Sweat is slick across the silver of his torso. It gleams in the firelight as he moves through the thick crowds. The citizens of Denocte have tumbled out upon her streets, drawn by the enchanting whispers of revelry. The fires crackle and dance, they leap up to set the sky alight. Smoke billows up to blend with the clouds and shadows that darken the midnight sky. 


Great torches light the sky in a warm glow, painting the swirling smoke in an eerie red. Even the moon is painted crimson with the light of this mid-fall dance. Tenebrae watches the dancers who entertain in the center of the streets. They move to a song of voice and instrument and it is not unlike the battle training Tenebrae has come from. Yet his music is the clash of weaponry, the gasps and grunts of pain and effort. These might be the only symphonies that he will ever know. Warriors and dancers share their grace and elegance and idly the Disciple wonders if he too might have been a dancer, if he were set upon any other road - one that did not lead to the sun and to death..


His knees still ache, remembering the cold stone of the temple floor. How many hours had he been there penitential that he looked at a girl, fearful that he might have wanted more than just to simply see. Is there no part of him that does not ache with sin or with the labours of war?


Shadows crawl along his skin as he walks beyond and away from the Night Markets. The darkness drapes him as if he were clad in armour. The glow of his eyes, of his half moon sigils have the crowd parting like the Red Sea before him. Some know the Night Order and its Stallions who Swallow the Sun. Others do not and yet one look upon the blazing sigils of half-cut moons and the eerie, light-swallowing glow of his eyes are enough to have them scrambling to step around him.


He moves through the spaces they make, walking like a warrior returned, not from training, but war. Dust and dirt are thick upon his coat, blood gleams like trickling black ink across his muscles torso. Still Tenebrae can hear his fellow Disciple’s laugh as his shadow blade caught across Tenebrae’s shoulder. The muscles smart, still they cry out their agony through whitehot nerves cut and riled. Yet even through his body’s pin he hears the song of stars and stops.


Tenebrae is stood before the tent that lays itself beneath the sea of swirling stars above. He looks upon the sign that welcomes him in and promises to know what the future holds for him. A girl moves in beside him. He feels it - he does not need to look. There is a fragrance upon the air, it clings to her skin, it dances across his tongue and he might laugh for all the ways she is beautiful and he is not made to behold her. Least of all when he is battle worn.


Tenebrae takes a breath and does not dare look at her, but bathes her instead in the rich whiskey of his words. Better to bathe her in the amber of his voice than to limn her in the starlight of his gaze - well, it is for him at least. “Do you think they can tell you any more about your life than a goddess has already decreed?” His skull tilts, as if to look at the girl before remembering the danger.


He keeps his gaze upon the tent and the truths its royal silks shield.

@Katherine ~ for any of your ladies <3

The night is long and deep and smoke-filled, and Samaira’s moon-bright eyes take in everything with a strange sort of disconnection.

She isn’t quite sure why she’s here, in Denocte. Perhaps because the doctors at the hospital had told her to take a night off, to take a break. Perhaps because she is trying not to think about midnight eyes and gilded skin and twin lives that are seemingly lost to the world. Regardless of the reason, the earthen woman walks slowly through the crowded streets of the Denocte. Above her flies Alaunus, a light above in the sky as the moon.

Samaira is glad for the noise, glad for the sound of so many voices that she can barely discern her own thoughts. Glad for the way the bodies sweep her up and down the street like the sea, letting them take her where they please.

The altars pass, and the pegasus does not approach them. Tonight she does not want to think about the missing and the gone and the left-behind. Tonight she wants to forget, to distract her mind from the thoughts it spins like a web in the rooms of the hospital when she is not busy with patients. She pushes down the rising tide inside her again, again, again, and pushes forward, wings drooping slightly at her side as though useless.

She moves away from the busiest parts of the market, away from the stalls selling all manner of wares; from flowers, to decor, to candles. She moves away from where the children and children at heart are bobbing for apples and taking part in other activities. The joy in their laughter tugs at her too harshly.

Instead Samaira finds herself standing where the bonfires are less crowded, where the silence is drawn and almost reverential. The tent looks out of place in the market, and the darkness of the canvas against the rest of the court looks like a portal to another world. The woman wonders what world she will find if she enters it, what sorts of heartbreaks could possibly lie in the next dimension, or any other.

