The night had passed with Ardeth's eyes still open, as if each lid were the same magnetic direction as the other lid. He could not close them after what could be considered his fight with Boann.
It was her eye, when Drostan kissed her. It was that flatness, as if her it was made of velvet, and in one spot it had scratched to a glassy finish, but if you stood at the wrong spot of it, the light would not catch the glass. All light would fade from it. He had stood at the wrong angle that night. Drostan had shifted his vision to see the blackness of it. Depths unestimable.
But dawn was breaking now. The lights were catching his own soft chocolate eyes. A red sunrise to mark the red sand with its red hand. He felt nothing rustle for several minutes as he sat, back to a tree, staring at the water. The slow ripples of life giving textures to the wavering heat of the sun. As the water began to settle under the sun's scrutinous eye, Ardeth could hear sand shifting under light feet beyond the foliage.
And indeed, Boann was outside of the tent she and Drostan had shared that night. She looked freshly groggy from sleep, and Ciannait, who had waited outside of the contraption the entire night, lapped at her face, washing the sleep from her skin. She was wearing a thin, yellowed and threadbare women's camisole, sweat staining it beneath the arms and breast and gathering below the summits of her nipples. The snake that slithered from spine to sternum coiled around her reddening shoulder. Her shoulders were slightly hunched now, as if not quite as awake as the rest of her. The patch lay wide across her face, making her look almost dashing from a distance.
She pat Ciannait's nose, brushing the sand away from her nostrils and eyes to the surprising permission of the horse. She combed through her mane with her fingers, intermittently smoothing and ruffling the sand from the white white hairs. Her hand ran over her spine, down her legs, under her belly, carefully smoothing away the froth of the desert from her fairy-kin's skin, her darkly haired forearms clumsy and dirty against the light of Ciannait's coat.
She then moved to her own hair, turning her waist over itself and letting the hair flip upside down, she shook and shook until the sand no longer came out. She then tied it back at the nape of her neck with a thin thong, the straps of her eye covering so tight they were pushing a few strips of hair up higher than the others.
She quickly moved to the ground, then, rolling her neck around itself a few times before bracing herself horizontal to the sand on her hands and toes. She began with a good fifty push-ups, doing them quickly and with what looked to be ease. After the first fifty, she moved to one arm, and then the next. She then tucked her toes under her bottom and rocked up onto her knees energetically. She stretched each arm it's given time both behind and in front of her chest before standing upright.
She then gave a few loud smacks to Ciannait's rump, to which the horse obediently folded her legs underneath her, and then fell from her knees to her side. Boann then sat about legs-length from the horses weighted side, and scooted her self up to massive ribcage. She tucked her bare feet under the horses chest, and began a series of sit-ups. Ardeth lost count of how many. He idly wondered how far the woman could count. Probably pretty far. She lived in a pub, and most likely worked there some time as well. Would have had to count money and glasses and pints. As a domestic, as well, she would have to be able to count the number of china to be washed and the rooms in the house. Boann seemed to gather what she needed from life, and only what she needed. A good set of arms and legs and enough knowledge to get by...
But then, he would wonder, what the purpose of her frivolity was? The rosary, while important, was not a necessity, he thought, to prayer. Particularly to one who seemed as conflicting about her faith as Boann was. The tattoos, the drum, the knowledge of ancient mythologies and curses of more than one origin. No, Boann took not what she needed, but whatever she could. Finding bits and pieces, here and there. Trying to fill an empty space...
After Ciannait was standing, and Boann had concluded what appeared to be a morning routine, her attention was brought to the closed-flap tent. She ducked into it, and came out with a painfully hung-over, blubbering Drostan over her arms. She helped him to walk out of the tent, and began to make her way to the water of the oasis.
It was now that Ardeth made to move to hide himself better. Silently, with the stealth of a large cat, or a long serpent, he moved further in the sporadic foliage of the oasis. He watched as Boann nearly dragged the moaning Drostan to the water. She sat him on the sand, close to the water, while she tested the temperature, which was still a bit frosty from the night cold, he gathered from her reaction. But none-the-less, Boann stood Drostan up, who was beginning to attempt to speak, and with the roughness of a mother, stripped away his wind-beaten shirt. Then his belt, his shoes, his pants. She bent over to pull the pants over his feet, then knelt down to undo his undergarments, being careful to face the side of his thigh, as not to get a face-full of either extremity of his lower torso, all the while responding mutely to his numb, nearly unintelligible apologies for the night before.
