T
here is nothing wrong in being different, Boudika. His eyes do to her what no other man’s have ever done. They unravel her. They bare her to the bone and, strangely, she feels seen. She feels felt, with each playful show of affection.
She wishes she could believe that so fluidly; as wildly, as he. But Boudika does not know if she ever will, raised as she was to be one of many interchangeable pieces. That was a soldier’s life. A pawn’s life. And she had always been different, and her differences had nearly destroyed her more than once—but here, with him, they feel like a strength. And for that Boudika is more thankful than she will ever be able to express.
We are. But you are also one of my people, now.
She smiles now, despite the expression in his eyes—she understands the severity of it, the weight placed upon her shoulders. And yet, it does not feel like a weight. “I am thankful for it. You have given me a purpose again, Amaroq.”
That is no easy thing, to instill in another.
She listens to him with appraising eyes; with hope, even. My people are ancient. They used to say that the ice was born of the stars and we were born of the ice.
Boudika feels the tragedy in his story; but the majestic beauty in it, as well. She wants to say that on her island, they had been the meeting of the land and sea, where the waters met the rocks of the cliffs. They had been brutal change. When he ends, and all of them underestimated the land horses her mind’s eye is painted with visions of her own war, with the way she cleaved life away as though it had been her right.
She is quiet—nearly demure. Because there are no words for this side of the story. No way to explain, in depth, the purpose he has instilled in her is a way to right her wrongs, to seek penance for her sins. To bring back something that had been lost.
“You and I know better,” she whispers, her nose pressed into his cheek as he stares toward the whitecaps in the distance. But then the severity of their conversation disappears; he returns to an aura of courtship and challenges her.
Rather than remain entrapped in the sorrows of the past, Boudika flashes a wicked grin. It does not take long for her to delve into the sea after him.
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.