She begins to walk toward it, as a silent rush of wings announces Alaunus’ landing at her side to join her. Samaira almost doesn’t notice the man made of moonlight and stars, too focused on the shadow inside the entrance to the tent, until he speaks. She pauses, turns moon silver eyes upon him.

“Do you assume to know what the goddess has decreed about my life?” her accent is smoky and warm, but beneath it there is a solemness, a longing, “I do not.” While Samaira isn’t sure which goddess he refers to, she has not spent much time considering the one patron to her home court. Vespera is as much a mystery to her as any of the other deities, and Samaira has never been particularly spiritual. All her life she has had to get by on her own, other than her parents, because nobody wanted her alive.

“If you do, please enlighten me,” there is a breath after the words, a sigh. She stands too close to him and when she shifts her weight the down of one of her wings might brush against his side. If this is the mandate of her life, Samaira is not sure which would be better: to have left Irindor or to have stayed.

"Speaking."

 

It is a relief to look up and watch the bird that casts his moonshadow upon the ground. It swoops over Tenebrae and the girl who stands beside him. Her presence is a press against his side, she is a darkness in the corner of his vision. Yet still he does not turn to her, temptation is thick upon his tongue, it is impulse bright within her muscles that yearn and yearn to look and see and behold.


He watches her bird that drifts like a ghost. So often it passes the moon, as if this bird is Icarus, fallen in love with the moon instead. Tenebrae does not blame it, for it is better to live in moonlight than in the sun. Oh, oh how he thinks and yearns and fights the desire within him. This desire, the desire to swallow to hunt and fight against the sun - this desire is easier. This is what he has been created for. Tenebrae is a Stallion Made to Swallow the Sun and his eyes close, letting the wash of violent delight slip like ice through his veins.


But she speaks. She speaks and she chastises (he thinks, until he hears the longing in her voice) and Tenebrae is holding her in silver before he can stop himself. He holds her in the white light of his glowing eyes and sees the silver light of hers. They are as starlight bright as his. The dark of her skin is made ever more so by the midnight low light. This creature is black ink, pooling before him into the shape of a girl. Her flowers are frosted silver in the moonlight as they sit in a crown atop her head. 


She is as fine boned as a sparrow, her wings like a dove. They move as silent as an owl and as she shifts, imperceptibly so, her feathers brush his side. He catches a breath and somewhere within him laughter echoes low and ironic. His knees still ache for the hours he spent repenting and in one moment he knows he shall return with ever greater sins pouring black from his tongue.


“I am sorry,” He begins and tries to forget the first touch of a girl - so accidental, but it burns him like embers. It solders itself into his memory and with a smile he hopes to cast it aside - a passing moment. He remembers the girl in the mountain temple, how broken she was, how empty from love’s great ravaging. Suddenly that touch is easier to bear, suddenly he is assured that he will not fall.


So Tenebrae dares to study her, to map upon her face all the places where the starlight touches and darkness is banished. He sees the longing in her pool deep gaze and he says again, “I am sorry, I meant it only of myself...” The girl is stronger than him, she does not look upon him but keeps her gaze resting on the thick curtains that shroud the witch within. “I wonder only if they can tell us of the day to day... I know my fate already, Caligo has seen to that, but I do not know the details of it.”


Tenebrae trails off, his voice mingling with hers until they are smoke over amber liquor. They have been stood together too close, too long. He can feel the heat of her skin, reaching out like the sun to warm every piece of him it dares to touch, his stomach, his shoulder, his hips, his neck. But it is easier, easier. So he says, so he says.


She sighs and he realises he has not stopped looking at her, that still he holds her in starlight. He looks away but it is like tearing himself from life. Oh he aches for not living and looking. “Have you asked her?” He says and thinks of Caligo. For it is only ever her. But she smells of more than Night. She smells of sea-salt and medicines and wild-flower meadows. “Who is your goddess?” Tenebrae asks, his skull tilting. He is regarding her again, studying the lines of her face, the curve of her throat - all the ways she may not be Denoctean. Can he tell if she is or not?


No, of course not.


“Do you think she holds any truths for us?” He asks, looking back at the tend, meaning the shed-star who stands beyond, consulting her stars. Tenebrae would swallow them all if he could. Steal their every ray of light.


@Samaira