He looked like a lost child, shivering in the cold of his own sweat and piss. Naked, thin and flaccid under Boann's unashamed hand as she led him to the water, nodding to his each and every request for forgiveness as if a sin-weary priest entertaining the little-boy sins of a thirteen-year-old child.
She helped him into the water, herself still fully dressed – though, for the water, now quite indecently dressed – and proceeded to rub his upper arms with her strong hands in a half-hearted assurance that the water would not be so cold for long. Ardeth watched as she took a small scrap of cloth and began to wash away the vomit, sand and blood from his face, chest and legs. She dunked his head gently into the water, and let him clamp down on her arm as she pried out another threaded tooth from his mouth. As she washed his back, he stood with his head resting on her thin breast, his fingers sorely stroking his gapped mouth.
Once he was clean, she brought him out of the water, and sat his naked form on her cloak, she took from a satchel from Ciannait's saddlebags a bottle, and handed it to him. At the sight of it he vomited onto her clothing, and Ardeth assumed it was in fact, more liquor. He eventually took a few gulps, and seemed to relax, the alcohol dumbing down the pain in his mouth and head. He lay down in the sun to dry himself off, still clasping his throbbing head.
As her hand reached to feel the watery fluid on her shirt, she suddenly realized that her own grime was building to an uncomfortable thickness over her skin. She stripped off her pants to her undershorts, checking with little care to see if anyone was watching, and, with little grace, thumped into the water.
She did not splash, though, Ardeth noted. In fact, her movements in the water made minimal physical impact. She seemed to glide, thigh high now, in the clean and slowly heating water. After scrubbing her arms and face, chest and, awkwardly, her nether regions, she slowly glided to her knees and scooched a bit deeper into the water, until she was about chin deep. It was now, in the warm, womb-like water, that she relinquished her patch. Ardeth could not see from that distance the marring of her face. But he could see something different. Something decidedly less strong than the Boann he had seen. He no longer saw someone who would let go of the well water into a river of knowledge, but one who would try to patch it back up, for fear of the wrath it would bring. He no longer saw a woman who would defy nature to ensure that the father-god loved her and his beast was born upon her; but instead, a scared little girl with some soap and water who would do anything for nine months to be washed away in a day.
He touched his own face, feeling the grooves in which an inked needle was pounded, making roads to be mapped by fingertips in the sand by a tree, watched from a distance by one small eye. His own marring felt fresh after a full three years, the memory of the pain still present. He wondered if her pain was present in her absent eye. That awful pain... but not that awful, he had said. Why not that awful?
He could see her face contort, though, even from that distance. She was crying. Pushing water out of her mouth and crying, the water rippling with the reverberation of her chest and cheeks. He then remembered a story she had told him, about the Celtic mermaid. In truth, he couldn't tell you much about the Anglo mermaid if you asked him, or any other nationality of one for that matter. But these were called Selkies; seals that can take their skins off to reveal a beautiful form of a woman. He didn't know what a seal looked like. He had a vague memory of seeing a walrus or sea lion with Lucy as a zoo. Boann had said they were sad, sad creature. Sad eyed and gentle, with powerful cries. Hunted for their skins and fats.
Well, she had no fats; and her skins were less than desirable. But he could imagine her as one. A slick, graceful seal swimming through waters and sands and air. One eye delicately plucked from the socket by a fisherman's hook; or perhaps in the struggle to escape his net.
Or perhaps it was a seal that had charged head long into that hook. Let it scrap the skin and the jelly and the retina strait out of the scalp. But for what? Why? To be ugly for the rest of her life? To escape her Selkie-mother's beauty? Was she unable to shed her skin, reveal round hips and a plump ass and fire in her hair underneath the tough leather of her outside?
She ran her hand over her face, letting the water wash away the salt and the sting. Her hand avoided completely the right eye-space, passing over the bridge of her nose to her wide mouth.
She stood up and got out. Dried and dressed herself as well as Drostan, who seemed to be slightly more coherent, though his mouth was still a bit slack. The others were rousing, and Boann was dressing her composure into what Ardeth could now see was her idea of presentable. Protected. Cold, distant, violent. Like the moon, perhaps. Or like a goddess. Like a woman who was hurt beyond hurt. Hurt numb.
