THIS WILL NEVER END CAUSE I WANT MORE
MORE, GIVE ME MORE
GIVE ME MORE
There are so many things that should catch her eye and Boudika knows it. There are so many other things that she should be looking at when he brings his billowing shadows and charged confidence. There is a part of her that ought to flood with shame or anger; with ire or guilt. Instead Boudika blinks long and slow; instead her heart flutters in her chest in a way that is neither girl nor monster but some bemused in-between. There are many sweet things to eat this evening.
There is the golden stallion, displeased. He steps forward as Tenebrae places the pomegranate aril in the tangle of golden hair, half possessively. But just as Tenebrae looks at nothing save the copper-headed mare, Boudika’s eyes feast upon him. Oh, there are certainly those that are hungrier, that were born hungrier, that were born with a hollow pit of wanting. The air feels electric. The air feels like the tension of a fight, of a storm.
She recognises it in Tenebrae's eyes. It is the first time he seems familiar and Boudika shows Tenebrae everything she has learned from his hungry shadows; as his darkness laps the metallic gleam from the stallion’s skin, Boudika’s eyes reflect the brilliant light of Tenebrae’s sigils and leave his flesh wanting for nothing.
The golden stallion clears his throat. “Maybe I’ll catch you later. It seems you have something… unfinished… here.” And there is a heaviness to the stallion’s words; Boudika cannot tell if he is jealous, or hurt, or simply savvy enough to realise the entire time they had danced she’d been a tiger disguised as a girl.
It is only when he is gone that Boudika realises just how close she came to ending his life. It is only when he is gone that she realises, unwaveringly, her eyes had laid claimed to the puckered white scar on Tenebrae’s throat. Seamlessly, the wild dancing continues around them, as water runs around stones. Seamlessly, the band playing a wild, haunting tune. Feverish. Impassioned. Boudika steps nearer Tenebrae; she steps close enough the heat of his skin touches hers.
“If I’ve learned anything from men,” she says. “It is that they rarely satisfy you.” Her tone is barbed; laced with venom; needing an antiseptic.
Boudika steps inward, to his shoulder, so they are aligned limb-to-limb. She turns her face toward his ear and whispers so only he can hear, “You owe me a dance if you’re going to frighten my partner.”
It is not a question.
There is no pool of water to separate them this time. There is no hungry sea to call her back. There are only the bodies that surround them, pulsating, a current and a throb. Everything, a rush of blood. Everything a brilliant, beating heart. The bonfire flares and flickers; it cries towards the sky it cannot reach and sends embers flaring, dying, into the dark. The music is in her. The crowd becomes her. And Boudika feels the hunger of a huntress, and of a woman, for the first time in her life.
And in feeling it she realises it is the only kind of piety she understands. "Do you have no pomegranate for me, my keeper?" Her voice curls around the alias; half mockingly. She wonders how long his eyes had trailed her; he wonders how long he stood at the border of the festivities, waiting, watching, to see if she could resist temptation.
He couldn't.
And Boudika knows it.
@Tenebrae
IF I HAD A HEART I COULD LOVE YOU
IF I HAD A VOICE I WOULD SING
AFTER THE NIGHT WHEN I WAKE UP
I'LL SEE WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS
