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
Tenebrae is not sorry either. In spite of everything, and despite he should be, he is not.
He is not sorry as the sea relinquishes Boudika as if she were its goddess. The Disciple does not stop to wonder how he might worship two.
His last chant has barely been swept away by the wind before she is pressed against him. She trembles where they press, breast to breast. It is as if she is the sea quaking beneath the wrath of the storm, but Tenebrae knows that Boudika is the storm. She is the sea that swallows her name. Wild waters push the duo together and he remembers how the surf had breathed she is coming over and over across his throat, his face, his chest.
Now she is here and they are pressed together like two tectonic plates, always pushing, pushing against each other. Destined to consume the other, to send all around them into chaos. Tenebrae and Boudika slip and slide against each other and her groan is the shift of the earth, it is the swell of the sea rising with the storm.
The cliffs stand dark and ready, they loom, sanguine and black, at Tenebrae’s back. They know how he stood upon them once and thought of drowning and thought of how he should not want. Yet he does. The monk wants so many things, the worst of which is before him.
Tenebrae inhales her like a man dying - maybe he knows what is to come after all? He feels the beat of her heart in the cradle of his. His bones are singing the sound of her heartsong.
Still she trembles, still she groans. She speaks, ‘No -’ and the rest is a dream. Yet he has lived his dreams with her before and he is ready when she lunges with hungry, savage, wild beauty. He knows the feel of her teeth cutting into his flesh. He knows her.
Except he knows nothing of her at all.
When first they met she was just a girl with blood upon her smile and thorns in her mouth.
When second they met she was a kelpie with a seal’s blood upon her feral smile and teeth as sharp as thorns in her mouth. She bore a heart so easily bruised then.
When now they meet she is a kelpie girl with an animalistic magic.
Once he knew her body, the length of her face, the soft of her lips, the bite of her teeth. But that was then and this is now.
He does not know a crocodile's maw, nor how much longer it is than Boudika’s. He does not know a crocodile's teeth and how much bigger they are than hers.
She teaches him.
There is the pull and rending of flesh. He can almost hear the cry of his flesh as his throat splits open. Boudika holds him and swims, down, down, down. Down to where light is weak and shadows reign. She cradles him in inky blue and his shadows rise in ire, they turn to solid snake heads that strike along her throat as she holds him. Their magics grapple they land upon the still bed of the ocean floor. She releases him in the blood and darkness. Her hair is a halo of wicked black, her eyes darkest red, her body bathed in nothing but shadow.
If only he knew how to exist here he would have the time to see how beautiful she is, in this place where she belongs. But, here, his body does not know how to keep him alive. The ocean holds no favour for Caligo’s monk. He is dying in its depths as he watches Boudika.
Salt water presses into the ragged edges of his gaping wounds. It feels like ice against the heat of his distressed skin. The storm calls him, up to where it breathes oxygen across the roiling surface of the sea. Already his heart is thundering to get the remaining oxygen around his body, already his brain is starving, his lungs contracting, his head pounding.
He watches Boudika for a moment, his ears pinned, blood drifting in a cloud between them. Finally his ears shutter back, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a grimace of agony. Tenebrae propels up, away from her, away from the girl who has dragged him too deep, too deep. Ire drives him, up to where the light cascades in rays through the murky depths. As the water grows brighter, he consumes it as all around him grows darker. He breaches the water surface, gasping, rising and falling as waves roll the water in towards the beach. Overhead the storm rages, feeding, fuelling the warrior below.
“Boudika!” This time her name upon his lips is nothing like it has been before. It is filled with the danger of the storm and sharp as the lightning that splits the sky. Her name is a cry across the waves that carry it in and shatter it upon the shore. The Disciple takes another breath, filling himself before he dives down to watch her loom out of the darkness, elegant, beautiful, dancing.
Tenebrae swims down to meet her, his ears still pressed to his skull. Anger seethes through his blood. It pounds in his chest and rings in his ears. The sea is filled with the wrath of a monk. He sees where his magic has bitten her and this time it is he who lunges. His magic sharpens into a blade that he presses tight to her throat. They rise the rest of the way together and once above water he hisses to her softly, “What the fuck was that?” Tenebrae wears no reckless smile for her now, but there is fury that roiles deep within his white-bright eyes. They tread water together close, close, limbs knocking, tangling as the storm laughs and laughs above.
Tenebrae no longer thinks what monsters might loom out of the darkness, drawn by their blood. He knows he watches the most dangerous creature the sea can offer. Yet he dances with her, something dangerous, something the land has never known.
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