AT NIGHT I LISTEN TO MY DEAD HEART AND NAME IT AFTER A DEAD COUNTRY
THE BIRDS IN MY BLOOD STOP MID-FLIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU, A WAR ENDS.
THE BIRDS IN MY BLOOD STOP MID-FLIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU, A WAR ENDS.
You think it wails to me?
Boudika would have said more, but did not have the opportunity. The kelpie dropped his horn and ice bloomed in the rushing current, only to be overtaken. It was beautiful to observe; perhaps because of its transiency. The ice's abrupt disappearance evoked a startingly clear image to her: she remembered a body-choked beach, like so many fish out of water. Dead, buoyed by the sea as it caressed, touched, reached—drawing them back, tugging them toward her forgiving depths. Someone, farther down the stretch of black sand, tugged a trident from the chest of a Khashran. The motion, she thought, was not so different from the ice as it was devoured by the current. Her expression was hard when she looked at him; unforgiving; and Boudika stepped nearer still.
The darkness between them existed as an almost living entity. Clinging. The bioluminescence merely softened the jagged sharpness of the dark and revealed his true nature: a predator, with the angles of one and the hard, unrelenting lines of muscle. But more: the illusion of the darkness itself was almost water-like. It laid heavy upon them; and it was not difficult for Boudika to imagine their encounter as some deep, underwater meeting in the ocean reeds. Did the air here, not taste of salt and humidity? Did it not fill her lungs with the ocean and the rotting scent of soil? Boudika did not dwell, however, too long on the concept; the wailing of the stream brought her back.
“And yet… it wails.” Her tone was nearly dismissive. To say: your magic has done little to silence the scream.
In one leonine motion, with coiled haunches, Boudika launched herself across the stream. Below her, something startled in the current; it disrupted a flow of hair-like algae. The algae began to glow fluorescent blue, nearly turquoise. The colour trembled in the water, and undulated, from cerulean to violet to crimson. There it remained, illuminating them from beneath in a ethereal, unwordly sort of way. It belonged to the island; to the mythic bridge to nowhere. The light. Throbbing. Throbbing. Throbbing as the island throbbed; as her heart throbbed; as the sound recurred, again and again, blood sluiced from the vein. She landed beside him; heavy and silent all at once; and the panicked algae turned to the same mauve of a bruise.
“This island is no place for those who believe in safety, or seek it.” Boudika countered. But her words trembled. He was right, Boudika knew. And was that not the very reason she had stayed so long, searching for a relic that likely did not exist? Searching for Time, to take back all her deeds? But his challenge was not answered in her words; it was answered in her proximity, hot and furious, like a tropic storm. They were very near one another; and her eyes bore into him, belonging to something feral, something old. Perhaps her very gods danced within her veins; the gods of old Oresziah; of stone and torch; of the dances Orestes had shown her; of the streaked gold of her people. In a way nearly impish, she dipped her tail into the glowing creek and flicked the water at the kelpie.
“I will not run. Will you?” Perhaps it was the distance of the sea, that gave her such courage. Perhaps it was because in that moment, close enough to smell the salt on his flesh, it was easy for her to imagine she was where she belonged. Dark shapes twisted in the stream, drawn by the algae or the ice or both; they were malovent and hypnotic, and in their swirling, chaotic dance the algae bloomed in shades of iridescent, unimaginable azule and emerald. The light was thrown wildly upon them; and the darkness swung wildly back.
A battle of wills.
@Boudika"speaks"
