boudika
—« you are not supposed to love icarus. ignore how pretty his wings look, how darling he is when he preens them. refuse to notice how gracefully he beats them to seek out the sky, how raw and wonderous. look for the salt, the clouds, the ships. love the beauty of them, instead. the story of icarus will end in only one way, and it will not be in your arms. »
A
n osprey does not belong in the desert. It does not belong where it cannot see the water of the sea, or lake, or river which it haunts, specter-like and eternal. It does not belong where sand stretches away, and away, and away and becomes an ocean in and of itself. An osprey does not belong bathed in golden desert light, or with the arid heat drying those black-and-white feathers. And so, when an osprey does visit the desert, it means flying forward into what may as well be a mirage. It means flying into a vast, empty nothing.
Perhaps this is what strikes Boudika from her reprieve; this strange, haphazard wandering. She has been an osprey so long she does not remember being a girl; she does not think as a woman would at all, and the sudden give-way from forest to plains to desert is enough to strike her as both predator and woman as odd. She is past the mountains; she is past Denocte, far from it, and the hot air is different beneath the contours of her wings.
For all Boudika knows, she has been flying like this for years. Hunting, diving, fighting--and in the back of her mind there is a sudden, ticking uncertainty. Why had she come to the desert? There is no prey beneath her, no shelter or foliage in which to hide. Why am I here? Her brain works as if through many layers of fog; her thoughts arrive disjointed, sometimes wordless, and when the effort becomes too much she simply decides not to think at all.
There, in the distance, is a spot of greenery. It is a stark contrast to the desert’s lolling sands. In a strange irony, the foliage looks like a scar. Boudika continues toward it and begins to descend when she sees the bright flash of water below. She might have hunted, she supposes, if there were not a bulging mare exiting the water.
This, too, evokes a strange kind of feeling in Boudika. But as an osprey she cannot name it. She lands on a branch overhead, starkly out of place, and eyes the woman rather than the water.
There is an unnatural quality to her crimson eyes, set back in her avain face. After a long moment, and with an effort like dusting cobwebs, Boudika descends to the earth by the oasis and transforms into a woman.
Boudika does not expect to feel so heavy.
She does not expect the way all her suppressed emotions return, furious and defeated. You do not deserve to look at me, she had said. Would that be the last thing she ever said to him? Would he become another dusty figment of her past, a person there-then-gone, as they all seemed to become? Boudika knows now why she had flown to Solterra, and the desert, and the oasis. She knows now why she had returned to her Novusian origin: it is because Orestes is there, somewhere, and she wonders--
Is this what he had felt like, alone? She is staring at a woman she does not recognise, swollen with pregnancy, and--
Do you remember wanting that, a small, girlish voice asks. It was something you had always wanted, in the academy--it is something you had always, always wanted but could never have, because of your father, because of the rules. You were a boy. How could you ever have a child?
Boudika thinks now, of course, that such a thing is not intended in her fate, in her life, in her destiny. Her legs feel strange after so many days--or had it been weeks?--of flight. Her face feels strange, as well; too soft, too vulnerable. Boudika says nothing. She only dips her head to drink from the oasis, surprised as the rotten pit of jealousy forming in her breast. No, Boudika thinks. She does not belong here at all. The urge to transform again nearly overtakes her--it is unbearable to be in this shape, with this mind, as a woman, woman, woman. Boudika would rather be anything else.
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