THERE IS A LION IN MY LIVING ROOM. I FEED IT RAW MEAT SO IT DOES NOT HURT ME. IT IS A STRANGE THING, TO NOURISH WHAT COULD KILL YOU, IN THE HOPES IT DOES NOT KILL YOU.
Lives on top of lives, stacked like a deck of cards—that was the way of the world, with too many memories, too many sentiments and letters and passions, all complicated poetry, all haphazard and ugly, all thrown together in a wayward, anarchic fashion. All of this was said in the way his smile did not quite meet his eyes, and the way they strove toward conversation, with both too much and too little on their lips, both too much and too little in their hearts. What does it mean, Boudika wondered, desperately, submerged in loneliness. What does it mean, to connect?
Oh, it had been a long time since she had been called companion. Love was not something she thought necessary; her spartan lifestyle, prior Novus, had never given her a taste for luxury or comfort. What it had given her, however, was a need for camaraderie, a need for brotherhood. Once, she had been animated by the vivacious striving toward life through constant, inescapable contest—they were competitive, vivacious bodies, always present, always surging forward with an eager appetite, larger than life, an ardor exalted by a culture which esteemed those who reached the summit, who dominated, who became.
Denocte did not demand such extremity—it was too close to the stars, and the night, making the people harder to grasp—the loneliness, then, was greater, and sometimes darker. It wrung from her words rather than fierce action; it suggested conversation instead of shared suffering which, to her, meant the foundation of brotherhood.
But perhaps there was shared suffering here.
These were all contemplations that passed with riotous, raucous swiftness. The chill met her flesh, then her bones. Boudika followed his gaze from her far-off white horizon, back from whence she came, toward the strange Court. Easier to breathe. Boudika thought so, too—but that word, that word… to breathe. The opposite came unbidden. To drown. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he knew, what it was like to drown not only in the sea, but in the people of a strange place.
You look pensive. Tell me what makes you the way you are. Among her people, honesty had been the only way, as blatant and harsh as nature herself. Boudika turned, now, her crimson gaze unto him—and fixed it there, as she did when she focused on something, utterly.
She recognized another Atlas, when she saw him—she recognized the burden of a world in the gaze of someone bone-weary. How many world’s had been abandoned for Novus’ shores? How many lives forsaken for the Courts of the warring, timeless land of celestial gods? Many. Her world was different than his, she was certain, but a burden was a burden—and the heaviness weighed the same. The snow had begun to fall harder, more viciously, and the wind stung at her face. Boudika smiled now, a genuine smile.
Something about his disposition made her believe he would care to hear.
So she told him.
”I was a General’s daughter in a world where only sons could achieve greatness. I killed my mother in childbirth; and our people consider that a curse, so I was never touched, and my father disguised me with magic as a boy.” Boudika shrugged one, supple shoulder. Her leonine tail lashed. ”I grew up in a military academy and learned to hunt monsters—without ever realising we were the monsters, not the hunters, and I captured the Prince of a Thousand Tides. I learned to hate, to fight, to wage war because I had been born on a side of war. I Bound the Prince, a creature of a thousand shapes, to one body and one Soul. Then I fell in love, with a boy, who was my companion… and he betrayed me, to my people, who betrayed me to the sea.” Her head cocked in a way that was avian; a way that was predatory, foreign to an equine, and yet… graceful, graceless. Boudika snorted, and her breath fogged.
”I was imprisoned with the Prince of a Thousand Tides, a water-horse, a shape-changer, now only an equine. And he renamed me, and taught me all of the beautiful things about his people, about himself, a creature as old as the sea… and he gave me forgiveness I had not deserved, from a Prince who I had been raised to hate… But we were sentenced to death by sinking ship, bound in iron. And... instead of dying… I awoke here. Now I dance, and can’t stand the sight of blood.” There were truths and half-truths; her memories made elaborate, larger than her life now, and all of it sounded fable-like.
It was the first time she had said it aloud; it, at once, felt sacred and sinful.
Boudika’s vulnerability vanished as she turned her steely eyes away from Michael, back toward the horizon. She had to squint, now, as the snow cluttered her lashes. ”And you, kind stranger? What is your burden?”
There was no other word to describe the weight, which forced them to brave this weather, shoulders hunched and smiles distant from their eyes.
WE HAVE LIVED LIKE THIS, IT AND I, FOR SO MANY YEARS. SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED LIKE THIS. SOMETIMES I THINK I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS.
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