight pause. The dragon from the sea was all that the dragon above them was not; dark blues and teals, massive, and in another time Boudika would have felt afraid. But today, it did not seem so strange.
And the request was on her lips—the request was there, in her mind. Change me, she wanted to plead. Change me like you change the sand underfoot. “Can you do that to living things?” Boudika asked, at last, forcing the calmness into her voice. She gestured at the earth beneath the unicorn’s hooves with a feigned nonchalance. She thought of Abel, then—the man she had helped imprison and Isra’s cool welcome home. It had been nothing to sentence him. Nothing to erect iron bars over the windows of a bar, transforming it into a prison. But then, perhaps it was everything, to transform the very world around you.
The magic should have been stranger for her, and would have been, if she had not watched horses transform before her eyes into incomprehensible shapes. Orestes had once said, water has no shape—how can we? and the thought had remained with her, poisoning her memories of soldiering. When she revisited thoughts of water horses becoming giant squid or sharks, it was only water that she saw, streaming through the mane of a dappled grey horse, the same colour of the storm overhead.
And more: there was the sense that with each uneasy shift of her weight, Boudika was loosing time. She wanted to ask: what would you do with the relic? but perhaps it didn’t work that way. Perhaps there were no favours from gods.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THEY BUILT YOU YOUR OWN NIGHTMARE? DO YOU EAT THE OTHERS OR DO YOU EAT YOURSELF? BULL'S BELLOWS SHAKING AN ENTIRE FRACTIOUS ISLAND; A GIRL IN THE SHADOWS WHO'LL WEAR STARS ONE DAY. A SISTER'S RED SWEET MOUTH AT THE ENTRANCE TO AN ENDLESS MAZE, STRING DRIPPING BETWEEN MILK-WHITE FINGERS. MERCY, SHE WHISPERS INTO THE NIGHT TERROR, EYES FLICKERING. I'M SENDING YOU MERCY.
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
What solution would you find on the shore? Maerys had no explanation that she felt was compelling enough for the mare. It was conviction and doubt; her thoughts a thick ball yarn. Some of the textile was untangled and useable, but the rest persisted as impenetrable mayhem. The knot felt infinite and at most times unyielding, a more prominent force than that which is free to be used. What answer could she offer the mare that would satisfy such an interrogative when what she knew didn't even comfort herself? Isra's question felt so much deeper than a relic - no, it felt deeper than this island or anything Maerys had experienced in the past days. How could she answer another one's questions when her own inquiries lingered like bitter aftertaste on her tongue? The girl had too many questions and few too little answers to be able to properly give the unicorn the words she desired. Her mauve eyes watch the bay mare with a torn expression - like charging steeds pulling in opposing directions. To choose one direction was to drop the other in its entirety; she could not choose one thought over the other. Torn between this and that, all she can quietly say is "where else wouldst one scour?" before finally admitting her thoughts on a solution - "conceivably one does not exist." Perhaps she was wrong, but she didn't believe Isra cared about the relic, she fretted about more influential things. The silver-haired child knew not even a drop of what Isra wanted to hear and could not offer her a second of comfort. With all of her iron-clad heart, Maerys knew the bay sovereign would find no answers here.
It was Isra, not Boudika, who vocalized when Maerys volunteered her opinion on the specific terminology used. She taught that mine is not the having of something, but rather a profound love for something. Mine is when you would die for it. Mine. The language of love and trust was like that, possessive. Maerys had always forbidden herself from becoming possessive as it was never how she yearned to live or be treated. She would never face Vradara and say you are mine so she would never turn to others and call Vradara hers, no matter the context. The girl comprehended what the mare alluded to very well, but made no vocalization in agreement or disagreement. Rather, she nodded her head with a quiet understanding of the words she had been offered even if she didn't wholly agree.
