WERE I IF I COULD, I WOULD ERASE YOUR ARMOUR RIGHT WHERE YOU STAND, BURNISHED HEAD TO HEEL BY SUN, A VERITABLE GOD. I WOULD TAKE THE SPEAR AND RETURN THE LYRE, but i can only stare at your golden back as you march off to the dance of war--
Boudika was angry, but it more; much more, than just anger. It was the kind of rage that closely resembled both desperation and grief and changed colour like a chameleon, blending one moment to one sentiment and then the next to the other. It was a rage that struck her to the core, wordless and strange. It was a rage that altered her very disposition, transforming her from sullen and brooding into a hurricane, a creature with flushed skin, disheveled hair, blood-shot and exhausted eyes. Oh, how she wished to be a force of nature; the very sort of think that wrecked indiscriminately, a force of fate and fight, unrestricted by the confines of mortal space or morality. Boudika wanted to be a storm and then, like a storm, she wanted to dissolve.
The injustice of this was the world did not reflect her tumultuous state. Instead, a placid serenity covered Denocte. Snow, an expansive blanket of white, encompassed the breadth of the territory. It was silent, aside the resolute crunching of her hooves as they broke through the crusted surface of the snow. It was at least a foot deep in most places, as a storm had covered the land the night before—a blizzard, even, that dusted the few trees in snow and ice. Last night, during her restless slumber and unfavored dreams, Denocte decided to refer her later mood of fury. Perhaps there was irony there; perhaps something she could discern, had she the mind to do it. Perhaps. But there was no reason to discover that irony, when she was awake and furious. Her run had been hindered to the point it had become a walk. Thus she trudged, resolutely and with simmering rage, toward the mountain range.
It had been weeks, or months, since she had arrived on Novus—beaten by the sea, bruised and chaffed by salt and iron bonds. She had awoken somewhere on the Solterra coast and wandered until she met the old stallion, telling her of courts. Solterra had been too similar to her homeland; too brazen; too harsh. Boudika shunned those ideals, now, despite her boiling blood. So she chose, instead, to become a dancer.
That thought came tinged with bitterness. A dancer, chimed her thoughts. As though you have any right to be a dancer. She knew what blood tasted like. How it looked at it congealed, sanguine and dark, on a battle-torn beach.
But those were not even her dreams, as of late. Her dreams were of Vercingetorix, with his dark head and alabaster body, dappled in glimmering, semi-translucent gold. She thought of him with his smile, with his soft whispers, with the way he had called her brother in a way more intimate than the word had any right becoming. You are my brother, he had said during the long days and nights when Bondike—not Boudika—had tended him.
Brother, brother, brother.
And then, when his feelings kindled for her--or him, as Boudika had been then, disguised always as Bondike--then, he was companion, and the word Vercingetorix used was full of love, a synonym, even, for a warrior who could not bring himself to say the sentiment.
Boudika fumed. Boudika hated. She was so much a companion he betrayed her when her love came to light and, with it, her identity. Vercingetorix had shunned her—sudden vinegar and salt, a cruelty Boudika had always believed belonged only to enemies.
Those were her thoughts as she climbed the mountains. Those were her thoughts as her muscles strained and her breath fogged the air and the frost froze to the winter-long fur on her chest and legs. Boudika was partaking on an odyssey. She thought, if only she could get far enough from the sea… if only she could surmount some obstacle, greater than she had ever known… then she would be free of him and his heavy ghost, all that it represented. He was in the back of her mind as an oppressive, vindictive shadow. He loomed like her island's devil, a cruel pagan thing, which whispered her transgressions. You were a woman among men. You pretended to be something you were not. You pretended to be good enough. And the cruelty, there, was that she had been. She had captured the Prince of a Thousand Tides. She had bound him for Oresziah--and they had banished her, sentenced her to death, sworn her away as an enemy against them.
All because of something she could not change. All because she was a general's daughter, rather than a son.
The hours passed and the sun grew warm on her back, but did not melt the snow, nor Vercingetorix's shadow. She climbed the treacherous mountains until she found a cliffside and could see the whole of Denocte and then, and only then, did she begin to scream her rage.
