I THINK YOU WILL SET YOURSELF AFIRE BEFORE YOU
REALIZE THAT EVEN YOU CANNOT CONQUER THE SUN. REBELLION SITS WELL ON YOU; LIKE A RED COAT OR THE GILT GOLD BURNISH OF YOUTH. (I DO NOT BELIEVE WE SHALL EVER SEE HOW OLD AGE LOOKS ON YOU, YOU ARE BREAKING MY HEART)
REALIZE THAT EVEN YOU CANNOT CONQUER THE SUN. REBELLION SITS WELL ON YOU; LIKE A RED COAT OR THE GILT GOLD BURNISH OF YOUTH. (I DO NOT BELIEVE WE SHALL EVER SEE HOW OLD AGE LOOKS ON YOU, YOU ARE BREAKING MY HEART)
Boudika thought their feigned intimacy strange—the brazen questions, the courtly politeness. The Night Court continuously surprised her with its compassion and, like a double-sided coin or a two-headed snake, with the intriguing darkness. It was true that Azrael was the first she had met who spoke of Caligo and the stars so openly, but it aggravated the strangeness rather than subdued it. Were they all so devout? Her island was ruled by the Old Ways; and there were believers but, likewise, disbelievers, particularly among her generation. The division was clear and ominous as nonbelievers made old practices crueler, without the eyes of the gods to keep them in check.
And she wondered, was Caligo a cruel god? Were the stars? Looking at them, their indifference spoke volumes. So far. So cold. What futures could be written in that stellar dust when she, on the earth, was alive with a beating, vibrant heart? Was that not in and of itself in defiance of the fates? But Boudika listened quietly, nearly enchanted by Azrael’s calm speech and certain uncertainty. For the balance has shifted, he said. War will come and, wish it, destruction and suffering. They will ask us to fight.
The thought churned within her, unwelcome. Boudika had sworn away such things coming to this land, and the comment sparked something incendiary within her. Something that had been an untended coal now flickered into an ember, a slow and tenacious burn, dark, deep, nursed somewhere close to her heart. She would not fight for strange gods on strange lands, no matter how kind the Night folk. Thus Boudika did not meet his gaze—merely clenched her jaw and stared so hard at the moon that when she blinked it remained, ghastly and white-turning-dark, on her inner eyelids.
What do you believe? His intensity, quiet and as smouldering as her rage, directed back at her. Her ear flicked toward him, her expression simultaneously pensive, conflicted, and hard. For some reason her father’s words rose, unbidden, to the forefront of her mind.
The General, her father, had been amiable that night—perhaps due to drink, perhaps due to the startling number of military victories Boudika’s recent class had wrought. He was standing quietly, pensively, in their large sitting room, the dark firelight hitting his two-toned flesh and turning it metallic. He was Boudika’s opposite—black where she was copper, copper where she was black, with silver stripes on each haunch and spiralling horns, much larger than her own. He was polarising in this atmosphere, making a large room seem small—and as she joked with him, jovially, playing the part of dutiful son… and clutching the memory close to heart, to breast, hoping it remain pleasant… he became somber.
“What is a tiger hunter,” her father asked. “When there are no more tigers left to hunt?”
Boudika had been taken aback. She had no quick, clever retort—her cunning cadet lips had become leaden with such philosophy. To hunt was her purpose, and his silver eyes glittered crimson, amber, black, with the fire. Despite her lack of commentary, she knew the answer.
“Oh, Boudika,” and she tensed at her feminine name on the General’s lips. But somehow he was made smaller by using it; he was just her father, with heavy, tired eyes. A General’s eyes, close to retirement, with health that declined daily and nightmares that kept him up into the early morning, nightmares of shape-changers, of drowning, of being ripped apart. “We love them and we hate them, because they are us, reflected.”
Boudika turned her face toward him, her eyes bright and flaming against the chill, the snow, the stars. ”I believe the only gods are the wild ones." The ones that could condemn and elevate in the same breath; the ones like the sea, the storm, the earth. "And I believe there are tigers, tiger hunters, and deer.” A shrug, too lesson the too-intense way she spoke. But it did not have that effect; it did not lighten it. Something about the gesture, sharp and abrasive, turned the words even more steely. ”And the tiger hunters will hunt the tigers until there are no more, and prey upon the beautiful, innocent deer for food and cloth…. And there will one day be no more tigers, and no more deer, and the hunters will realise it is only themselves they have to blame. They will realise that they destroyed the very thing they loved, and feared, and hated. The thing they needed, for existence. What is a tiger hunter, without a tiger to hunt? And your goddess will know darkness then.”
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, too dry, too dry. The words relayed too much; about herself, her beliefs, her past. Her scars were silver slivers against the darkness of her skin. ”This Raum believes himself a tiger hunter, if the rumours are true. But a forest can only burn so much until it is soot and ash, and the dumb luck of it is that we can do nothing against a force like that but hope we’re among the lucky ones.”
A friend had written her once, while she was in prison, and told her that Oresziah had nothing left to believe in. The water horses were captured or killed. Peace, at last, was upon them—but the soldiers went home and beat their wives, and the scholars began to study a culture dead with Orestes bound, and the massive, mulling army had no more purpose. They built ships, and Boudika could only wonder, now, whether those ships had been for the hunters to find more tigers in a sea they deemed cursed. Everyone’s day came, and perhaps she only had the poor fortune of entering another life, on another coast, with another misfortune. Perhaps you are cursed, she thought, and laughed to lighten her words. ”But worrying about all that would drive you to madness.” she says, eyes redirected to the moon. ”It is beautiful, I suppose.”
@Azrael
