THEN I FEEL THE STORM AND AM VIBRANT LIKE THE SEA
Boudika knows the way the beach will still when a predator lurks beneath the depths of the waves, as though even the living on the shore are not safe. She knows the way the seagulls flock above, waiting to scavenge the remnants of the kill, and everything becomes so, so still.
It is the same feeling, now. It is the same creeping apprehension that lurks along her spine, that prickles her flesh with fear. She feels the adrenaline, the rapid thump, thump, thump of her heart as it begins to beat a new, ecstatic rhythm. Do they feel it? she wonders, side-eyeing the others as they gather, nervous, some whispering—and more doing, stepping forward, toward the relic that awaits like a promise and a curse. If you can only reach me, it seems to say, tauntingly. I am right here.
Boudika’s forward momentum comes to a forced, abrupt halt when the island begins to move. The stillness is suddenly betrayed; the sand shifts beneath her, beneath them, and the forest itself comes alive as though to claim the relic. Her instinct is to backtrack, to grasp more tightly upon her trident, to shift toward the most familiar face. Boudika moves towards August, to her peripheral, as gold as the relic itself.
Everything is motion. Boudika should be more surprised; she should feel the strange rush of uncertainty that comes with unexpected magic. Instead, she thinks only of course. Of course it would be something transformative; of course the strange island itself would become in order to defend the very treasure it was erected to introduce. Equines lunge toward the creature head on and Boudika cannot help but be appreciative for their sacrifice. It is August she looks toward now, falling back on years and years of training. She had never learned to fight alone. “Alright!” Boudika shouts back, above the fray. As August launches forward, so does she.
She charges, low and swift and with ears pinned sharply to her skull. The sand churns beneath her, and she hears the great heaving and cracking of the strange creature’s wooden bones. It is futile, Boudika thinks, to try and destroy a magic thing without magic. She feels bare without gold or silver or bronze; she has no copper chains or steel shackles to Bind the thing.
Only the familiar weight of her trident. At the last moment, Boudika coils her haunches to launch herself toward the island guardian’s writhing back. Her trident is raised, pointed, descending, aiming—to become a thing of reckoning, to become a harbinger with three gleaming gold points. And still her mind, through the pandemonium, the crashing, the yells—
What favour would you ask a god?
At the moment, she would very much like to ask them to let her live.
Boudika chooses option two.
