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+---- Thread: [FTB] I look at her and light goes all through me (/showthread.php?tid=5185)
I look at her and light goes all through me - Tenebrae - 07-01-2020
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
There is distant music playing. The notes are drifting like boats over the mirrored surface of the Lake. The star strewn sky is reflected in bright dots of twinkling silver. The heavens, adorned in midnight array, paint themselves upon the canvas of the lake. Festival goers come with golden-lit lanterns bringing warm licks of colour to the cool, autumn scene.
Tenebrae stands in the midst of the wishers who each hold their lanterns tight. Children close their eyes and hope for things superficial and things so surprisingly deep. Adults cling to their lanterns as if their wish might be something more, magical, capable of a miracle. To whom do those wishes go? The monk wonders. Who is the one who decides if they are granted, and how? Tenebrae thinks of his goddess. Was Caligo good enough to grant wishes? He is beginning to think not. How many times has he wished he were not so sinful, so desperately, terribly in love?
Maybe it was time to lay a shallow, pagan wish upon the wind. The Disciple would light his lantern and let it drift where it may. He would let that flame do what it so desired with his wish. The monk moves past a makeshift altar. The shadows adorning it tremble when he does not think to look at the shrine. They whisper terrible things into his magic. They are full of warnings that limn his blood in moonlight prayers. Darkness still prays where this monk no longer does. They writhe in agony as he collects a lamp like a pagan and lights it with a prayer as shallow as a wish. He does not send it to his goddess or even any deity.
Tenebrae releases the lamp into the sky. It struggles to rise in the breeze, as if burdened by his sin. The lake blinks as she watches the lantern slowly ascend. The stars are weeping, or maybe the sound of their crying is only laughing? Do they know how he is falling away? How he might already be gone?
His faith bleeds black drops of blood upon the moonsoaked grass in his wake. He is a man ailing. His love makes him sick. He thinks he is ready to renounce his goddess. The altar he passed is trembling. It topples in the wind. His shadows seeth across his skin and worshippers flock to righten what the wind full of wishes has wronged. But the monk does not turn to witness the breaking nor righting of his goddess’ altar. The fallen monk merely meanders slowly on along the dark bank of the lake.
The night welcomes him, for he will always be that: a child of Denocte. The music falls away behind him. The sounds of the shrine being righted are swallowed by the gentle lapping of water upon the shore. The Lake welcomes him and as the distant lanterns rise in an arc above him, he wanders out into the shallows. He does not stop there, but lets the water pull him out deeper, deeper until he submerged in the black of the lake’s embrace and her star-strewn sky. The water cleanses him, of everything, or so Tenebrae hopes. It washes from him dirt and the vestiges of the sins he has let loose upon the wind.
When the man emerges from the lake, it is to a golden form upon the bank. He looks at her and knows that what the water has washed away, she will paint back across his body. She will paint him in love and sin and sacrilegious thoughts and hopes and desires. Elena, gilded in sunlight and wanting, taking desire, has come to find him, he knows, but she is looking at the stars. Which one has she truly come here for? Him? Or the stars he invited her to stand beneath, here beside the water.
Tenebrae will make her choice for her, he thinks, as he steps up the bank and his shadows descend upon his flesh as the water spills from him like tears. The monk, the man moves to her, enchanted by the gold of her skin. Caligo’s gift is soldering his veins into his soul and yet, already Elena’s fingers are there, reshaping his heart, his soul. His moons blaze white with divine rage. Their light illuminates her aureate skin, spotlighting her as one who leads him astray. The half-moon sigils almost burn him yet he moves to her, a moth to the light they cast upon her skin. He presses his lips upon the smooth column of her throat letting them rise a heated trail up, up along the elegant arc of her throat until he meets her upturned jaw.
He would ensure Elena came for him alone.
@
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Elena - 07-03-2020
and bury it before it buries me
The last few rays of sun dance against her left flank, and reflecting the pretty patterns of the evening light on her skin. The autumn eve is cool, the soft breeze caresses her back gentle, like a lovers touch, like hands running down her spine. Elena stands quiet, ears not quite listening. Her lips are drawn into a thin line, serious, and yet they are soft and a promise to turn into a smile at the smallest prompt. She doesn't know how long she stays in Denocte, but it is long enough that the stars begin to flood the sky, and Elena gasps. It was stunning.
