Boudika is water between Tenebrae’s grasping fingers. She is gone before he can even comprehend - not that he had even had her within his grasp. They way she watches him reminds him that she is more than he could ever hope to deserve. Boudika grows dark and hard. The way she watches him is like a wave rearing up out at sea, threatening to break him into pieces upon the shore. She will turn him into finer sand than the beach across which they just ran. And yet, beneath her rage is a slate-grey sea as unforgiving of his apologies as a slab of concrete to a falling knee.
Her words cut into him. Boudika flays him open between the trees who stand about them as silent and watchful as a jury. But it is Boudika who will sentence him and he has only eyes for her. No matter how he sees the pain, the fury bloom within her body bright and hot as running lava. She scolds him with her quiet, chilling cold. Her every word cuts him to the quick and he is fast to learn that every bite of the whip, with which he chastigated himself, was a kiss compared to the pain he has caused her and the unremitting punishment of her words.
How dare you… How dare you… Each one is a whip crack upon his soul, his heart.
How dares he? The young monk blinks and breathes and they are such effort. Always they have fought, always they are touching fighting with words and teeth upon skin. But now, oh now he does not reply. Not even when he longs for her to know that it was never a lie. He love for her was nothing but honest. Every word that fell from his lips - he would leave the Order for Boudika…
Thoughts and words and emotions tangle within him. Tenebrae, young monk of the Night Order, no longer knows who he is. All he knows that his life began with Boudika and it will end with her too. He wonders how it could have happened, how he came to love two women, how it ever came to this. He does not know, he is too foolish, too drunk upon all that he should never have.
This is why monks should keep their vows. Tenebrae clings to such a thought. He holds it tight within him as treasure. Yet as he watches Boudika, he can never rue the day he first beheld her, looming out of his shadows.
Her ire is sweet upon his tongue. The monk knows its flavour. He craves it, yearns for her violence. But not like this. Not when her agony her fury is caused by a cut so deep to her heart. She transforms, shifting her skin from colour to colour. He watches her with steady, regretful eyes, until, oh until she gilds the moonlight in a gold so brilliant it is more than the sun could ever hope to be. He flinches at the beauty of it. Tenebrae swallows down the shameful stir of want and warm bloom of love that swells within his gut. It is not love in the way he loves Boudika. He knows now, he knows too late. But he feels it, will always recognise it and apologise to Elena for an eternity because of it.
The Disciple’s flinch is answer enough. His girl- Boudika- knows, though she asks. She need not. Now the kelpie knows the other woman is sunlight-skinned. Tenebrae swallows on an apology for Elena, for what might come her way.
You do not know what love is.
He says nothing, he does nothing. There is no answer he can give her. Not when she solders truths like that deep into his bones. He does not know what love is, except for now and now the time is too late. The monk has been an ignorant fool.
When had he begun to cry? He does not know but a frantic and dangerous wave of dread rises like a monster from within him. Desperation spills out from his nerves, until grief shakes him like rocks. Boudika transforms, an osprey rising into the sky.
I will never accept this. You don’t deserve to look at me. She steals his breath from his lungs. He has nothing left with which to inhale. His lungs tremble in their sorrow, they refuse to draw breath and the monk falls to his knees in her absence. Tenebrae tries to breathe, but his fall is worse than that upon the battlefield. What was life without her? What was an eternity unable to look at her again? The last he will ever see of her is the way she rose, a bird, wild and free, leaving him behind.
|| "Speech." || @Boudika
when is a monster not a monster?
oh, when you love it
