I do not know more than the Sea tells me,
told me long ago, or I overheard Her
telling distant roar upon the sands,
waves of meaning in the cradle of whose
sounding and resounding power I
slept.
It is something telling that Boudika does not fixate on the blood spilled in the same way he does. Perhaps, in her world, it has become an ingrained rite of passage. Perhaps everything that means something requires blood in the water. Sacrifice. Everyone she has ever cared for, at some point, bled for her or she for them. There is a question there, in the aching silence. There is a question. Maybe I am a monster?
If that were the case, why does he continue to touch her? Why is it she cannot drive him from her, time after time after time? There is something comforting in his strong, silent presence. In his touch. If she were only willing to accept it, to trust it, to see it as genuine rather than another complicated test.
He listens. At first Boudika is self-conscious, with her voice echoing in the cavern, haunted and girlish. But he listens. He listens with his whole body, leaned just slightly into her. She feels it in the silence, in the way he nearly holds his breath to hear her words. When he speaks it is to ask a question she had never expected.
Do you need me to be like you?
There is the light of the fire and then the ethereal other light, that makes the planes of his face seem hard. It is a light from within him, she knows, just like there are a thousand shapes wrestling in her stomach for purchase, just like a wolf howls long and lonely in her soul and an osprey screams, and screams, and screams. Boudika looks at him and does not know how to answer, especially when he questions her. Especially when he tells her a truth she already knows: he belongs to something else, something other than the sea. But would it make you happy? Would it make a difference?
She shakes her head, a silent no, because she cannot otherwise answer. Her throat is hot with unshed tears. Boudika sees the truth now, the truth of what he says. Of course it would not make a difference. Or so it should not. But what man would take a crocodile’s teeth and then respond with such compassion? She can think of none.
Even still, a part of her wants to say yes, yes, yes. There is a part another part of her that remembers not Tenebrae, but Amaroq; that hears his words return to her on the shore of Novus where she had looked, and looked, and looked for Orestes.
He had said, I could Make you. I could Make you like me. And then you could search for him below every shore, in the trenches of the deep, in the corals and kelp forests. Everywhere. And I would help you look.
Tenebrae says, you loved him and for a ringing moment Boudika is uncertain. She thinks of Amaroq’s knowing eyes the first time she met him, eyes that had said, you love this Orestes and will got to any length to find him. He had told her, it is not good to be alone. And what was it, then, had she loved him? The truth emerges, raw and vulnerable, fledgling like a bird not ready to fly. “He Made me.” Her lip trembles with the admission. And we never looked. We never ventured into the deep together, to find—to find the pieces of me he promised to help seek.
Because that was a truth, in and of itself. She had felt infatuation with Orestes. She had been Bound to him, in a way of Fates and Souls, but not of lovers. She had been Bound to him, as an ouroboros is bound irrevocably to itself. With Amaroq, it had been different. With Amaroq, she had belonged to him and he to her in a way of things created, in a way of the endangered—
In contrast, Tenebrae is free. As free as wind, as free and untouchable as shadows. He belongs not to her, but to… and Boudika cannot even answer. He belongs to something she cannot understand. You have shared something extraordinary with me.
The sound of his voice undoes her. It is a bedroom purr, belonging somewhere more intimate than a storm-drenched cavern. His lips are against her throat and there is a sound low inside her rumbling, rumbling. They are too warm. They are searing her skin, and in that moment Boudika would burn for them. She feels as if the very touch will undo her, will unravel her. The last time Boudika had confessed so much the man she had confessed it to betrayed her.
You don’t need to change me to get me to stay with you, Boudika. You are in my blood already. The words might mean more precisely because he is free. There is no line of Maker and Made, of Bound and Binder. He is free, without obligation, to confess such a sentiment.
She might have protested, she might have fought more intensely; but the sensation of his teeth against her skin is titillating. Had he not proven he would stay? He would talk? Even in the most dire circumstances, he was willing to try and understand. She closes her eyes briefly and wishes, do not stop, do not stop, do not stop
But still, she remembers—
“But what does that staying mean?” her voice is not so girlish now. There is an almost choked quality above it, as she wrenches herself from the physical sensation of his touch. No, Boudika emerges slightly guarded. “You… there is much we don’t know about one another.” Her confessions hang heavy in the air and yet he has given none. There is no explanation for his shadows, nor the temple-like alcove she had once found him in. ”A disciple,” Boudika adds, quietly, in a voice that is just beginning to lilt up into a question as he says—
Your father though…
The comment is delivered with rough humour and Boudika cannot help it. She is taken aback enough that she laughs; the sound seems sharp in the cave, sharp and echoing, but it is a healthy alternative to their somber voices. She thinks of the simplicity of it. I prefer you as a girl. If someone else had said the same thing, many years ago, she would never have come to Novus—
and she would have never, then, realised many things she had come to realise. She laughs for a long moment before she trails off. “I do, too. I don’t think I would have caught your eye, otherwise.” Boudika tries to rally; and although not outright flirtatious, it emerges tentative, nearly impish, into the dark. She clears her throat after another moment, feeling awkward with her sudden shift in disposition. “I… I think I have some medical supplies, here. Just the basics.” It is hard not to see his throat, torn by her own teeth.
It is Boudika’s turn. She turns her face to examine the wounds, but does not touch them. She looks at a body pocked with scars. Boudika recognises a soldier's body when she sees it, carved of muscle like marble. His sigils illuminate those telltale scars, almost harshly, even as the flickering shadows attempt to obscure them. Boudika stops at his shoulders. Her chin drifts just above the nape of his neck, across a shoulder blade. Then her lips touch the lash marks delicately, as one would brush their mouth across a flower’s soft petal. She exhales so, so softly. Her voice is still in her mind; husky, and deep, and attractive. She is warm where she had been cold, and soft where for so long she had been hard.
“And these?” Boudika’s vulnerabilities come with a price. There is a sinking feeling in her stomach, however, she will not like the answer even if he gives one. Boudika remembers him the first time they had met, and even the second; she remembers how his back had not borne such obvious lash marks and wonders what had inflicted them. It, too, incites a bit of rage in her.
The confession comes almost awkwardly late when she says, “Tenebrae?” she whispers it against his scars like a promise. Yet the thought had been boiling, waiting, to be admitted. “You are in my blood, too.”
"Speech." || @Tenebrae || ooc: This is the thread with Amaroq she mentions!
come back to the shores of what you are
come back to the crumbling shores