“If you want to remember, you should come to Denocte’s lake one night and watch the stars from there.”
She had not been thinking those words, had not thought of those words in so long, not until they shine back to her now, in a blanket of navy blue, obsidian. And maybe, she remembers them now because there is still hope. Hope, an entirely fragile thing, an unreliable thing – it sits like St. Elmo’s Fire, a promise of light in the distance that she could never get any closer to. “Lantern?” Says a stranger. “You can make a wish.” Only one? She thinks. Elena’s heart think she would rather have none than only one to give. The flame is lit inside it, but Elena does not let hers go like the others, instead she holds it fast, like she should have done with her heart. Instead, she watches, as all the others float away, like dancing sunlight in the darkness.
With lantern in hand, she walks down to the lake. She should feel happy, excited, like magic on an evening like this. There are still butterflies in her stomach, a hundred impossible creatures with wings as soft as snowflakes and they are tying knots and tearing holes and leaving wounds in her heart because everything hurts, everything aches, and she doesn’t want to breathe. But she inhales, sharp and practiced as she watches a monk baptize himself in lake of the night. There are scars on his back and Elena traces them with blue eyes. It is him, she has traced the lines of his body enough to know this. She breathes softly, the longing still fighting against the common sense that’s waving a red flag in the back of her mind.
He submerges himself, and she wonders if she had only imaged seeing him, but he rises, from the water, as if reborn. She wants to unfold the map of his heart and trace the constellations within it. She wants to know all of the different shadows and caves and dark corners. She wants to know the sharp edges. The haunted pieces. The places where she can knick her finger and draw blood. The places that could gut her.
“Tenebrae,” she says, quiet, so soft that even the stars twinkling above them, can’t hear her. She does not say his name for him, but for herself, it know that it still makes her feel as daring and reckless as it always had. She would be a thief in the night to steal but a moment with him. With a brazen look in those eyes of blue, she takes a chance and she stays.
In some ways, she is in love with a shadow. With the smoke of him. She reaches for him but grasps onto nothing, leaving a bitter ache in her stomach. And yet, she can feel him like a weight in her chest. Elena has always been sunlight, been fire, impossible to catch, impossible even more so to hold, but she will now sit there in the shadows and beg them to swallow her whole if only she gets to feel them against her skin.
He looks at her.
Oh god, he looks at her.
And Elena swallows every breath that is stained with him. They say a woman would run through fire and through water for such a heart. And that men’s evil deeds live in brass, their virtues are written in water. So Elena will take up her paintbrush and write her love for him upon the satin of his cheek, the arch of his shoulder, the curve of his hip, and her lips will erase the sin from his.
She should go, she knows she should go. Blue eyes go upwards just as his own reach for hers. Her grandmother had said they are a guide, that the stars can tell you where you need to go. But Elena feels so lost that north could not possibly exists any longer, and she cannot bear to look at the compass in her hands because it keeps spinning and spinning and spinning until it leaves her dizzy. And her pulse hums and her chest aches.
He was right.
She remembers, she remembers it so much, so deeply, that she forgets the monk for an instant, forgets the man, forgets the shadows, and forgets her splintered heart slowly growing alive in her chest, like the flame of a lantern.
The golden girl (like sunshine, sunflowers, summer) doesn't move when those lips press against her throat. She stands in the shallow shores of the lake, but suddenly she cannot feel the water, cannot feel the cold, can only feel that heat that burns her skin like the embers of a bonfire. The way he touches her, it coaxes something sweet, something wild into the well of her chest. “I’m here.” Her mouth lingers on all of the syllables, drawing them out like honey as she speaks. It is only then she looks at him, and in a breath the stars are forgotten.
Her heart stutters in her chest, but she is quiet when she presses her mouth against his shoulder in return, tasting temptation on his skin with tremulous lips. A sigh builds in her chest, climbing to her lips and steadying the racing of her heart when she closes her eyes and leans into him, an impossible half-smile pressed into his skin. “And you,” she says, pulling her gaze upwards to him, as if to make up for all those glances she had thrown away when they sat beside the sea. “You’re here,” she says, and she looks at him like she is terrified she might forget him like she has the stars.
