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.
A killing-thing. What does it mean, to be so close, to a killing-thing? Blade-like, razor-sharp and whistle-thing—yet more whetted than any steel. Death is here, in the fickle sensation of tingling skin, adrenaline coursing headily through her veins. Oh yes, Death is here. Exquisitely present, an old friend rediscovered at the end of the world. Yes, Death is here. The Almighty courses between them in the vivacious, thundering beat of her heart. Time stands still, because Death is here, and he wears a kelpie’s skin and a huntresses tiger coat. He is a whisper, a promise, the tension of song quivering in the wail of a strange island’s heart-stream. This is where Life is real, present, where everything is felt and experienced. Intimately held next to Death. Touching the flame. Pulled beneath the waves. A knife biting at the air where flesh had just occupied. Beneath the wolf’s crushing jaw, or the tiger’s claws. In the fight. At the precipice, the edge—ready to leap—to leap—
That proximity, so intimate, is gone before her mind can comprehend its depth. He withdraws and Boudika feels cold. They are well-versed in Death’s dance. Amoraq's nearness, his cold skin, is an unpoetic reminder of past brutalities—in his shape she sees hundreds of other shapes, and she remembers the weight of her trident at the end of her mind’s reach, the certain angle it must be wrenched from unmoving meat so that it does not catch on flesh or bone—
He has answered her. Her thoughts reel. Boudika cannot remember if she has ever given this water horse her name, or if she has kept it a secret between them. His does not come to her mind. Only water horse, only the cold breath of ice and the curious memory of her swimming in the winter sea. He could have killed me then.
A relic, the water horse replies, and draws away. The darkness is there again. It fills the space that opens, chasm-like, between them. They are hard, shadowed angles and lines. She is a fool. For a moment, disappointment wells within her, and she cannot name it, she cannot find the spring from which it spills. What would we hunt, she had asked, and he has given a kinder answer. In the empty darkness, in their growing distance, she hears another echo: each other. Her heart, however, is a writhing thing; an animalistic thing; and incomprehensibly, she thinks of Orestes’ teeth through the bars. Flashing sharp and long and wicked, but beautifully so. We aren’t savages, Copperhead. There is nothing as beautiful, as sacred, as the Hunt.
“And when we find it?” She cannot imagine an answer. Her head cocks in the darkness, and her movements are leonine when she trails in a tight, small circle around him. There is something enraged about her. Something fire-bright and hot, smouldering. Her tail lashes again, a smarting flick toward his chest.
And then she remembers his promise.
And I would help you look.
She stops. The sudden stillness at the center of a storm.
It does not matter why he wants to find it. It only matters that he does. Her mouth feels dry. He is the only one who could help me find him. She could say that. She means it. But those words do not come. Instead: “What do you love about the hunt?” Because she needs to know why she can hear the blood rushing in her ears.
Do her eyes not answer him, bleached by the moonlight, ethereal, belonging to the deep? Do they not say, anything?
@Amoraq"speaks"
