Why don’t you just touch me?
The question of a warrior-turned-dancer-turned-monster.
Boudika asks it in the way her gaze devours him; her eyes study each hard line, each angle, as his magic explores her. Oh, yes. She devours him with her eyes. She savours each smile he gives, and nearly sashays into the embrace of his reaching, prodding, curious shadows. Each flick of her eyes beneath her long lashes, the absolute dilation of her pupils; it serves to illustrate a beastly point: Boudika stares at him like a piece of meat.
Does he not realise how he smells?
That alive, heart thrumming in his ribs, he is so much more tantalising than a corpse? Orestes’s words are on the tip of her tongue, nearly an apology, nearly an explanation. It’s in my nature.
“It was perfect.” The way she says it, almost a question, an unfinished sentence. Her teeth feel like a promise in her mouth; she tongues them where he cannot see, and says, quietly, “I could show you.” There is nothing darker than the sea, shadow-caster. Don't you know the moon makes her dance?
“My trident will never be gone for good.” It is a simple admission. Boudika does not mind sharing it. Even now she sees it in Isra’s castle; even now she knows where it rests, waiting for her with more patience than a lover.
Yes.
His heart, his heart.
Oh, it is so strong. Boudika ducks her head, her ears pin; and then turn toward him, wickedly sharp, wickedly pointed. It beats, beats, beats. She hears the rush of blood with the shushing of the sea and together they make The Song, and she listens with fierce delight. Boudika wears his shadows with pride; she laughs the moment her approach causes an undulation within him; and that laugh grows as sharp and high as a gull.
Yet Tenebrae stands. He stands tall and straight as any pine; she nearly loves him for it, in the way the tiger loves the strength of the stag; in the way the tiger loves the strength of another tiger. As always, Tenebrae is shrouded and looks like no mere stag; the shadows come from him; and those that exist by themselves strain about him, as if seeking approval, as if dancing to a song that only they can hear. There is something more than fear; Boudika senses it, she remembers it as the tension that existed between herself and Amaroq.
Something like want; something sweet as sin.
Boudika can nearly taste it. He presses her with magic; her muscles strain but she feels, she knows, magic is nothing for the thing that writhes within her like life itself.
Then he settles himself. Breath by breath. Boudika listens to it. Her eyes drop from the sky to him, him, him; and they stay fixed there with pinpoint intensity. His eyes skip from her legs, her eyes, her spiralling horns.
No. Well then, I had better know what I am up against.
Just like that the game is up.
Do you know hunger like the hollow pit of a fruit, gutted out? Do you know hunger like something that was once full, but is now empty? Do you know hunger like death does, looking at life?
Why don’t you just touch me?
His violence rises to meet hers; but Boudika is no warrior that he can caress. She is not a girl with flowers in her mouth, or a trident by her side.
I am no seal, Boudika.
Everything is still. And she is no woman.
She stands trembling beneath the feel of his touch; perhaps if Boudika were older, a little wiser, it would not undo her so. A sound escapes her, neither moan nor gasp nor cry but something that is all of those things and none of them.
Now her heartbeat undulates.
Now the sea sings in her veins and the darkness fills her to the brim with wanting, longing, hunger.
Boudika does not play games anymore.
With the sudden intensity of a shark attack, of a crocodile lunging from the deep, she twists her head and extends forward. It is a sideways snap meant to lodge his face firmly in her mouth, with particular care not to place her leopard seal-like teeth in the soft pits of his eyes. The gesture of it is the sick mockery of a killer’s kiss; and if she succeeds it is with the soft pricking of those teeth against his skin, the taste of blood, the thrum-thrum-thrum of her heart beating, beating, beating—
I could show you.
Some things are too perfect to eat.
Have you ever held something sweet in your mouth, just to savour it? Tonguing over the hard edges; letting the taste melt, melt, melt on your tongue? Have you ever tasted something so rich it would last for an eternity?
Some moments are too perfect to let go.
She wants more. Boudika twists her neck, twists, twist, twists, ducks her forelegs down to drag him to the sand.
You want to be an offering?
You want to be a sacrilege?
I could show you.
@Tenebrae || “speech”
