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our ghosts are not friendly. Boudika wants to laugh; but she is afraid if she starts, she will cry. And so she only says, noncommittally, “No. They are not.” The grief passes over her features as a cloud might the sun; and then it is gone, moved on to something else, to some other form. She smiles, instead, to match the wryness of his tone. She should have known he would not mind a new scar, but the one that is left on her will not be forgotten so quickly.
He will leave again, she knows, now. He will leave.
But, Boudika supposes, all things do. And for the moment, she will not dwell on such an eventuality, on such a certainty. Instead, the world passes her by as rivers do to rocks; the city of Denocte begins to lay to rest, and fades from cityscape to seascape nearly within the blink of an eye.
Boudika is shy now where only moments ago she had been bold. She steals glances at him, marveling. For so long since he left she has felt not only alone, but separate. Even when others had met with her, Boudika had been different. The colors, brighter. The scents, stronger. Everything, vivid and demanding and sharp; and so she had been, too. What am I? she had asked so many nights to nothing but the stars and the sea. What am I? How did I become this? She had known, however—she had known that since she had first met him, a force—whether fate, or will, or destiny—had driven her to become and, yes, he was her Maker.
What does it mean, she wonders, to be Made?
They catch shy glances from one another; and when she plunges into the water, it is only to glance back and admire the way it turns to ice against him. He does not allow the space between them to exist for long, before his chest is pressed into her shoulder and his lips graze her ear. No. Though I hardly remember what it is to be otherwise.
Boudika turns her face into the wild tangles of his mane. She toys with a bit of bone and, with bright-eyed mischief, plucks a shell to weave into her own hair.
“I have never known anything else,” she admits, quietly. Her tone is nearly abashed.
But it is true. In Oresziah, it had always been a lie. It is the only way she can allow herself to think of it now: the depth of those relationships had been something other, often based on duty or necessity rather than attachment.
It causes Boudika to draw away, deeper into the sea. She beckons him with her eyes, until they stand chest-to-chest and shoulder deep in the waves. She asks, “Tell me about your people.” Tell me what it means to be one of them.
Boudika knows she is different, and her expression flits briefly with insecurity; she recovers, however, by saying hesitantly: “We are something new, together.”
this is who we were, before bones, before dirt, even before light
this untameable expanse, this blue mirror of god. this heaving,
churning proof that we have always been deep, restless souls.