“You asked a favor of me, and now I ask one of you.” She isn't sure how she can speak when he leaves her breathless. “Remember me?” She asks, the request soft. She breathes, a sound like tempered birdsong, a release of pain and sorrow and longing – for many things, but mostly to be encased in shadows. In his shadows. “Don’t let me be some forgotten thing,” she says, begging him to promise. The words are a command, but her voice rings like a plea. He takes from her, and she takes from him.
And she is about to take even more.
“Tell me you love me.”
“If you want to remember, you should come to Denocte’s lake one night and watch the stars from there.”
She had not been thinking those words, had not thought of those words in so long, not until they shine back to her now, in a blanket of navy blue, obsidian. And maybe, she remembers them now because there is still hope. Hope, an entirely fragile thing, an unreliable thing – it sits like St. Elmo’s Fire, a promise of light in the distance that she could never get any closer to. “Lantern?” Says a stranger. “You can make a wish.” Only one? She thinks. Elena’s heart think she would rather have none than only one to give. The flame is lit inside it, but Elena does not let hers go like the others, instead she holds it fast, like she should have done with her heart. Instead, she watches, as all the others float away, like dancing sunlight in the darkness.
With lantern in hand, she walks down to the lake. She should feel happy, excited, like magic on an evening like this. There are still butterflies in her stomach, a hundred impossible creatures with wings as soft as snowflakes and they are tying knots and tearing holes and leaving wounds in her heart because everything hurts, everything aches, and she doesn’t want to breathe. But she inhales, sharp and practiced as she watches a monk baptize himself in lake of the night. There are scars on his back and Elena traces them with blue eyes. It is him, she has traced the lines of his body enough to know this. She breathes softly, the longing still fighting against the common sense that’s waving a red flag in the back of her mind.
He submerges himself, and she wonders if she had only imaged seeing him, but he rises, from the water, as if reborn. She wants to unfold the map of his heart and trace the constellations within it. She wants to know all of the different shadows and caves and dark corners. She wants to know the sharp edges. The haunted pieces. The places where she can knick her finger and draw blood. The places that could gut her.
“Tenebrae,” she says, quiet, so soft that even the stars twinkling above them, can’t hear her. She does not say his name for him, but for herself, it know that it still makes her feel as daring and reckless as it always had. She would be a thief in the night to steal but a moment with him. With a brazen look in those eyes of blue, she takes a chance and she stays.
In some ways, she is in love with a shadow. With the smoke of him. She reaches for him but grasps onto nothing, leaving a bitter ache in her stomach. And yet, she can feel him like a weight in her chest. Elena has always been sunlight, been fire, impossible to catch, impossible even more so to hold, but she will now sit there in the shadows and beg them to swallow her whole if only she gets to feel them against her skin.
He looks at her.
Oh god, he looks at her.
And Elena swallows every breath that is stained with him. They say a woman would run through fire and through water for such a heart. And that men’s evil deeds live in brass, their virtues are written in water. So Elena will take up her paintbrush and write her love for him upon the satin of his cheek, the arch of his shoulder, the curve of his hip, and her lips will erase the sin from his.
She should go, she knows she should go. Blue eyes go upwards just as his own reach for hers. Her grandmother had said they are a guide, that the stars can tell you where you need to go. But Elena feels so lost that north could not possibly exists any longer, and she cannot bear to look at the compass in her hands because it keeps spinning and spinning and spinning until it leaves her dizzy. And her pulse hums and her chest aches.
He was right.
She remembers, she remembers it so much, so deeply, that she forgets the monk for an instant, forgets the man, forgets the shadows, and forgets her splintered heart slowly growing alive in her chest, like the flame of a lantern.
The golden girl (like sunshine, sunflowers, summer) doesn't move when those lips press against her throat. She stands in the shallow shores of the lake, but suddenly she cannot feel the water, cannot feel the cold, can only feel that heat that burns her skin like the embers of a bonfire. The way he touches her, it coaxes something sweet, something wild into the well of her chest. “I’m here.” Her mouth lingers on all of the syllables, drawing them out like honey as she speaks. It is only then she looks at him, and in a breath the stars are forgotten.