It was then that the ocean breathed harder, her surface crescendoed and diminuendoed with rhythmic ease - a pulsing reverberation of the heartbeats of those she kept protected in her bassinet of brine - before parting and birthing something more prominent than all of them combined. Grand and beautiful, it was a dragon of a vastly different variety than Vradara. He was sketched from the colors of the sea, and in many ways, she assumed he acted like the mar. The sea took her cue from the breeze, in soothing zephyrs she caressed the shore with salted lips of cerulean, but when violent clouds would come, her wind-torn summits would strike the bank and stone with resolute wrath. Maerys could only imagine the hulking dragon in the same way; clearly he meant no harm, but Maerys would be a fool to assume he wouldn't attack her if she did something that warranted it.
Not for the first time on this day, Maerys was left with no words.
They introduced themselves as Isra and Boudika (the sea dragon remained nameless now). Both were kind as they declared it is a pleasure and nice to meet one another and it draws a timid smile from the girl's lips now. Her mind was still a surging perplexity as pleasantries were exchanged until her attention was drawn from the dragons and conversation as Boudika inquired about Isra's magic, something Maerys had failed to note prior. In the sand adjacent to her hooves, the ground had begun to morph into something new. It was a glimpse of metal at first, the grey of iron and ore - not uniform, but instead a patina of many shades, before it expanded into something less subtle. The hardening and greying seemed almost fraudulent as the ground morphed from one thing to another and it was with reverence and admiration Maerys watched the transition.
Boudika seemed transfixed on the boundaries of the magic - can you turn something living? The image of her flesh and bones being warped by the strong twist of magic into stone was frightening to the child, but Boudika seemed absolutely fascinated with it. Maerys did not understand the full capabilities of Isra's magic; she didn't recognize that it wasn't just substance to iron, but rather one thing to any other thing. Despite the question the mare asked, Maerys found herself wondering about something different than Boudika. She questioned the timeline of it all. "Has't thee at each moment been able to reconstruct?" Was Isra born with such powers or did she acquire them as many Maerys knew had? Maerys herself had always wanted to obtain magical capabilities, but she had yet to be granted with such an opportunity. It was not jealousy that flowed through her veins now, but something else.
It was awe and wonder, and nothing truer could be said.
Perhaps it is only the touch of Fable's nose against her hips that tells her magic, no further, do not touch the sea. Perhaps it's the way that the salt-water he leaves runs down her like tears from the waves, salted and endless. Maybe it's the way that the sea always seems to cool all this fire rising, rising, rising to make a pyre of her bones. Or maybe it's nothing more than the way the mares are looking at her as if she's something both strange and maybe a little terrible that cools her fury.
Isra inhales as Fable lies his massive head beside her. The ground trembles on her exhale as the dragon lays down in the sand like a mighty lion might (he's always forgotting how large he is). The metal around him turns to grass, soft, plush and begging for a dream. All those dark bolts of furious rage start to die in her heart when she tells herself that there is time, too much time, to become a beast.
Later, she tells herself, later I will become the hunter once more. And then, when she steps closer across that wall she didn't realize she was building, now I am only a unicorn in a treasure hunt. The steel turns to pearl and the sun paints rainbows across the iridescent surface of it.
When she turns to Boudika it is only with a stab of recognition, because her question is one that she's asked herself over and over again. Could she turn her own bones into something else; could she remake her body into something as black as the hate in her heart? “I can.” She says and too her it feels like each word slices its way out from her lips like a blade instead of a waterfall. A moth that flies to close to them turns into a monarch. When she watches it fly back into the wind she tries not to feel too much like a monster. She fails.
Isra drags her hoof across the pearl shore as if to test how like sand it still is. At her back the sea is still crashing towards them. The tide is coming in and she can feel it tugging at Fable (and she tries not to feel it tugging at her singing, drown, drown, drown.). Her smile falters like a willow in a storm when she turns to Maerys. “I don't know if it's always been there. Someone had to show me the way to the place where it hid.” Isra tries not to fall into the memory of Eik and their deep, endless sea. She tries not to think of the continent that only the two of them know. She fails at that too and she turns her gaze towards the jungle to hide that slick shine of love sparking in her eyes.
