Winter comes early to the mountains. It howls in its corners and prowls round its crags. The cold creeps upon the white temple that gleams like bones - a cage of ribs in which Caligo’s heart is housed. 


Tenebrae does not feel the cold, not as he leeches his brothers’ magic and pulls darkness down to smother the temple and guard it from the press of winter’s groping grasp.


He stands guard, a statue in the deepest reach of this great, ornate ruined basilica. Its hellenic beauty steals the breath of his lungs each time he climbs up and up until the air grows so thin that he is left breathless and gasping. Yet it always abates for trained he is to endure the heights of mountains - where else are they to commune with Caligo? The Night Order, placed here to defend their goddess and her Court. The Night Order, placed here to remind the world what darkness is and swallow the light out of the sky.


So it is his duty this night, to stand and listen to the thrum of life below, where toffee apples are passed between sticky fingers, where revellers dance in the pale moonlight and couples kiss in golden firelight. Up here he is to hear it all. Up here he is to be removed, to stand guard and remember that he is apart. Disciples are not to be tempted by the delights of the flesh, their love is Caligo alone.


How long has he stood here, shrouded in black with his star-bright eyes closed as he listens and does not move. Hours, his body cries, hours. It might even be days.


So it is, when she comes, this girl that walks like a ghost. This girl that burns as brightly as another he already knows. But there is no smile upon this girls lips as there had been upon Boudika’s. There is only a line and it is sharp and agonised.


The girl drifts as if a wraith, as if joy and love and delight have slipped from her body as easily as life. She floats beautiful and lost and he watches her, his eyes now open, twin stars that glow brilliant in his swallowing dark.


He moves and the shadows press upon him, fingers upon his cheeks his jaw, the muscles of his breast. But he moves through them as easy as air, they beg for a command, to be made solid. Tenebrae gives no such command and so they go and press upon her. They shy from her glow but dare to press upon her throat and settle in the grooves of her face, the curve of her flanks. They are bold and brave and his eyes blaze brighter as he chastens them back, back and summon more down, down until the darkness sighs and billows as thick as smoke, as deep as a chasm.


He moves as the girl does, keeping at right angles, watching as she drifts like a lick of flame between pillar and pillar. The air tastes of her agony which has filled up all the places love has left her empty, empty. He is glad he has vowed chastity, he is glad such love is forbidden to him - if this is what it makes of you.


The Stallion moves as she does, each step mirroring hers, his path an orbit about hers, until she moves to the centre of the temple where Caligo’s altar lies. Suddenly his magic is released. Suddenly shadows snap solid as a spear that reaches clean across her path. Black sparks fly as his shadow spear strikes stone. It is there for a moment and then gone, weary is he with his vigil. But there is no worry for Tenebrae is there before her. He stands adorned in the glory of darkness, his eyes aglow, his sigils blazing their ire.


“You cannot pass this night,” darkness murmurs to the phoenix who dares bring light to the temple. She glows crimson and gold before him. Her fire, her light, her sorrowful vivid, angry light, pushes against his darkness. Oh how darkness and light tangle like fingers pushing, pulling. Where once he wore a smile upon his lips for a girl with a trident and skin so brightly copper, he does not now for a phoenix girl. Not when the darkness feels the bruises of her agony and the cut of her starlight blood that pours from open wounds and banishes darkness with a stroke.


@Moira

 

Tenebrae had circled her like a planet about its sun. His orbit had closed and closed until they collided in a clash of light and dark. They were two comets meeting: their magics dancing and fighting and dancing and fighting. The Stallion and this mare are fingers of darkness and fingers of light that grapple and grip and twine their fingers together repelling and then drawing in, in, in.


He stands tall above her, illuminating her in the silver of his eyes. It is a light she does not need. Not when she glows like a divine pyre. She is the boldness of flames licking out into the dark. Her wings flare with seraphim fire as she tips up her chin and looks at him beneath the sweeping black of her lashes.


Their eyes meet, silver to gold and moonlight to sunlight. Upon her skin is everything of Denocte - the jasmine, the smoke of bonfires, the laughter of revelry. Yet never has Tenebrae seen a girl who looks so unDenoctean. Especially with her magic that opposes and matches his, that brings light to life and gives it solidity. 


There are orbs of light, bright as fireflies between them and Tenebrae’s darkness leaps to swallow them whole. Inkblots spilled across the paper, darkness bleeding across the sun.


