ON THE NIGHT OF MY DEATH, YOUR DESPAIR WAS SO LOUD, THAT I COULD HEAR IT CLAWING THROUGH THE EARTH TO FIND ME. ALL THE MEN SCREAMING, BEGGING, STILL COULD NOT DROWN OUT THE WAILING OF YOUR HANDS.
There was something about knowledge—the lack of it could drive one almost to madness, the questions of what if, what if, what if, the sheer possibility of what one does not know. But, as two-sided as a blade, the juxtaposition was just as cruel. To have knowledge, to have the answer—what if I regret it, and what if you do? The need for her to know, for the answer of her incessant, haunting question—is he alive is he alive is he alive—to reveal itself… Well, the effect was addictive, but not narcotic. No, it came with no pleasant stupor, no sedation, no elation. It was like a dependence on adrenaline—an obsessive, necessary agony simply to feel alive. The curse was that not knowing was unbearable. The curse was that knowing, too, was unbearable.
So their breaths fogged the air, each one of them unaware they breathed life back into the other, a semblance of hope—there was a delicate balance here, a strange intimacy borne of two who understood a rare, strange world. She had named him a water horse, lacking fear, and he gave her a reawakening, he made her feel alive again instead of a shadow dancer. This water horse gave her hope, as she desperately waited for the answer, the name—Orestes Orestes Orestes Orestes—clamouring inside her with the same urgency as a scream.
And the kelpie's predatory grin, the delight in which he took in her vibrancy, the way that shark-smile faded. The stillness, then, of glaciers—and it was an unknown to Boudika, who knew only the water-horses as transient, as the shape of a wave one moment, of fanged fish the next, then of horses tangled in seaweed. This stillness, violent only in its absolute, made her pulse quicken. And his words, the words she waited for—I do not know this friend of yours. They were heavy. The clamour of Orestes’ name became an anchor, and Boudika felt tugged toward the ground. Her disappointment was tremendous, insurmountable, the knowledge abruptly unbearable. He probably isn’t alive.
But still, the not knowing.
What if he is?
The kelpie regarded her with predatory intensity; his gestures not equine, no, but distinctly lupine, or even avian. The cool regard of a wolf’s stare. Dispassionate, but not uncurious. And Boudika does not shy from it. The mare takes another step forward, and then the waves kissed her forelegs—cool, tugging, tugging. Sand pulled from beneath her feet, and then returned, with each coming and going of the sea. These things are not unfamiliar to Boudika—for if he was a wolf, she was a wolf hunter. If he was the sea, she was the land.
Those things cannot exist separately.
Those things cannot exist without great and terrible intimacy.
Does the shore not wish to crash into the waves? To become one? Do the rocks of rivers not one day corrode, brought to knee by the limitless will of water’s way? Does the wolf not starve without the deer, and does the wolf hunter not know the animal as well as a lover, in his habits, his ferocity, his capability? The shape of supple shoulder, the angle of muzzle and tooth, a well-bred wolf versus a poor one? The health of a well-fed animal, the luxuriousness of the coat, the thickness of the fur… and the malnourished, brittle, sinking? These things Boudika knew, of the Khashran, and even if this kelpie was only a distant relative… she knew his habits, too. She knew how to recognise a wolf as a wolf, she knew how the recognise the famished eyes brought on by loneliness. This kelpie’s expression was not so different from Orestes, in his prison bars.
”What do you know of finding him?” Her previous ferocity had become still. Almost placid. A lake gone bad with stagnancy. The noise between them, for a moment, just the hush hush hush of the sea. Her skin was not drying. The chill was prevalent, deep, aching in her bones, a wet that felt like ice. The kelpie’s words were promise-like and Boudika did not know what they meant—how did he suggest she find him? Boudika weighed her answer.
How badly and her mind was full of sea-blue eyes, the dark dappled coat, the way she had seen him once, from very far away, running down the beach with a herd of Khashran in half-shapes. The water had just barely relinquished its embrace and it streamed from their rippling flanks as they became land forms, equines, some bounding as mysterious almost-animals, laughing with mouths slit wide, crocodilian, vicious.
And then: her recent plunge into the sea. The clinging of the salt, the prevalent scent of ocean she could not escape, she could not outrun. ”I would do anything,” Boudika at last answered, but now distrustful.
She stepped back, one foot closer toward the land, very still. Her tail swayed briefly and then, with a flash of bright copper, gave a long, lethargic, leonine flick. Her eyes, which had had so much trouble focusing on the kelpie before, now bore into him utterly.
Orestes had once said, you could never be the sea, you are all fire, copperhead—crimson eyes and copper skin and dark, deep stripes—the sea would not have you, you are a lion, you do not belong—
And she wondered, did she? The not knowing was both entirely unbearable, and entirely necessary, as though the answer in and of itself might be condemnation.
I ONCE HELD YOUR SOLDIER HEART BETWEEN MY WAR TEETH, AND SHOOK IT LIKE A DOG WITH A BONE, UNTIL IT KNEW THE FEAR OF GOOD LOVE. DO YOU REMEMBER?
@Amaroq
