tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again, how it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. it's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. look at the light through the windowpanes. that means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable.
Me either. But we can learn. Boudika is not so shy to keep the smile edging up the corner of her mouth. Can we she almost asks. In her silence, the question dances in her eyes, reflecting fairy-lights and stars. Boudika is uncertain. After all, it was her nature. Once, it had been war; now it was flesh and blood and the cruel mysteries of the sea.
Yes, he says to her. Boudika thinks of how sweet the word is, how much she wishes to keep it echoing between them. Yes. Yes. Yes. She wants all his affirmations, all his confirmations; she wants him to whisper that word in the crook behind her ear, a promise, an oath.
But tonight is not for such severities.
Then can we dance together.
This time, Boudika does smile. The expression is coy. “Tenebrae,” she whispers, still stepping back. Boudika twines around the fountain where it is backed by a terrace full of ivy. It is remarkable with what ease she rests against it, leonine, a predator in the foliage. She peers at him through leaves and wood, beyond the tinkling of the fountain. “Don’t you know, the patrons don’t get to dance with the performers.”
But Boudika’s voice is breathless, but the tone is high enough it is clear she is teasing.
She pauses—and then begins to tap her hoof rhythmically upon the cobblestones, a taptap tap tap taptaptap that increases in intensity until she bursts from behind the ivy shroud.
Although Denocte always sounds of life—the distant noise of the festival, of children and adults, of music reaching toward the stars—this is different. She keeps her own rhythm with well-placed taps of her hooves; but the dance Boudika reenacts is complicated and story-like. It begins with her rearing. With a deft toss of her head, the metallic ribbons are sent streaming behind her, a current of fire and movement. The bells woven into her tail begin to chime—the darkness and the lantern light are things she uses intrinsically to her advantage, dancing in and out of the shadows. The dance becomes Boudika’s ribbons; a flurry of movement; the thrashing of her head and the lash of her tail. Her footwork is complicated and elegant, the rearing and bucking intended not to be a show of power but instead to be sensuous, made bright with the flash of her paint.
Boudika’s dance is a flurried spiral around him; fast, and faster, and dizzyingly fast.
Until they are nose to nose, her breath rushing out to stir the ribbons that hang, now, quietly in her face.
The music of her feet has stopped.
The fountain continues to cry.
But wordlessly, Boudika steps forward. She presses her shoulder into him, and curls her neck around his own. She presses into him again, forcing him to step, until they begin to dance to the distant music of the streets. Wordlessly, body pressed to body, Boudika cannot help but think of all the ways contrived to make mortality fall, and fall, and fall.
It is this:
The soft sweat of her neck that smells like brine. Him, woodsmoke and high tide. Denocte’s streets full of jasmine, frankincense, the spices of foreign meals and mead.
It is her pulse against his pulse.
“Or, Tenebrae, would you like to learn to be a wave?” She steps passed him abruptly, trailing her leonine tail beneath his chin. It is to guide him with her, to a deeper alcove of the hidden courtyard, to where the dense foliage of the courtyard’s garden opens to the sea beyond, through the wooden fence. Boudika positions so they stand-side-by-side facing the sea but slowly, nearly imperceptibly, she begins to sway. Boudika turns her head to whisper at his ear, playfully, her teeth nipping the fine hairs there—
“It is a little like this, beneath the surface. Constant, soft, an entire world of movement.”
There is something mischievous in her when she says, “But… Tenebrae?” Her voice sounds younger to her; vulnerable; strange. “You were meant to fly, I think. That's what stardust and moonlight is for.”
Then, Boudika's laugh is like breaking glass: high, beautiful, sudden. She lurches from his side and jumps effortlessly over the fence. For once, she does not run to the sea. Instead, Boudika heads straight down the hill at a dead sprint. There are some cottages on the outskirts of Denocte; but before she can blink she is passed them, and into the trees, her laughing rising, rising, soft as a flock of doves. Fly with me, she thinks.
"Speech." || @Tenebrae
tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us
these, our bodies, possessed by light
