THEN I FEEL THE STORM AND AM VIBRANT LIKE THE SEA
A soldier must be unafraid to face death. They must be conditioned to not feel such fear; and when they feel it anyway, because it is as instinctual as breathing, they must have the muscle memory to overcome it. Yes. The fear rushes through her blood with the vivaciousness of a creature cornered, a creature terrified. The middle of the snake, as she lunges, becomes everything and nothing she could have imagined. It becomes the essence of every Khashran she has ever known, and more. It is transformative; intangible; changing even as her eyes analyse its movement, its form, into a different form, something equally incomprehensible: scales like sea-glass, rowed teeth, swords, all and none of those things.
Even as Boudika’s heart rushes with the sentiment of raw fear, her mind and body push past it. What could have resulted in a hesitation, an indecision, is an utter commitment to her purpose: forward, forward, forward the mare drives, as she has always been taught. She does not flinch. She does not stop. Her trident point gleams wicked and bright, and she closes her eyes. She knows death intimately. She has held Him in her teeth; he has whispered to her with many different lips, and she knows that he will never look the same twice.
But today is not for death. Not yet, at least. The snake’s belly writhes into something else. It yawns into the shape or twisting, gnarling roots that bloom bright emerald leaves and ripe, ripe berries. Boudika’s momentum is already carrying her, in and through the over-ripened rain. It showers her in red like blood, red like a curse, and she bursts through the sickly sweet scent and bitter taste to discover the waiting moat.
The mare does not charge through immediately. She stands, feeling the hot, torpid drip of the juice as it slides down her flanks. Her sides heave with her heavy breath and out of the corner of her eye, she recognises that August has made it through. But this island is full of many tricks, and her old soldier’s instinct to attach to another is gone. She does not trust these strange magics and what tricks the island may plan on her mind. The trident dangles at her side, coated in crimson as she is, and Boudika shakes the wetness from her face.
She heaves in another breath, and decides there is no strategy. The island is a changing thing, a living thing, just like the Khashran of her old home. They cannot be anticipated, or calculated. Boudika can only react.
So she does. Boudika steps out onto the moat with the twisting darkness beneath it, and after feeling the strangeness of it, bursts in a run toward the trident. She does not adhere to the “reason” of the glass-like moat; she does not concern herself with whether or not some areas seem thicker than others, or if it cracks beneath her weight. It feels to her, a little like a last break; the moment in which the pitch of the battle changes, and there is an intense desperation where the only option left is a frantic forward charge.
Boudika chooses option two.