Ah, was that not what she is? The sun? The sun come here to light Denocte. He smiles and it is a wolfish thing upon his lips. It is hungry and savage. His eyes glow, glow, glow. Brighter and brighter they blaze as he swallows down each piece of sunlight she draws. Moira makes him ravenous she reminds him of what he was made for: he is a Stallion made to Swallow the Sun.


Yet she meets his grin. She meets his smile with words that are ash and embers. They breathe firelight across his skin and his nape arches shadows pulling out into arching wings to match hers. Across their shadow wings her light sparks like lightning. He feels their sharp illumination upon his body as she moves to light him as his shadows move to swallow her.


Those wings are there for but a moment, expanding like a breath, and then gone as if he exhales and all the shadows tumble back to press in close upon him. 


“I am a Disciple of the Night Order.” Tenebrae says with a voice rich as whiskey that waits for the spark of her embers to ignite his words, his voice. “We protect the temples of our goddess and this night is not for worship here.” Low, low is his voice, deep like the dark the presses in and around.


Still their magics battle, still she illuminates him as he shadows her. Still their magics tangle and untwine. The shadows relish the fight of her, and yet, as they darken the lines of her, drawing her in stark relief, they can feel the emptiness of this girl. They whisper to him of how she burns bright and wild outside, within she is a wilderness ravaged by love, broken and unwound by love’s great, bruising grasp.


Yes, yes it is easier for the Disciple to stand and call himself apart - untouched and kept free of the chains of love that bind and wound. It is easy, easy. “Do you dare to challenge a Disciple of Caligo?” Tenebrae asks her and upon that feral curve of divine black lips is a beautiful wild that hopes she might say yes.


His shadows prowl forward like a panther, weaving midnight between her slim limbs. They whisper along the skin of her knees and ankles, Yes, yes, yes.

@Moira

 


Away, away, below, below he hears the sigh of bonfires breathing smoke up into the sky. They laugh with glowing sparks that are nothing compared to the light that dances and crackles across his flesh victim to the Tonnerre girl’s magic. Oh that revelry, that mid-winter delight so warm with joy that it is mid-summer sticky across the flesh of all who gather at the Queen’s command.


But they are so far, so far away that their laughter is but a whisper dream in his ears. It is temptation that wraps itself about the mountain base and croons to him like a cat. Yet tenebrae is here, held by his shadows that swell and billow across the temple. They crawl across his goddess’ walls and rise like wings. The crescent moons atop his brow and emblazoned across his shoulder grow with greed as they swallow, swallow every piece of flame-lit magic Moira gives it.


Ah their magics - their magics! They tangle and loop and circle and no longer does Tenebrae know which came first - his darkness or her light. For all his magic swallows her light, her magic grows brighter, brighter. Tenebrae is a reveller here. Light dances across his flesh, it caresses like a lover, it delves beneath his skin as if between the pages of a book. What does it read of him there in the words of his DNA… there in the novel of him, his past, his existence? Ah! He smiles for this is how he was made, of light verses dark, of sunlight and darkness, Night versus Day.


She is not here to worship and oh, who is the heathen now? It should steal the smile from his lips, that smile as lovely and dark as Night’s deepest hour. Yet his grin grows, it is the space between stars and the moonlight glitters across his lips as if they are glass, black as a raven’s wing. His smile is sharp as shards and soft as feathers. “Blasphemous.” Tenebrae murmurs, low, dark, amused. He is not appalled for none could be like he and his brothers, devout and holy and deacons to his goddess.


Slowly he blinks as her words slide like serpents of sunlight, such is her ire. Her phantom lights align into a row of flames that lick the darkness with tongues of endless light. His spear of darkness does not reform though the temple’s bones still echo with the song of their meeting. It is a song to which their blood has words that clash and harmonise and clash and harmonise.


His starlight eyes glow bright beneath the shroud of his darkness (the parts of him her magic allows him still to keep secret). Tenebrae closes them slowly, to better listen to the ancient whispers of all the sacred magic Caligo has left here. “Then what brings you here?” His skull tilts listening no longer to the song of Caligo but the echoes of the sun that play across the temple, held in the essence of this girl’s magic. 


A part of him begs, a part of him rises like a storm at sea and gathers with hope that she might dare, that this girl might challenge as the sun once foolishly challenged Calligo. Tenebrae hungers as all the Stallion’s hunger. He has a taste for stars and gods of sunlight. Yes, her voice whispers small in the temple and yet he hears her every syllable as her tongue forms them. His eyes open, bright and brilliant, keen and wild with scattering moonlight. He turns to her ravenous and delighted with her challenge.


