Ripping, howling, the sky opens up. A yawning black mouth with shadowing teeth that close around the figure highlighted against the silvery moon. Diaval does not flee, even as he feels the tongues of magic grip his ankles, the breath of fate hot on his heels. The world below, with its flickering lantern light and endless forests, is obscured by the darkness that surrounds him.
Screwing his eyes shut tightly, the stallion quells the nausea in his gut as he feels himself being hauled from one dimension to another. Portal travel was not something that got easier the more times one experienced it. But Diaval was glad to be able to say he no longer wretched and hurled when he landed in a new world- even if his stomach still violently rebelled and his heart flung itself desperately into his mouth.
The familiar sensation of falling took a hold and for a moment the winged steed enjoyed the sensation. Until he opened his eyes and realised he was indeed falling. A hoarse cry left his dark lips as Diaval threw his wings open. The ground hurtled up toward him, dizzyingly fast. Too fast. It was too late. In a last ditch effort, the black steed twists his body and curls his head into himself. The inevitable bone-shattering thud sends pain erupting through his body and for a time the world goes black.
Pain, blinding pain, is the first thing Diaval becomes aware of as he is drawn into consciousness like poison from a wound. The world is still blessedly doused in darkness, stars still gleam overhead, a different set to the ones his closed his eyes on earlier. Earlier? He cannot be sure how long ago it was that he jumped worlds, that he crashed her. Minutes, hours, days. The passage of time had eluded him in his pain-ridden slumber. He hopes no one witnessed a dark form spat from a portal and hurled across the sky; he hopes no one saw his quick descent to meet the unforgiving ground. But what is hope in a world such as this. Unfurling his wings with a grimace, the steed rights himself and allows his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. A lake sits silent and shadowy off to his left, the moon reflected in its calm depths. Despite the cold, the stallion rises upon unsteady hooves and heads for the blessed liquid, allowing the freezing temperature to block out the pain.
the angels come too late, feather's crawling with mites and eyes flat as snakes'. the smell of ozone lingers in their skin, and glory glory glory sounds like a punchline. they promise altars and arks; the hollow earth, the ascending light.
It is nothing like the sea.
The water is cold, cold, cold. And dim; there is no brilliant blue, no lingering emerald. The sea is sharp clarity; this is soft, like a dream, like a nightmare, and everything is shades of brown or deep, deep green. The reeds are not as alive kelp and beneath the water is quiet, quiet, quiet. Boudika holds her breath beneath the surface, drifting with remnants of current. Her tail and mane float brilliant crimson about her, and she focuses on the slow and steady beat of her heart, lowered to withstand the lack of oxygen. Fish cut paths across her front or stream by her sides, flashes of silver and light. The longer she waits the more at peace she becomes. Boudika is attuned to everything beneath the surface; more so than she has ever been attuned to anything in her life. She can feel the dance of the reeds against her flank and sense the creatures that shift within them, alongside her. The larger fish, even before they pass, she can sense from their energy, their pulsating power and life.
Boudika is teaching herself to become a water-horse. She knows the sea would eat her alive; she is too inexperienced, too uncertain. And so she rests among the reeds, and holds her breath, and snaps at fish as they stream past her, and dreams about what it would be like to swim with sharks. There is a longing in her heart, infinite and pained, that feels like the unfinished note of a song.
She cannot say what tempts her to leave the secretive alcove; it is almost as if in a dream she rises and swims to the surface, breaching it first with her nostrils, then her eyes, then her horns. She exhales in a spray of water, and inhales deeply enough to fill her lungs. Everything seems slow. She can feel the rhythmic, calm, calm beat of her heart; so much calmer than it has ever been. Boudika rests like that on the surface; only her eyes, her nostrils, her horns. Her eyes are dark slits above the water; she sees, after a long moment, what drew her attention.
He is floundering. Wings unfurled, crawling to his feet.
