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Author's Note: This was part of a larger fiction involving some ravens, and what have we, but I ended up abandoning it. Nevertheless, here's some Boudicea and England/Albion talking, or so. Oneshot/drabble thing.
Badb Catha.
She cupped his face between her two hands, angling it this way and that as she took in the lithe, jutting grace of someone little more than a child. Gently she thumbed away matted blond hair to look him in the eye. Her own eyes scanned over every last scrap of him, taking each inch of his skin into account, and each puff of air that slunk in and out of his nostrils into consideration. Albion stayed perfectly still; from this vantage, not only could she see him, but he could see her. The lengthy beauty of a grown woman; straight nose, and thin cheekbones. Green eyes locked tightly to the Iceni Queen's eyes.
"My husband is dead. My daughters have been taken unwillingly." Her voice bubbled up like fire, and another dart-flare of hatred gripped Albion's stomach. Twisting, like a ball of iron ore, writhing in the heat of some smith's furnace. These were facts, but behind them lurked emotions that wriggled right through Albion with an inexorable force.
"You know me." Albion asked, tone harsh but not at this shamed, humiliated, kicked Queen.
"You have come to us."
Dully, he felt his heart flutter limply, angrily in his chest. The rage of the tribe had lulled him close, just as a camplight could singe a moth as it desperately tried to find its way. He had not been able to escape the slithering feeling of hatred, fury, impotent violence that littered his people, his lands, sinking into the dark loam of the earth with a snarl to wake every sleeping demon therein. It had captured him so surely. A moth lost in the dazzle of a fire. Albion was no moth though, not nearly so common. He was a fey creature, indeed, he was that fire, and his people would revel in his sparking, spitting, hissing, painful light. Their anger birthed and drew him close, but he drew them closer in turn. He was their anger.
"I am us." Albion's teeth glittered in the pinelight, the long scotpine candles chewed up in the late hours like spat out bones and bracken.
"I know you." With a peace that resided only in the elegance of her movements, her fingers swirled in the birch bowl to her side. Birch – Albion had insisted on birch. She delicately lifted her hands, the feminine grace lent her peace, but her fingers dripped blue with war paint. Dark indigo lacing along her fingerprints, and the cold liquid was swirled across his face in long marks. "Do you fight with us come tomorrow?"
"You will fight for me come tomorrow." His arrogance is a little befitting, and his face trembled into a toothy smirk, like a wildcat flashing its fangs. "There will be death and berserking. There will be vengeance." His blood howls for more blood, spattered and painted on the floor, just as his face is painted with woad.
"Andraste, by Andraste, we will destroy them." Her voice hisses low in the dim dark. "By Agrona they will be left as nothing."
It is exactly what he hopes to hear, and he throws his head back, the blue staining in sharp juts towards his chin, slicing smears that are both unintended and yet, perfectly meant. He throws his head back, and his entire body trembled with wild, primal laughter.
Death, glorious murder and death. Yes. That would teach Rome to dishonour his women, and his people, and his ways. Touching, exhilarating, burning, mindless murder. Glorious.
Albion was glorious.
May your quills be ever sharp.