His laughter is mercury pools warm and rich and beautiful - dangerous as a blade. The shadows gather keen and sharp, they level themselves into a sword whose tip is lined for her heart. “I hoped you might be so foolish.” He breathes as soft as her challenge, and yet he does not move. For all his magic, for all her ire that rises in challenge of his, beneath this girl is a torrent of sorrow. Tenebrae is the dark between stars, yet she is the emptiness. She is unspooled and in pieces and so he waits with his smile upon his lips and his eyes bright, bright, bright.


Come girl and lay down your sorrows and your ire.



@Moira

 



And she shatters.


The lights of her magic are nothing compared to the thousand shards she becomes in her sorrow. 


Tenebrae’s darkness is nothing but a swallowing void through which the shards of her anguish cut. The light seeps in an Tenebrae stands, exposed. 


Moira Tonnerre breaks and yet the Disciple stands as if unmoved. The white of his eyes are not the bright of stars now, but those of moon-caught-cobwebs capturing memories as dust upon the glow of its gossamer thread.


She breaks and her light sputters out. No more does light battle with darkness. No more do the tongues of light dance across his skin, fine and elaborate as tattoos. In the darkness, the shadows knit themselves over where her light left it wounded. Within its grasp this girl stands as at peace in the soul of his darkness as she is in the light of her own. The black coos to her now, it adorns her in the silk of silence. Gone is the war and oh, this is the silence  of its wake. It is an inhalation and the Stallion feels the temple groan with the effort of breath.


Beneath the wrath of his magic this girl had stood as a phoenix ready for the coming of death and life. She had stood already in pieces, fractures littering through her skin, her soul, her heart. He had missed it all. Hungry, hungry warrior he is! Born only for war, for a destiny he is hell bent upon meeting. Yet this silence, the girl who watches him with eyes like the sun - oh eyes that make him hunger- reminds him of more than war.


Solitude, Moira speaks into the silence. Every syllable off her tongue is as sharp as ice, and beautiful as hoar frost. Cold, cold she is now an ice queen with sorrow dusted across her  cheeks and lips as snow and grief frozen in tears upon her lashes. 


Oh phoenix will you burn in ash or snow?


The girl smiles slow and small and beautiful as she tilts her head back, back. Moonlight shines through the parts of his darkness he has not yet healed and tumbles in rays down the groove of her slender throat. Tenebrae stands, black as midnight, his weapon lost with the groan of the temple. It aches for its warrior, these walls of stone and marble. It aches for its phoenix girl who burns in ice and silver.


How does it feel to conquer? Though he is stood tall and great before the altar, a formidable barrier to stop her path, already Moira has made herself a sacrifice. She is a lamb before the lion, the phoenix ready for its change. Tenebrae wonders what she will be when she rises from her ashes.


“How does it feel to be defeated?” He murmurs low, low to the girl upon her altar; it is a table gilded with gold and ice, woven with feathers of her fly-away soul and ashes of the phoenix. There is no victory for him or her - Moira has left no space for it, not now. Not when her fight puttered out like the thousand flames that pressed and burned across his torso. He wants no victory in this. He deserves no victory. Her ash is in his mouth and it is bitter to his tongue.


No longer does his darkness press as if it reach into her bones and banish the fire, the light from the essence of her being. Now it reaches for her, soothing along the contours of her cheeks and settles in the dark of her lashes. “There is no victory to be found in solitude or sorrow.”


Still he stands, the black of his magic breathing ominous and whole, reaching out to the corners of the temple. It holds him and from its depths his white eyes glow, glow. Yet it is his half-moon sigils that illuminate her skin. Within the darkness the Disciple watches her, the contours of his elegant face drawn in whispering lines of burgeoning understanding.


“Forgive me.” He says like a vow, like a pledge. The temple trembles with the weight of it, with a girl’s agony and a man’s contrition. Tenebrae knows what it is to be consumed in sorrow, to turn to the dark and hallowed pieces of himself and the foot of his goddess’ altar for peace, for comfort.

There is a part of him that knows the sacrament of silence, the healing of it. He takes a breath, it is wrong to leave his post and yet he knows it is best for her. So he turns and leaves her to the silence of her thoughts, her sorrow, her grief. 

@Moira