At once new and prehistoric, something within her laughs. Weak, weak, weak.
Boudika submerges again, and kicks closer to the shore. Her hooves touch the soft, silty, rotting bottom of the lake.
She can see him again, now. He has stepped to the water, has lowered his head to drink from it. Does he not know? Does he not even think to look?
Boudika knows she is not camouflaged for it. She knows if the light were brighter, if he squinted just a bit harder, he might find her bald face staring back among the reeds, wraith-like and intense. Boudika is enticed; her new instincts whisper dark things to her heart, her body, and she trembles with wanting. Her teeth prick against her own lips and her mouth stretches, stretches.
The water-horse bursts from the water in a moment of sudden intensity; crystalline droplets spray from her in a shimmering cape, and then she is standing in knee-deep water, mere inches from him. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to bite. When she fills her lungs with new, fresh air his scent hits her and she is nearly bowled over from it.
It is what life smells like, perhaps.
What a heartbeat sounds like.
What a breath is, whispered against the throat, exhaled in pleasure.
Boudika steels herself, shaking the water from body like a dog. She is smiling a wolf's smile but it trembles; everything trembles and there is something dark and secretive curling in her mind, a serpent, a thing that wants, a thing that hungers.
“You ought be more careful where you stop for a drink, stranger.”
you will be gold, and gold again. but you are not surprised when their throats are torn open, revealed to be hollow.
Though smart enough not to blunder about foreign lands entirely unaware, Diaval does not notice the water-kissed mare as she cuts smoothly through the still waters. Watching, waiting, spying, a predator ready to strike. Pain wracks his body, his wings, his mind. The darkness a blissful shadow across eyes that hurt too much, squinting away from the moon that is dark and yet all too bright. The pounding in his head only grows louder as he drinks, a thump, thump, thump in his ears as the action of swallowing pops the pressure. The water is ice cold upon his tongue, tasting faintly of salt and earth and strongly of blood. The fallen prince cannot tell if it is his tongue that bleeds, or his lips but he knows the salty tang of life-liquid comes from him.
His legs quiver beneath him, barely holding up his ebony form. From the shock he tells himself. But the slowing ebbing pain whispers to him otherwise. It is like a backwards ocean, washing towards him rather than any. Growing stronger and stronger until he screws his eyes shut tight against it. One wing hangs a little awkwardly- not broken, but certain injured in some way. Or perhaps it’s his shoulder. He cannot tell, not with the pounding. The pounding that wont leave him alone. He wants it gone, the lights shining and dancing before his eyes, the acute tornado of discomfort.
And suddenly the rush of water, the splash that sounds louder than it should in the silence that lived everywhere but in his ears. His eyes snap open, the deepest blue like the darkest depths of the ocean. Or the highest heights of the skies. With the world swimming before his eyes, the dizziness not calmed by the cool water he can feel still sliding comfortingly down his throat, the winged steed can see only a form- bright as the mare is. Alarm punctures the cloud hovering over his brain and he steps back swiftly, shakily, drawing in a breath. The claws of his wings are sharp, the scar across he face says otherwise, but he is not a warrior. Words were his weapons.
As the distraction, and the sudden rush of adrenalin, chase away the shimmering lights and fuzzy mind-mist, Diaval makes out a tooth maw grinning a danger grin. “You ought to be more careful where you stop for a drink, stranger.
“I-I.” He stammers and then gathers himself, courageous even if not battle hardened. “I didn’t mean to disturb your waters.” He dips his head politely, a little regally, the dark fronds of his sweat-soaked hair cascading in a sheet of ebony over his neck. It aches, gods does it ache. But he was a prince, and a court-man before that. Courtesy went a long way, even in the face of danger. Though not every danger, he was quick to remind himself. Courtesy had cost him and his sister their kingdom, more fool him for it. “I’m Diaval. I just landed here, what is this place called?” Landed! Bah! She probably saw his fall from the sky and was here to laugh at him.
