THE BODY IS A PLACE OF VIOLENCE. WOLF TEETH, AMPUTATED HANDS. COVER YOURSELF WITH A CLOAK OF LEAVES, A COAT OF A THOUSAND FURS, A PAPER DRESS. THE DARK FOREST HAS A CODE. THE WITCH SOMETIMES DISPENSES ADVICE, SOMETIMES EATS YOU FOR DINNER, SOMETIMES TURNS YOUR BROTHER TO STONE. YOU WILL BECOME A CANARY IN A CASTLE, BUT YOU'LL LEARN PLENTY OF SONGS.
Denocte has never bloomed for Boudika before tonight; the city has never dropped her Venetian masks to reveal the intricacies beneath the smoke-shrouded streets. But for the first time, she feels as if she sees Denocte, as if Caligo walks beside her along the cobblestones. Perhaps Boudika is only more receptive to the heady scent of skin; the burning of frankincense; perhaps it is only because her senses seem so much sharper than they once had been, and every movement, no matter how imperceptible, entices her with something almost like lust. The copper-headed mare watches the shadows that entangle themselves in the corners of bonfires and
her eyes trail the sensuous dancers by the flames. Boudika can feel her teeth against her tongue and the sharp reminder is enough to steel her nerve, even as she weaves between the fires like a tigress, always on the edge of the light. More strangely still, however, it grounds her; it whispers along her skin with all the knowledge of a lover’s touch, you belong here, as if she hadn’t before, as if her remaking ensured her belonging. This is the first time Boudika, the Champion of Community, had returned to the city since her becoming. This is the first time she has walked the streets, adorned so handsomely with moonstone, since she learned the taste of flesh and blood.
Her fear is what has kept her away; her fear that she could not control herself and her insatiable urges. There is a part of Boudika that understands she is no longer polite company; there is something artistically, painfully base about her now, something carnal and wanting. It shows in the predatory, metallic reflection of the firelight in her eyes. It shows in the way the younger dancers shy from her silhouette, instinctively, as if they know a tigress is near.
It takes Boudika longer than she would like to decide why it is they stare at her, now, when they never had before. Eyes linger and whispers follow the half-seen glimpse of her, with her tigress stripes, with her bald face catching the firelight in a way both ghastly and beautiful.
Boudika knows why they stare, though.
She is inconsolable.
There is a raw edge to her expression, her being, like a tragedy; it is there in the shape of her mouth or the glint of her eyes. It is there in the way her hair hangs long and tangled, windswept, smelling of the sea. Denocte’s smells of bonfire and incense do not cling to her; it is all hard salt and water. She is inconsolable in the way she looks half-wild, transformed as if by grief or some daemon, some inner turmoil and power. No one speaks to her for the same reason. She is terrifying and beautiful and strange.
It is not until later in the evening, when the partygoers have drunk their fill of honey mead and flavoured wine that the Denoctians dare approach her. She is a tragic backdrop; a shooting star; something tameable and strange. Boudika had not felt her control waiver until the first stallion asks her to dance, embolden by the liquor on his breath. She rejects him politely, in a clipped tone, and is already back-stepping when he steps forward to press his telekinesis against her shoulder, urging her toward the throng of sensual, entwined bodies of dancers already entranced with one another. “It’ll be fun, I promise.” he is quite handsome, and—
Boudika’s teeth are long and sharp in her mouth. She does not want to speak, or expose them, so she remains quiet. He presses closer to her, unbeknownst, mistaking her silence for indifference or insecurity—
“Dance with me, Red,” and even the nickname is charismatic. Boudika presses back. Boudika follows him into the throng and for a moment they twirl. She lets him lead her.
He smells heady; her mouth presses into the nape between his shoulder and his neck. He is laughing, and golden-skinned. The flesh of the stallion is warm. Decadent. There is something in the salty smell of his sweat and the sweet-rich odour of the liquor on his breath that reminds her, distantly, of overripe plumbs in the summertime, the way they bruise, the way they flesh sloughs from the seed. There is something in the memory that makes her mouth water, and it is not the flavour; it is the precise and indescribable tension of the plumb’s skin against one incisor, the way it feels to press just so against a ripened fruit, how—
her lips press into that nape now, and the stallion laughs high and pleased, unknowing to the tigress he holds like a woman, like a lover—
she is sweating now, and it smells rotten like the sea on a too-hot day, rotten but natural, metallic, hard, hard—
there are many bodies now, all of them, pressing her—
the heat of the bonfire is incendiary—
the heat of the bonfire pools everywhere her skin is soft, vulnerable, the armpits and breastbone, the loin, the ankles, the throat, the eyes—
the golden stallion is endless, limitless, she feels his pulse again beneath her lips—
her nostrils are full of that vivacious, lively scent, all salt and skin, some kind of woody cologne—piñon or juniper?—and the sweet, sweet wine—
oh how sweet would he taste?
how sweet?—
her lips, his tender throat, and his eyes so darkly hooded beneath long, lovely lashes as he says, “We could go elsewhere?” —
but he does not know she wrestles with a beast and the beast has teeth long and sharp drawing blood within her own cheeks—
she cannot speak, she cannot speak,
she cannot pull away, and there are bodies everywhere—
her mind is full of the feeling of a perfectly ripened plumb, the press of an incisor against the skin, the burst of juice beneath—
And then, she sees the sigil.
Perhaps she should have been thinking of pomegranates all along.
@Tenebrae
LITTLE GIRL, WATCH OUT FOR OLD WOMEN AND YOUNG MEN. IF YOU DON'T STAY IN YOUR TOWER YOU'RE BOUND FOR TROUBLE. THIS TOO IS CODE. YOUR BODY IS THE TOWER YOU LONG TO ESCAPE. THE BONES IN THE FOREST YOUR MEMORIES. THE LITTLE BIRDS BRING YOU BERRIES. THE PEBBLES ON THE TRAIL GLOW GHOSTLY WHITE.