She has always told her self that after-- after she's done being a weapon, after she's done killing-- there would still be all the time in the world left for love.
“Have you tried looking anywhere else for the relic?” This she asks because she's done thinking of how terrible her magic is and how the sea at her back is begging both her and her dragon closer, and deeper. “Me and Fable would be happy to help you look, if only for a little while.” At that dragon lifts his head and hums until the pearl under them all vibrates slightly.
It's almost easy then to imagine that the island is alive.
I TRIED TO WRITE STORIES ABOUT THE BOY WITH A BULL HEAD BUT THEY ALWAYS CAME OUT TOO ANGRY. LOOSE-LIMBED TEENAGE BOY WITH LEGS LIKE IRON AND SKIN GOLD, GOLD, GOLD. A NAME LIKE STARS, FISTS LIKE WEAPONS. WHITE TEETH AND YELLOW HORNS. NEGLECT LIKE A BRAND, LIKE HE EARNED IT.
The talk and image of magic brings to life Boudika’s own sharp inadequacy. While the other mares stand debating ownership, to which Maerys now only offers a noncommittal nod, Boudika stands in her perpetual solidarity. The island teems with life behind her, and before her the conversation blooms like a an uncertain, halting flower. The blossom-coloured dragon spirals overhead and Fable rises from the sea, legend incarnate. The circle of her solitude is complete. There is magic at her hooves and magic shaping questions on her tongue, but her heart is just a heart and if she were to call, no companion would answer. These truths ache inside her. They ache uglily,
She wonders what would happen, if she were to turn and disappear into the island. She wonders if they would notice, in their talk of relics, that she is gone. She wonders who would notice that her dances have stopped in Denocte, besides her patron. She wonders if there’s any point in any of it.
I can says the unicorn, but Boudika is not brave enough to ask for another shape. Even as the world around them continues to change. The metal ore has become grass, and pearls, all things more beautiful than it had been. Isra’s dragon—and as Boudika thinks it, there’s a sharpness to the claiming s, a pang of lost comradeship that hurts to think of—settles heavily beside them. She cannot believe that a beast so large, so fearsome, can for all intents and purposes possess all the nonchalance of a house-cat. Anything, her heart begs. Turn me into anything else. A tiger. She thinks she would like to be a tiger. The question catches in her throat, a cough, not a word. The red-and-black mare nods, and her heart aches to ask, soften me from iron to grass but she cannot, she cannot, she cannot.
And the moment passes, as the youngest mare questions the nature of Isra’s magic. Someone had to show me the way to the place where it hid. Boudika wonders, briefly, hopefully, if that is the gnawing emptiness inside of her. If that is room for magic but she knows, she knows, that is the space that was left when she thought she died months ago in the sea.
The tide is coming in. It has crept so close, Boudika feels it shushing at her heels. She feels outside of the conversation. She feels speechless. And she doesn’t know why.
“I know many of the places it isn’t.” Boudika offers. It is all she can offer. Her failures. And still, the question haunts her again and again. What favour would you ask a god? She does not want to share the potential of finding the relic. But in that moment, searching alone would be unbearable. Looking at Isra, at Maerys, at the dragons, Boudika thinks for a moment… perhaps she is not alone.
Inside, an old itch comes to her. A weariness. High tide, her memories whisper. Is the most dangerous.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THEY BUILT YOU YOUR OWN NIGHTMARE? DO YOU EAT THE OTHERS OR DO YOU EAT YOURSELF? BULL'S BELLOWS SHAKING AN ENTIRE FRACTIOUS ISLAND; A GIRL IN THE SHADOWS WHO'LL WEAR STARS ONE DAY. A SISTER'S RED SWEET MOUTH AT THE ENTRANCE TO AN ENDLESS MAZE, STRING DRIPPING BETWEEN MILK-WHITE FINGERS. MERCY, SHE WHISPERS INTO THE NIGHT TERROR, EYES FLICKERING. I'M SENDING YOU MERCY.
