I FEED IT RAW MEAT, SO IT DOES NOT HURT ME
Only the moon. There was a chance, if Boudika were anyone else, the passing silence would have unnerved her. Certainly, there was something unnerving about the water horse’s sudden preoccupation—and adoration—of the moon over Boudika’s shoulder. Boudika had heard enough of Novus’ lore to understand the water horses there were sometimes greatly affected by the moon, whereas her Khashran had been indifferent to it. Perhaps this mare—water horse, Boudika amended—was affected so? But that did not make sense to Boudika, considering she had asked what the moon was. The mare elaborated, but not very well. How far Boudika almost asked, but did not. The large, green eyes gave it away. The perplexity about the light of the moon. The dark, perhaps.
“What kind of king?” Boudika wondered. She remained expressionless, aside from a slight narrowing of eyes. What a strange water horse. The kelpie shifted in the water, nearing Boudika, and the huntress watched cautiously. The water horse, grey and white and green and frilled with red, elongated her neck—reached for the air.
If Boudika were to kill her, that would have been the moment. The jugular gleamed like an offering, catching the moonlight just so. A spear or a trident or even a knife, expertly thrown, would have ended it. Boudika had none of those things… but it did not matter. The life ebbed there in that gleaming throat, exposed like a virgin at the alter.
Boudika would not have recognized the change that overcame the water horse, had she not been so experienced in watching them. There was a sharpening, a sudden and brilliant attentiveness. Ah, Boudika recognized that head-tilt, that virginal offering. The water horse had been scenting the air and on it was Boudika’s very flesh. She had seen something similar often enough. The wind shifting during an ambush, alerting a herd of Khashran of their approach—the way they lifted their heads, not equine but predatory, and turned their eyes sharply in the directions of the wind.
It was not so different.
As a courtesy… Boudika’s lips turned wryly into a smile that belonged not to flesh and blood, but a blade. It was not a smile that said prey.
Boudika answered the breathy, wanton voice. She stepped closer. The water lapped higher, now, and Boudika knew the depth at which she stood would delay her movements. She knew the risk very well, and a larger part of her whispered, run. Was that not a tactic they had taught at the academy? She had been one of the top students. She remembered her lessons very well. It would not be so difficult, to incite the predatory instinct of a water-horse… to seduce them into a chase… but why else did Boudika run so far, so fast, so often? Her sure-footed land-legs would not fail her. But lungs accustomed to water? Would they fair so well? Boudika wanted to run. She wanted to lure the water horse—
Orestes. Orestes, in her mind, standing beside her. The only time they had not had bars between them was when they had been led to their death sentence. They had walked in chains, prodded and jeered at by a large crowd, and had walked side-by-side. His flesh and touched her flesh, and it had been so much warmer than she had expected a Khashran’s flesh to be. And in her had welled the fear of mortality, the fear of an un-lived life, and he had brushed his killer’s-mouth against her jaw and whispered, tenderly, “You will not die today, Copperhead.”
Her desire of violence fled abruptly. She watched the water horse's salt tears. “Don’t apologise. It’s your nature.” There was no insult. It was as matter-of-fact as when Orestes had said it, of her, as Boudika sobbed out her guilt of Binding him to his equine form and no other. It is in your nature. There was a wisdom to those words Boudika would never fully understand; an acceptance, of knowing something for what it was and not attempting to change it. Sometimes, there was no malice in deeds—sometimes it was as simple, as factual, as the wolf eating the lamb. Boudika cocked her head. “I won’t leave. Come, water horse. We can find you something more suitable for you to eat.” In those words was a kindness Boudika did not expect to find. She cleared her throat, stepping slowly backward and out of the water, ensuring she made no abrupt or flighty movements. “… can you leave the water?”
Boudika stood in the sand, staring. She was caught unawares when the water horse asked about her—and she discovered that she did not know what to say. “My name is Boudika. I’m a dancer in the Night Court.” It was clipped, factual, one statement after the other. It was not her. It was an identity she scarcely understood, or related with. I am a dancer who chased down a criminal. I am a huntress who fell in love with what I hunted. I do not know who I am.
Boudika did not want to say that--but at the same, it felt like a lie to refrain. Haltingly, she spoke again. "Before I lived here, I hunted a speices very similar to yours. We called them Khashran. They're gone now."
The way she admitted it, they're gone now was not cruel. She could not help her voice from catching. She could not help but remember Orestes' dark face streaked with golden dust, his eyes staring at her with a pain of eons, of oceans, of an entire people. Gone.
"That was a long time ago, though." And the night sang to her, and the sea sang to her, and perhaps it would not be so terrible to be drowned by a creature so beautiful.
Perhaps it would even feel a little like forgiveness.
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