I TRIED TO WRITE STORIES ABOUT THE BOY WITH A BULL HEAD BUT THEY ALWAYS CAME OUT TOO ANGRY. LOOSE-LIMBED TEENAGE BOY WITH LEGS LIKE IRON AND SKIN GOLD, GOLD, GOLD. A NAME LIKE STARS, FISTS LIKE WEAPONS. WHITE TEETH AND YELLOW HORNS. NEGLECT LIKE A BRAND, LIKE HE EARNED IT.
The talk and image of magic brings to life Boudika’s own sharp inadequacy. While the other mares stand debating ownership, to which Maerys now only offers a noncommittal nod, Boudika stands in her perpetual solidarity. The island teems with life behind her, and before her the conversation blooms like a an uncertain, halting flower. The blossom-coloured dragon spirals overhead and Fable rises from the sea, legend incarnate. The circle of her solitude is complete. There is magic at her hooves and magic shaping questions on her tongue, but her heart is just a heart and if she were to call, no companion would answer. These truths ache inside her. They ache uglily,
She wonders what would happen, if she were to turn and disappear into the island. She wonders if they would notice, in their talk of relics, that she is gone. She wonders who would notice that her dances have stopped in Denocte, besides her patron. She wonders if there’s any point in any of it.
I can says the unicorn, but Boudika is not brave enough to ask for another shape. Even as the world around them continues to change. The metal ore has become grass, and pearls, all things more beautiful than it had been. Isra’s dragon—and as Boudika thinks it, there’s a sharpness to the claiming s, a pang of lost comradeship that hurts to think of—settles heavily beside them. She cannot believe that a beast so large, so fearsome, can for all intents and purposes possess all the nonchalance of a house-cat. Anything, her heart begs. Turn me into anything else. A tiger. She thinks she would like to be a tiger. The question catches in her throat, a cough, not a word. The red-and-black mare nods, and her heart aches to ask, soften me from iron to grass but she cannot, she cannot, she cannot.
And the moment passes, as the youngest mare questions the nature of Isra’s magic. Someone had to show me the way to the place where it hid. Boudika wonders, briefly, hopefully, if that is the gnawing emptiness inside of her. If that is room for magic but she knows, she knows, that is the space that was left when she thought she died months ago in the sea.
The tide is coming in. It has crept so close, Boudika feels it shushing at her heels. She feels outside of the conversation. She feels speechless. And she doesn’t know why.
“I know many of the places it isn’t.” Boudika offers. It is all she can offer. Her failures. And still, the question haunts her again and again. What favour would you ask a god? She does not want to share the potential of finding the relic. But in that moment, searching alone would be unbearable. Looking at Isra, at Maerys, at the dragons, Boudika thinks for a moment… perhaps she is not alone.
Inside, an old itch comes to her. A weariness. High tide, her memories whisper. Is the most dangerous.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THEY BUILT YOU YOUR OWN NIGHTMARE? DO YOU EAT THE OTHERS OR DO YOU EAT YOURSELF? BULL'S BELLOWS SHAKING AN ENTIRE FRACTIOUS ISLAND; A GIRL IN THE SHADOWS WHO'LL WEAR STARS ONE DAY. A SISTER'S RED SWEET MOUTH AT THE ENTRANCE TO AN ENDLESS MAZE, STRING DRIPPING BETWEEN MILK-WHITE FINGERS. MERCY, SHE WHISPERS INTO THE NIGHT TERROR, EYES FLICKERING. I'M SENDING YOU MERCY.
@Isra @Maerys
