Woke up to see that the great Goran Gligović had posted this awesome Bouba/Kiki art yesterday. Immediately wanted to read about these characters' adventures, so I thought I'd do a quick morning warm-up with a writing exercise about them. Write what you want to read innit
I guess this isn't really in the spirit of the post, which is to get folks to come up with their own characters (some awesome ones in the quotes already btw). So for my own contribution I submit Nettle and Thorn, who I reckon are each like 80/20 of Bouba/Kiki and Kiki/Bouba? I'll let you figure out who is who.
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| art by Goran Gligović |
The Adventures of Bouba & Kiki
Part Sixteen – The Skeleton’s Treasure
And so the winding staircase led them deeper and deeper into the dungeon. Kiki tapped each stone step with the point of a long black boot, testing for traps. Bouba held the torch aloft, following behind with slow, heavy footfalls.
From time to time, Kiki would raise her hand, and stop to lift an unassuming stone and tinker with some hidden mechanism. Then they would continue their journey down.
When at last the stair alighted it was at an alcove so small that the two could barely stand abreast. The air was stale and cool, and before them was a tall stone arch set with a heavy wooden door.
“Raise that light, Bouba.”
Kiki sidled around the stout warrior, passing over the walls like a long dawn shadow and examining every stone with spindle-fingered precision. Bouba hefted her mace, preparing for danger.
“Traps?”
“No. And no secret passages either.”
The pair looked up at the door before them, resolute. The only way in.
Kiki immediately set about checking the latch, the hinges, the skull-shaped escutcheon of the keyhole. Each was old, beginning to rust in the dank air, but still held strong. She hissed a curse, whispering to herself.
“I can’t work out this door... Some trick to it maybe? Or a key we missed...”
Bouba, meanwhile, sighed as she dutifully held her flaming torch aloft, watching the flickering shadows it sent scattering across the ancient walls, the dull reflections in the metal of her heavy black mace. She tossed her blonde mane, then stopped, noticing something in a nook high above the archway.
“Look!”
Her companion did so. There at the edge of the firelight, past the cobwebs and festering mould, was the dim shape of a large skull set in the stone. Its mouth opened with a deep darkness the light could not dispel. A tunnel, disappearing back into the wall.
“Good girl! Come on, help me up, I’ll take a look.”
With a broad smile Bouba set down her weapon and handed Kiki the torch, lacing her thick fingers into a platform for her companion’s pointed black boot. She hoisted the slender woman with ease, and Kiki came face to face with the stone skull and its gaping maw.
She peered into the darkness, holding the torch closer. The tunnel did indeed pass through the wall, and coming from the far end was some faint light whose source she could not divine, and the sound of running water. Drawing the blood-cursed sword Takete she poked and prodded within the passage, but the ancient stone gave no reply save the singing of the red blade upon the rock.
“No traps. Okay, hoist me up.”
Bouba raised her strong arms higher and watched as Kiki folded her long limbs into the tunnel and disappeared between the stone skull’s teeth with a swish of her red cloak.
There was a shuffling, and then Kiki’s voice echoing from the stone skull’s throat.
“Can you follow?”
Bouba looked up at the narrow tunnel, then down at her own broad curves.
“Nope!”
More shuffling. “That’s fine. Wait there, I’ll try to work out the door from the other side.”
The other side was in fact a natural cave, clear water trickling down walls of rough-hewn rock and dripping from long stalactites like blood from a blade, gathering in a shallow pool. From between the rocky spires above, a thin crevice issued a slender shaft of moonlight, refracting and reflecting about the cavern like threads of silver.
The air was a little fresher here, and yet the ancient scent of death lingered still.
Kiki dropped down with a splash, the water reaching past the ankles of her long black boots. There was the door behind her. Perhaps the latch could be worked more easily from this side?
Then a glint of moonlight caught her eye, reflected not in water but in bright gold. Her hooded head whipped about, dark eyes darting in search of the source.
She found it. There, just beyond the moonbeam, an ancient skeleton slumped against the rock. Its flesh had long since rotted from the bleaching bone, superseded by black fungus and spider’s webs. All that remained of its possessions were a rusty blade and a horned helm atop an empty-eyed skull.
Those, and the gold ring glinting upon the finger bone of its sword hand.
Kiki swept across the cave towards the fallen warrior. Her spindle fingers reached out from the folds of her cloak, through the shaft of cool moonlight, and grasped for the treasure.
The skeleton raised its other hand, and grasped her wrist.
Kiki cursed, springing back with a splash, attempting to wrest herself from its grip. There was a creak and a clatter as the corpse pulled itself upright, horned helm tilting on its head, hollow sockets staring. Its jaw hung loose, silent, and its free hand raised and swung the old sword down.
Kiki raised her red blade just in time to parry the blow, the clang of steel echoing through the moonlit cave. Another step and a splash, but she could not overcome the strength of the undead fiend. As it raised its blade for another strike, she slipped Takete across to the arm that held her, the blow perfectly aimed to pry the bone loose at the elbow.
Its grasping arm undone, Kiki sprung away just in time for the fiend’s rusted blade to fall exactly where she had been. She loosed the hand from her wrist and the forearm fell into the water, thrashing with animate unlife before falling still.
The skeleton advanced, wading through the pool on shaking, rasping legs. Kiki backed away, pacing a circle around the cave’s edge, watching and waiting for its next strike. strike. In the corner of her eye she saw the tunnel overhead, but she knew she could not reach it.
She stepped back over a smooth stone and slipped, falling backwards into the water. The skeleton loomed over her, sword raised.
And then the door fell from its hinges and crashed down into the pool with a mighty splash, and Bouba charged through the archway, fair hair flying wild, and brought her mace down upon the skeleton’s helm.
Kiki’s dark eyes shone. “Bouba!”
If her companion heard her, she did not show it. The battle-lust of her people was upon her. Again and again that heavy mace came down, crunching and splintering ancient bone. The rusted blade could not find an opening in the onslaught, nor could it deflect or parry a single strike, such was the ferocity of the warrior woman’s attack. Each blow exploded in a cloud of dust and shards of broken bone.
Then with an upswing Bouba sent the horned helm soaring across the cavern, and in a blink the next blow came down and split the pale skull in two. The fiend fell at once into a clattering pile and lay beneath the pool, unmoving and silent.
Bouba finally turned to her companion, and beamed. Dust settled slowly on the rippling water, but the warrior had barely broken a sweat. She extended a hand, pulling Kiki upright and into a powerful hug, enveloping the slender swordswoman in her thick, powerful arms and deep cleavage.
“I worked out the door!”
So they fished the gold ring from the water, and Kiki and Bouba made their way out of the dungeon, and away into the night.
