tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
Azrael’s ears fall like towers upon the tangle of hair atop his poll. The line of his jaw grows as rigid as a mountain cut hard upon the horizon. His words are shards of ice. They pierce into Tenebrae’s guilt and jealousy. The sight of Azrael, is lost to the monk. But the sharp of his words, as they cut themselves upon his teeth, are painful to hear.
A part of Tenebrae crumbles with this meeting. Another part rises up in its place. It is a tower of ire. Its foundations are hurt, its bricks are grief and its mortar, jealousy. The monk’s head twists away, yet he listens, fixated upon the man’s voice. Darkness seeps, as polluting as oil, into the space between them. It sticks to Tenebrae’s jealousy and billows like smoke from the fire of his anger.
The monk does not know how their jealousies come from different origins. He does not know how he stands as a threat to Azrael’s family. A family that, by blood, is actually Tenebrae’s. His blindness should act as a caution, but the monk is rapidly learning that his piety has become little more than a razed forest. There is no part of his life that stands tall with holy piety any more. His love has turned him into a stranger, even to himself.
In the darkness behind his unseeing eyes, Tenebrae sickens with the painful twist of his stomach, the sharp jab of jealousy that tears him into pieces. He should not want a child as much as he does. He should not feel an ounce of envy that Elena loved Azrael even as she lay with Tenebrae beneath the stars.
Worst of all, Tenebrae should not feel jealousy when he has sought to pledge all he is to Boudika. What is it that makes him so incapable of being content with his lot? Shame comes like tar. It paralysis him with its unyielding truths and pours them down his throat like a bitter tonic. He would vomit, if he could. If he thought it would be so easy to rid him of himself and his own terrible wants and desires.
Tenebrae deserves nothing. No woman. No child. That is what his shame whispers in his ears. That is what he hears and recognises. Azrael is the more deserving man.
Beneath his bandages, the monk’s eyes press tightly closed, blocking out his shame, blocking out the feeling of his body dying in the light of his terrible wants. It seems, not even blinding was enough. What is left for him now?
The monk takes a breath, listens to how the children play outside the darkness of his entombing body. He hears the sound of laughter and awe. It seeps into him like a balm. Turns a wretched man into something, slightly, better.
Azrael’s acrimony washes against the monk and he prays. He prays for his tongue to be restrained, for his ire to ebb and his humility to bloom.
But he forgets his piety is a barrel running dry.
“I am escorting Morrighan’s daughter. She longed to see the flowers,” The words come out cold as the shadows that rake themselves like claws along the stone parapets. But then it comes, a prayer answered, or maybe, merely just shame, exhausting the anger and jealousy from his body. “I have not come to cause issue with you and Elena. She chose you and I chose another.” It felt easier when his shame exhausted him to the point of numbness.
Tenebrae is glad he cannot see Azrael, to know what hatred, what hurt moves there clouding out the friendship they once had. “How is your daughter?”
The child, he does not say, that I cannot help wishing was mine.
But it is easier, he knows, that she is not.
Tenebrae takes a breath. “I am sorry, brother. For everything.”
