THE SEA SPEAKS MORE HONESTLY
TO THOSE WILLING TO DROWN
Boudika’s heart has always been too much. It only took her becoming something—someone—else to realise what, and who, she had been all along. Yes. Her heart has always been too much; she has always tried a little too hard to love the world, and all the broken men within it. Her father taught her best, and taught her young; how to wrap her innocent, girlish affections around a man of barbed wire and whiskey and say, you are enough, enough, enough even as he pushed her to become something she could never be: a son. And still Boudika sacrificed; and still Boudika strived; only to see him proud and happy. Then, of course, there was Vercingtorix and all his fiery, passionate intensity. She gave the most to him, she thinks; a whole chunk of heart, wrapped and bloody, every time she defended him, stood up for him, trained with him. It was there when they drank atop the citadel of their old homeland and stared at the stars; it was there when she leapt off a cliff-face to save him; it was there when she visited him day by day by day in the hospital bed, and fell more in love with someone who would never—could never—want her. It was there, always, when she lied.
Orestes. The man who she could never not give her heart to, already too in love with the terrible sea. He had been the sea, changing as the tides did, full of anger and sorrow and a depth incomprehensible to her until she spoke with him, until he looked at her with those deep-sea eyes and tried to cover up all the ways life would hurt. She loved him and lost him because of it. She loved him and learned to become something else because he would never, ever let her shy from her true nature again; and she owed it to him, for essentially killing him. Boudika owed it to him.
Amaroq. He was the ice and feral passion; the arctic. A different part of the sea then she had ever known, but still familiar. He had chased her and seen her and she had hated him first and loved him second, because she had been afraid of all the things he might teach, she was afraid to hear him sing beneath the too-still sea and hear the cold echo of her own heart. The last of a breed, the last, the last, the last—
Now:
Tenebrae.
And he is not like any of them.
There is no sea for her to fall in love with first; no water to shield his mortal flaws. Only him, and flesh and blood and shadow. Perhaps it is because he is as chaste as she, bound by some higher order. He moves to touch her and somehow refrains an inch from her skin; instead his hot breath ghosts over her throat and Boudika trembles, strung taunt as a guitar’s wire.
You will be the death of me, Boudika he says, and she thinks the same of him. Then: I will swim with you, and said so close to her skin, to the pulse of her blood, Boudika feels as if the words Bind them. And then it will be Boudika feeling her morals strain and fight against her; tonight she knows she will dream of things he cannot give, tonight she knows she will dream of him following her into the deepest parts of the ocean.
Tenebrae gives her a small gift by not flinching from her touch; no, he breathes in her scent and she is and that, too, feels like some type of promise. They are Denocte and the sea; smoke-fire, frankincense, sweat, salt. Boudika nearly closes her eyes; but then he moves and the darkness dissipates with an abruptness that is shocking.
Do not give your heart away, Boudika.
The comment shocks her more than it should. She nearly laughs aloud, and in reflection of her earlier thoughts the girl says whip-quick, “Why have one, then, if not to give it away? If not to share it?” The question is delivered innocently, though. Without his shadows he does not seem so unreachable. Without his shadows he is there, ready to be touched, and Boudika moves uncertainty to press the soft of her cheek against the half-moon sigil at his shoulder. Only a man.
There is more she wants to do, more she wants to say. She wants to trace the supple arch of his neck, and bury her face into the tangle of his mane. She wants to lose herself in him the way she has only lost herself in the sea. But Boudika has already succumbed further to girlish wants than she would have normally; and it leaves her embarrassed in a way illy suited for a water horse, for a creature so unapologetically brazen. He had not left when she had asked him to stay; but Boudika would not keep pushing him; she would not play games. And if he belonged to Caligo, so be it. Boudika would not plead again.
“If you want to find me, come to the sea.” Boudika whispers it against the skin of his shoulder, prayer-like. Then she pulls away; it is not hard to submerge herself in the vivacious crowd and then gone, down an empty street of Denocte, running on the path studded with moonstones. She can breathe freshly for the first time; and through her mind again and again she hears
please
please don’t
and how she had never been brave enough to say those words before now, to ask for exactly what she wanted, exactly what she deserved. And, running, the scent of him still on her skin… she is intoxicated on it. When Boudika crashes into the sea, it is exuberant; it is four long strides and a dive, and a beating heart that screams
yes
yes,
yes—
@Tenebrae
