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
Boudika’s blood blooms along the black of his shadow-knife. It trickles down her throat, joining with the littered puncture wounds of his snakebites.
Tenebrae presses the blade into her neck, demanding her retreat. Somewhere inside himself something is howling for distance from her. A part of him is still in the bottom of the ocean, as broken as a shipwreck and only Boudika will find it there; a shard amidst the wreckage.
He should rejoice at the distance she affords him. He can breathe now, yes. When she is not close the fog of desire lifts and the twisting question of who is she? does not shout so loudly in his mind.
But, when she is apart from him their attraction pulls tight as a rope. Tenebrae is a colt bridled for the first time, he thrashes, thrashes against this want. Yet the reins do not break. He cannot be free of her.
The sea is complicit too. It pushes them back together and the rope falls slack. The monk’s body does not ache when she is close. He crashes into her again and again as the sea rises and falls with her swells. He is a plaything here but Boudika is a goddess.
Show me. He had commanded of her. Wearied, weakened by blood loss, he does not specify his command, he does not think he needs to. Show me the safe place you know. The intention is there, but his words are already lost by the sea. He is tired. Boudika is the worst thing in the sea, but he is tired and he is willing to rest with her now.
If only.
All the sky is an omen of death. It is gathering chaos. This has become the battle between life and death. His warrior-girl is the worst thing in the sea and she has not yet shown him just how terrible she has become.
Already something other is shifting in her eyes. Already the storm has slipped its electric fingers into her veins. Boudika comes alight beneath the flashing white. Fury limns her with the lightning’s ferocity. Tenebrae watches as her fury grows. It emerges in trembles that shudder in her bones.. The sea rocks her, it coos to its wild girl. This is her show.
Who is more fierce now? the wild wind seems to crow, the storm or the girl?
Tenebrae watches on, deeply, darkly sombre. His shadows gather. They breath across the waves like smoke. They rise up from the deep, summoned by the Disciple. He readies himself, he knows this dance with her. This is not their first turn about the floor, their feet know how to move together, their limbs, their hands, their arms and the beating of their hearts.
They may know how to dance, but they are so full of deep misunderstanding. Her apology is still upon her tongue, her mind still full of sorrow and loneliness. And he is tired, a mortal in need of rest, so far out to sea that the cry of the shore is lost in the wind. He wants shelter. She wants forgiveness.
Fate laughs.
Something lethal comes upon the kelpie. It is some grim revelation, some new, raw hurt. All Tenebrae can think is how and why they seem to hurt each other more with words. How has he inspired from within her a new kind of fury?
She thinks he demands her magic from her as if it were cheap tricks. He does not realise she thinks this way. But oh, the damage is now done and his revelation is yet to come.
His kelpie holds him in her ruby red gaze and morphs as if it were as easy as sighing. She becomes him. White light glows from his sigils in their places across her brow and shoulders. Tenebrae’s breath sucks in between his teeth and now he swims back, recoiling from this strange magic. It is her turn to mock him (though he never mocked her at all).
“Bou-” He begins to say - still husky, still rough as the rocks beneath the waves - but she cuts him off with his own voice. It is haggard and rough, low, low like the roaring ocean. What else would you like to see, Tenebrae? She makes his doppelganger ask.
His shadows descend through rain and cloud to smother her, to trap her words back within his mouth. They pause when she gives him answers to all his unanswered questions.
Who is she? A kelpie possessed by her new magic
What is she? A shifting soul, savage and hungry and hurt.
Tenebrae’s heart is in his throat, pulled up like a fish upon a hook. Boudika’s changing soul demands of her its desire and she swims away a shark, cutting through the water. Her dorsal fin cuts an ominous circle about him and he twists to follow it. Shadows track it through the water, they turn her great body black as midnight.
“Boudika!” He shouts coarse above the storm. Still she goads him in her fury, still she threatens him with her sweeping circles and then…
Then she speaks into his mind, loud and clear and wrong. She mocks him with those words.
She disappears.
It is only Tenebrae and his billowing shadows out amidst the waves. The sea fights his treading limbs as he twists and turns to see where she has gone. Boudika has sunk beneath the waves, still a savage beast, still wild. Her absence does not ease his heart. The waves hide their girl within their writhing black depths. The water laughs and it roars as it tosses the Disciple, pulling him further, further out to sea. Still Boudika does not return though he knows she will, she always does. She is wild and savage, unpredictable and hungry. She is angry and petulant. Above all, she cannot resist their pull.
Despite this her ire stokes his. Fear fans the flames of his own fury. When she returns she is just as likely to bite him and fight him as she is to kiss the wounds she has inflicted upon him. So often he relishes her unpredictability. So often he craves her wild nature, the bite of her teeth but-
“BOUDIKA!” He screams a third time as lightning splits the sky. This is the second time he has chanted her name into the waves this night. Summoned, as a genie, she emerges. In her horse form she is almost fragile amidst the waves.
Distance is nothing as he swims to her. His fatigue is forgotten. Tenebrae is as electric as the skies above. Her face glows with the light of the half moon sigil atop his brow. “Do not threaten me,” the Disciple warns with a voice low and ominous. Still the waves push them together, they converge like planets, like continents - their being together is an earthquake, a catastrophe, after all.
“Do you wish to kill me, Boudika? If so then let it be upon land where I can meet you in fair combat.” His lips pull back across his teeth, his ears are flat atop his skull. His body burns with ire and it is only further stirred when he lets his gaze roam across her proud face.
“We have much to discuss.” The sea churns, turning them in whirlpool circles as they rotate, held tightly together. Now he is quiet, now it is his turn to simmer with danger, to let his shadows gather and turn themselves into to beasts that run across and through the waves: lions and tigers. “I can match your wild, savage soul,” the monk hisses with desire and simmering warning, “but for now, I repeat, show me this safe place you said you knew. That is all I asked of you.” He is close, close in the water, where their mouths bump in the uneven waves, where lips meet teeth and hooves scrape the other’s knees. “And no more of your tricks.”
Then, softer, softer so soft even the storm quiets its fury to hear the monk speak, “You are not the only one hurting. You are not the only one out of control here. Give me your words tonight, that is all I want from you.”
@Boudika
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
