B
oudika does not mean to find him.Perhaps that is the only reason that she does.
They ought to be an analogy for gravity; for fate; the way that objects collide. They certainly collided, and could not have been more different. But that collision, she knows, had sent them spiraling apart. The gravity of their attraction had not been strong enough to survive the damage of the impact. The rest, however, she is not certain of: the emotion he evokes when she sees him, far below, does not seem like fate. Only like force. Only like something she cannot fight.
And for these reasons, she does not mean to find him. She does not want to find him, or she would have long ago. For once, she does not come from the sea; but Boudika can see that he is there to find her, or at least to reminisce. She stands at the precipice of the cliffs above, staring down, watching him as a god might, with feigned apathy.
From this high, he is small and dark and tragic. Boudika surprises herself at the familiarity of his body; the way she can remember, with vivid sharpness, the exact hardness of his shoulder when she pressed her face against it. She can even remember his taste; sweet-strong, sweet-warm, vivacious and full of life.
He does not seem as if he would taste that way now.
Perhaps it is because, before the sea, he hardly looks like a man at all. He is a silhouette of her past, one of the many men brought to his knees by the churning expanse before him. The mother sea is a gleaming jewel, too bright to look at. This is the most light she has ever seen him covered by.
The season has been turning from winter to spring; but it is still too early for the dead things of the cold to come back, for the buds upon the trees and within the brittle yellow grass to bloom into new life. The only thing to suggest anything turning, anything changing, is the way the sun glints blade-sharp from the surface of the Terminus Sea.
And there he is.
Small, and dark, and sad, and swallowed by light.
Boudika wants to turn away.
But that force remains, that gutted sense of hunger, of wanting. Perhaps it has gone from lust to knowledge; from affection and hope to understanding.
He was something she had never deserved, she supposes. Boudika feels more a fool than ever for having cared so deeply for him, for wanting to love him. (Even now, she cannot confess love, because the question of whether she cared for him that deeply remains a wound in her heart, an unfinished story, an unanswered question).
But Boudika had wanted to love him. She had wanted to, very badly, and that is the wound that stings the most. That is what fills her with tragedy. After everything, after every hurt she had ever felt, she had wanted to try again. She had thought, she had believed, that... there could be more. She had thought—so foolishly thought—that perhaps, in spite of everything, despite everything, she might have found happiness with someone new, someone other, someone who did not tie her to the anchors of her past to drown.
She wants to say that before she thinks better of it she descends the cliffside, and is beside him. But to do so would be to tell a lie, mostly to herself. The descent is not easy. The descent is long and treacherous and haphazard, so that the sun dips down in that sapphire sky toward the even brighter sea.
No.
Boudika has the entire day to think about it. To think about what she will say to him.
To think about turning back. To think about becoming an osprey, or a monster, or a wolf. Her magic is strangely quiet, as if all those great beasts within her watch upon the peripherals of her uncertain heart, eyes gleaming. At any moment, the wolves might bay. At any moment, the lions might thrash and cry aloud. At any moment, the shark might rush through the current, jaw agape.
Then, all that time is gone. The creatures she can become are silent within her. And she is standing behind him, looking over his shoulder, toward the too-bright water.
Boudika does not say anything. She only watches him. She traces his shoulder with her eyes, his haunch, the ridged scarring that covers his back from the Disciple’s whips.
Why, she wants to ask. Why do we hurt each other so?
Is this what love is?
It seems, to Boudika, anyone she has ever cared for has hurt her. Or vice versa.
She does not want to see his face. She does not want to meet his eyes. And so for just a moment longer, she refuses to. She waits for the sun to begin to set, and for the sky to go into the colors of a death throw, of oranges and reds and pinks so vibrant it must surely mean the end of the world.
It is then, and only then, when the horizon is too terrible to look at any longer that Boudika says, “Tenebrae.”
Just, Tenebrae.
Always, Tenebrae.
So tell me how to be in this world
Tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt
