Standing face-to-face with him it would be easy to assume her intentions had been malevolent; that she had followed him there. There, eye-to-eye, with her name a sin heavy on his mouth, it is easy to believe her wicked and wily, a woman come to condemn him.
But Boudika is as taken aback by the appearance of the Disciple as he is of her sudden breach of the water’s surface. She stands statuesque; the water drips crystalline and nearly luminescent from her skin. She had been drawn from the deep of the cavern’s water not by any understanding of who disturbed her; on contrary, it was merely due to the passing shadows, the predatory sense that there was someone else there. Boudika was only there to discover; to learn something of herself in the pure water of the mountain's deep.
The water-horse had only been doing something innate, something inherent. She had followed the water; and it had led her here. Boudika had paid little mind to the cavern’s embellishments; to the sigils of Caligo that, for her, did not glow. The water tried to speak to her, even now; but the words it would say were ineligible in his presence. Instead, the was the dull roar of the distant waterfall—it pounded against the edge of the pristine pool and sent ripples and ridges through the water.
How dare you. Get out. Now.
He treats her with rage.
Boudika’s ears pin; her nostrils flare. The bright light of his sigils reflect upon her pupils and they stare back at him, predatory and metallic, not red but silver in the way a wolf’s are in dark and light.
A nearly childish voice cries out within her. I was here first.
He had disturbed her.
Boudika’s mouth stretches long and dangerous; an ugly smile. She takes a step back, away from him; and drops into the deepening water until only her eyes, nostrils, and ears are exposed. She watches him, crocodilian and strange, and still the water does not speak.
Perhaps if she understood the extent of the organisation to which he belonged, she would realise her trespass. Perhaps if the meaning of the Disciples was clear to her, the carvings on the wall would be more relevant.
But now, neck-deep in the water, she seethes at this man’s ability to enrage her. She seethes at the fact that not once, but twice, he had made an enormous ass out of himself.
Boudika nearly leaves then, to slip back through the twisting expanse of underground rivers, hunting and seeking and learning and living, when the outrageousness of it strikes her. What an unreasonable request. She circles him, eyes gleaming against his sigils’ light, and emerges on the far bank across the pool. She climbs out as sinuously as a jungle cat.
“Tenebrae.” His name is spat from her mouth like a curse. She eyes him sidelong, lips twitching in an almost-snarl. “Again you find a way to ruin my evening. I am not sure what trespass I made this time, aside from following a river—which, I might add, belongs as much to me as your shadows do to you.”
Boudika is all but bristling; perhaps it is because there is a part of her, girlish and bewildered, that does not understand his hostility. The last time she had seen him, he had apologised. The last time she had seen him, he had been the first man to give her a kiss. The sentimentality of it is something the water-horse refuses to dwell on, however; and the fact that she feels something only angers her more. "I was here first." I had no idea it would cause such great offense to you, shadow-caster. The words taste like vinegar.
@Tenebrae || “speech.”
