T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
I could show you.
Boudika says sweet like temptation. The words are soft as they fall from her tongue. They curl and drift and tumble into his ears. He smiles, amused, enthralled by her words, by the idea of becoming other beneath Caligo’s midnight.
“Mmm,” He hums as if he considers it, as if her words are temptation. “No, Boudika,” The Disciple breathes, soft as a sigh, coarse and flammable as whiskey. “My goddess would not approve. She made me to eat suns... not flesh.” He knows, he knows how he tastes upon the air, he feels her gaze upon him hot with the breath of desire, sharp with a tiger’s hunger. He smiles, daring, bating, relishing.
There is a violence thrumming within him. It rises in answer of her gaze. It is as violent as he has seen in the gaze of any war-drunk man. Yet there is something beautiful in her gaze. There is the primitive urge of need, of survival, of wanting and having to hunt. Tenebrae knows that hunger, it is like the insatiable need to chase the sun, to pierce it from the sky and swallow down its every shard of light.
Her desire is flesh. His is light.
Together they crave.
Together they hunger.
The sea laughs for the two violent creatures that stand upon her bone-sand shore.
“She made me to swim in shadows not water…” He trails off as he watches her, as he imagines her suspended, cradled by the wild salt of the ocean. He can see the wild rise of her hair, an undulating halo of crimson about her face, her tail twining about her limbs. It is a beautiful image. It is a forbidden image. Yet such restrictions do not stop him demanding to know, “What is it like to swim in the darkest parts of the sea?” Where the light cannot reach. Where darkness reigns supreme? By the gods he might let her turn him just for that. He steps nearer, wanton.
Why don’t you just touch me?
Her eyes ask him, not once not twice but over and over. Though he is a foolish man, with no experience or knowing of desire or lust or all the other wants of the flesh, he does at least see that there is nothing simple in her question. Tenebrae knows that to touch her is to invite death. To touch her is to kiss violence.
So he does.
His lips touch hers. It is a kiss, a caress, wicked with daring. It is brimful with desire.
He wants and she wants. Together they want: desire and violence, suns and meat. They are Nature and portraits of her savage, primitive beauty.
Boudika trembles beneath his kiss. Tenebrae can feel it in the hum of her teeth beneath her lips. She releases a sound - it is a song for the sea - uncontainable, wild as waves. His lips might have smiled (where they touch over the corner of hers) if she did not strike like a cat.
Her mouth pulls from his and parts, baring her teeth as she lunges for his face. But Tenebrae was waiting and wanting. He spins away, fast, fast, but she is no woman and her teeth find a line across his face. They cut a line from beneath his sigil, diagonally across from the corner of his eye down toward the other side of his lips. Blood glows from the line, white, white with all the light that he has swallowed.
But Boudika is not content to merely cut. She clasps him at his throat and twists. He resists, his muscles bunching, the darkness hissing, at her gall. Yet he goes down and the sand sprays beneath their flailing limbs. The sand meets him as he lands with a grunt. His forelimbs lash out for her, once twice, reaching for her chest. Yet there is a smile sharp and dangerous with daring upon his lips. It is lit by his light-glowing blood that falls into the corner of his lips.
Boudika holds him, feline and strong. He laughs gently as he lies, applauding her, he relishing her. His blood leaks from where her teeth hold him. The shadows twist and turn and form into a trident, a dark doppelganger of her own. He points it towards her throat, toward where her pulse spikes like his and makes their breath rush, rush, rush.
Tenebrae, Disciple of Caligo, a Stallion Made to Swallow the Sun, lies pliant beneath her. “Do I taste good, Boudika?’ He wonders what light-drunk blood tastes like, “Can you taste sunlight? Or are we all just meat and bone?”
The seal lies still and open beside him as Boudika kneels like a god between them. Tenebrae dares her, dares her to feast and to kill. “I will be a greater meal than the seal, at least.” He says low, low and hot like the crimson of her skin. Hot like lava meeting the sea.
His shadow-trident presses between them warning, warning. “Have you killed more than a seal yet, warrior-girl?” He asks, soft, soft, soft as shadows trail along the line of her cheeks.
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