I do not love you as if you were a salt-rose or topaz
or the arrows of carnations the fire shoots off
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved
in secret, between the shadow and the soul
or the arrows of carnations the fire shoots off
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved
in secret, between the shadow and the soul
Boudika is surrounded by life, and death. Both are equally aloof, and fleeting, and dance before her with all the fickleness of a flame and the shadows it casts. There are memorials and graves to visit, overflowing by now with flowers and gifts to the remembered. There are names she does not know belonging to men and women she has never met and her heart aches, aches, aches like the sea against the shore, longing for something unobtainable. Her longing, like the sea, smooths over the same stones of her past again and again until the memories are threadbare and faded. Boudika feels alone and yet intimately connected to this new land, her new home. There is something that tugs at her regardless and she finds herself mourning for a name that cannot be erected, cannot be acknowledged, because she is far too selfish to share it.
But her restlessness draws her again and again to a tent with flickering firelight, that equines enter and leave periodically. She listens to the whispers that accompany their passage and knows there is some sort of soothsayer, a prophesier, within the tent. The fires within emphasise silhouettes briefly, jaggedly, but Boudika stands too far away to begin to guess what secrets the tent may contain. She suddenly feels the briskness of the wind, and it occurs to Boudika that she has been in Novus nearly a year. The bonfires billow around her and she listens to their heavy breaths, sighing herself.
Nearly a year.
It is a long time, and there is nothing of her past for her to rediscover. Only the future; and as much as she reminds herself of this, there exists a nagging guilt. Boudika’s eyes are drawn upward, toward the bright stars and the sickle moon. It is so bright, a luxury that was rarely bestowed in Oresziah where cloud-cover was more common then clear nights or days. Why? the question is tentative in her mind, toward the darkness; nearly a prayer, but not quite. There are moonstones beneath her feet and Caligo is everywhere in the night, in the laughter, in the prayers of those who grieve their dead and in the excitement of children who wander to the Harvest maze. Yes, there is a goddess among them, weaving them closer and closer together, but Boudika is still uncertain what her part is within the tapestry.
She wonders, at last allowing herself to put true thoughts to her sentiments, if she has betrayed him.
Another horse exits the tent. The opening flap, caught for a moment in the wind, snaps harshly. It is getting later, and later—the steady string of attendants has weakened considerably, and the flap remains open, catching in the wind intermittently.
Boudika has not forgotten him, but the sea is too large for her to search. The harder she holds on to the memory, the less she has in front of her. He has taken up all the rooms in her heart, and none of them are open. The revelation is one that strikes her, and if she were completely alone it would have been an effort to keep the strangled sob within her chest. As it were, she is out on the streets of her city, and she stands with all the stoicism of a tested warrior. Too much. Too much. Yes, it is too much for her to bear alone. She takes one step forward, and then another.
She enters the tent and is affronted with heavy incense and a hazy, smoky light. But there is comfort, and pillows and cushions aplenty. Boudika settles in awkwardly and, looking at the Shed-Star, she begins to ask:
Is he alive?
But Boudika knows the answer, and what comes out instead is:
“I would like to know what to expect this coming year.”
The sea has swallowed him, and Boudika knows with sudden and complete acceptance there is no coming to terms with that. It is a new fact of her life, and he has given her a gift she can never repay—Orestes has given her her life, at the sacrifice of his own. The only thing she had left to do was earn that sacrifice and so she waits, allowing the turmoil within her breast to settle into something more anxious, more childlike, because as true as it is she mourns his nameless grave at the sea she thinks of how I must be ready to champion these people. Boudika had to believe that all of it, every last thing, and happened for a reason.
Yet she is brimming, overflowing, with all that she has contained and refused to speak of. She guards it selfishly and waits, and waits, until the tension grows and her questions come like a flood. “How do I commit myself to Caligo? How do I... I... become?” And even that, desperate and ragged, is too vague: because even as Boudika asks it she does not know what she is to become, or what she wants to become, only that the sea sings to her, and she has fallen in love with the moonstones of her city's streets, and moving into the castle has at once made her feel full and empty, and somewhere there is a girl within her that loves to dance painted in gold.
@Layla @Katherine"speaks"
