There is a quiet part of her that blooms with his blood in the dark, that asks, is any of this his fault? And Boudika knows it isn’t. This god-fearing monk with scars like wings on his back does not truly deserve this, this unpredictable monstrosity, this visceral violence, this lusting rage.
But in the rush of the water and with the tremendous strength of her body, with the sea in a storm and the land crying with the wind from the distant ocean, it is all she has left to give. The cliffs are black tonight and in that quiet place of his struggle, of his drowning, as she drags him fighting to the depths—well, in that quiet moment of struggle, of desperation, she thinks, I must remember to tell him never to visit when the cliffs are black.
They remind her of blood on sand.
Of never being enough.
Of what it feels like, to Bind a soul forever, for an eternity and longer, to strip from someone all they have been and all they will ever be. And perhaps that is Boudika's amorphous power, to destroy what she touches; to take it between her teeth and skin it with the deft touch of an expert killer, peeling back the layers of skin from the loin and breast and then the limbs. Perhaps the taste of blood in her mouth has nothing to do with her rage at all, but only her nature.
Only her nature.
When his shadows fight her, she is relieved; they pierce the leather-thick hide of her crocodilian form, and she releases him to the writhing nest of shadow-snakes. The shape of a crocodile rejects her, then, as if the nature of the beast screams out, kill him kill him kill him kill him and by refusing, there is nothing left. She floats above the sea-floor with a tangled mane and eyes that belong to something—someone—infinitely older and infinitely more sad. The sea is screaming through her as if wronged; the waves pummel her even here, and Orestes’s words come back to her like a fierce lash.
The ocean will never love you like you love it.
Boudika never realises the truth of the statement until now. She watches Tenebrae with his lack of oxygen, with his rent wounds, and feels a hunger like she’s never known before. Boudika knows the struggle. The way his lungs must scream for oxygen and how the edges of his vision must go black. There is a moment when he regards her before pushing back toward the surface and Boudika’s soul strikes like flint with loneliness; the fire doesn’t catch. She ascends after him with dangerous ease, wishing she could have said, just take my blood, fight back, I can turn you that way—blood unto blood—I can make you mine—
Perhaps that had been her frantic reasoning for striking out all along.
When they break the surface, it is with Boudika's name on his lips and Tenebrae's blood on hers. Boudika rests with her equine face barely above the water. Although she is no longer a crocodile, she swims like one; and the storm pushes them together again, legs against legs. What the fuck was that? He is mad. The fury reaches her with a kind of distance, as she appraises him.
It is in my nature.
Boudika is bleeding, too; it slicks down her neck and shoulders and she knows there will be creatures hungry, soon, creatures that want to discover them. Creatures already scenting blood and on the way. There is no room for weakness here.
His blade is against her throat.
Boudika does not flinch. Simply continues to appraise him, his anger, his white-bright eyes and the beauty of it. It is the most beautiful he has ever been, in her eyes, streaked with blood and wearing the storm. His expression is pinched in a way that only anger creates, and still, Boudika isn’t sorry. Still, Boudika wishes he had bitten her back rather than fall back on his god-given magic of darkness.
It would be too much to explain.
Boudika doesn’t know the words anymore, only the primordial communication, only the longing for more, more, more. Amaroq had understood, and Orestes too. It is the feeling of a soul set to ringing, like a gong. A soul set to aching. With strange gentleness, Boudika drops her nose to gesture his weapon aside—closer, closer, closer
and she kisses his wound.
Perhaps one day she will tell him her intention.
But not tonight.
Not beneath a storm-born sky that begs her to become anything but this, this, this weak-willed, weak-fleshed creature, too prone to letting its heart beat from it’s chest.
“We must go.”
Boudika knows it isn’t an explanation. “There is a place I know that will shelter us from the storm. But this—“ and she presses her nose to the disaster she’s caused, his bleeding, puckered wound. "—will attract beasts much worse than me.”
She draws away; and the mare is almost sheepish in it, almost apologetic, almost regretful. But Boudika cannot regret claiming him again; she cannot regret giving him the opportunity to Become. There is something animalistic, something… something… that has opened within her like a cavern when he first called her name tonight, and left Boudika emptier then she has been in longer than she can remember.
“I—I… am…” the apology is almost there.
But Boudika has sworn away apologising for what she is.
And so she doesn’t. She only regards him steadily as the rain falls harder, harder, and she can barely see him through the shroud it creates.
"Speech." || @Tenebrae
oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
here are your upturned hands.
