“Truth," said a traveller, “Is a breath, a wind, a shadow, a phantom; long have I pursued it, but never have I touched the hem of its garment.”
T
he girl turns and glances toward her. Boudika realizes her mistake as soon as she does. Her eyes should be sea-blue, sky-blue, the sort of blue that aches to look at for too long. A blue containing too much light, too much depth. Like Elena’s.But when Elliana meets Boudika’s eyes, she can only remember Tenebrae when he had been unscarred. They are winter blue; the vibrancy of Elena’s eyes meeting the ghostly paleness of Tenebrae’s. Winter blue, a sky bleached of color by the cold. Winter blue, a sea frosted with ice and made grayish by the overcast snow.
It occurs to Boudika she should not have reached out. The truth had been deniable before; there had been enough room for doubt, a lack of assurance. She hadn’t known, not for certain. The girl could simply have been any young daughter of Denocte and, instead, she sees similarities that cannot be denied.
The scene strikes Boudika as something from poetry, or a novel. The girl is smiling as she walks toward her through the fog. The girl is smiling quietly, almost as if she recognizes her. It is nice to meet you, she says, and her voice, too, is the winter sky. For a child, she seems unexpectedly well-spoken and calm; and Boudika, in the face of this composure, reels to regain her own.
It is a mistake.
A mistake.
Boudika does not speak again. Perhaps for fear of her voice breaking. Instead, she nods in agreement and begins to walk down the street. There is a shop-owner who sells teas and pastries, and in the cold drizzle Boudika is certain he is open. It seems a strange thing, to think of food, but when they enter the small shop the warmth is welcome. “Would you like anything?” Boudika asks, quietly. “I don’t want to keep you from whatever it was you were doing. I’m simply not in town often and—I don’t know any other time we would have met.”
She cannot stop herself.
Why can she not stop herself?
Everything... reason, decency, tact. These things tell her she should not engage. She should turn away. She should send her home. And yet, horrified, Boudika continues on. Her mouth does not feel like her own. Her words, they do not feel like her own.
The thing, in this moment, that does belong to her is the heartbreaking resentment building in her chest. Why lie, Boudika wonders. Why lie Elena?
And then: does Tenebrae know?