Her heart stutters in her chest, but she is quiet when she presses her mouth against his shoulder in return, tasting temptation on his skin with tremulous lips. A sigh builds in her chest, climbing to her lips and steadying the racing of her heart when she closes her eyes and leans into him, an impossible half-smile pressed into his skin. “And you,” she says, pulling her gaze upwards to him, as if to make up for all those glances she had thrown away when they sat beside the sea. “You’re here,” she says, and she looks at him like she is terrified she might forget him like she has the stars.
“You asked a favor of me, and now I ask one of you.” She isn't sure how she can speak when he leaves her breathless. “Remember me?” She asks, the request soft. She breathes, a sound like tempered birdsong, a release of pain and sorrow and longing – for many things, but mostly to be encased in shadows. In his shadows. “Don’t let me be some forgotten thing,” she says, begging him to promise. The words are a command, but her voice rings like a plea. He takes from her, and she takes from him.
And she is about to take even more.
“Tell me you love me.”
so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me
@Tenebrae <3
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Tenebrae - 07-10-2020
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
There are so many pieces of his soul upon which she might cut herself. His soul, submerged in darkness, is so full of wicked edges and pin point corners. She fears how he will make her bleed, how he will eviscerate her. But already, as his faith makes him ail, so too is he already bleeding. Tenebrae is strung upon her soul. It is a cross upon which he perishes. Her heart the pyre upon which he turns to ash.
Elena ends the monk with a look.
And then her voice...
It is a song, a melody that undoes all the pieces of him his faith has bound together. Elena remakes him with her wanting. She demands of him and oh, he gives and gives and gives. He is a fool, drunk upon love. It makes him uneasy, to ever think himself a fool for loving Elena. There is nothing of her that is foolish.
Her words are honey, deeply golden.. Tenebrae’s lips have already reached her jaw and they turn for hers, to taste where her words tumble from her mouth. There is a sweetness there, it is addicting.
“Of course you are.” The black stallion murmurs against her lips, whiskey over honey.
The monk’s kiss does not linger there, not when she still looks up at the sky. He moves to look up, to see what gods and stars hold her interest when his kisses cannot. Yet their gazes snag as hers descends and his rises. All of Elena is held in the white light of his star-bright gaze. He breathes lowly and only now wonders if Caligo’s altar has been reassembled, or if it still lies in pieces, spilled across the festival grass.
Elena speaks. It is more honey that he does not taste (though he longs to). But her words turn with crystal hardness. He might laugh if the lake had not already washed the sins out of his skin. All Denocte is still and sombre around them. The stars stretch out, keening out their sorrows and their eternities in blinking light.
Tell me you love me..
Has he not already told her once? Had he not breathed is across her skin when it was still slick with saltwater. Now the column of her throat is not cool salt, but warm satin. The smoke of bonfires and the scent of jasmine cling to her skin like wild gypsy promises.
“I love you.” He concedes with eyes too bright, too wide. “I see you.” He offers her. ‘You are a vision not easily forgotten.” And then, after a pause, as the final droplet of water leaves his side and drops back into the lake he murmurs, “You are in my soul.”
Are you ready yet?
He does not ask it. Though the stars cast the question down like crowns.
@
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Elena - 07-10-2020
and bury it before it buries me
Lost things always find each other. They end up on that same island, with searching in their eyes, and limbs weary from trying to find their way. And maybe that island, is not really an island at all. But a land beside a lake.
When that first moment happens, that first instance where your heart soars in your chest and you feel more dangerously alive than you ever have before, you don’t remember to take a second to consider how far it is you have to fall from that point, how broken you will be when your heart crashes against dirt and stone. That is the flaw of loving. Of loving freely and with all of yourself. Falling out of love, out of a life that feels like electricity, like lightning under your skin, is wholly obliterating. The pieces of who you were and who you are get scattered so far, so savagely, that it becomes impossible to be that self any more. We call it growth, justify it by saying it’s a lesson learned, but this growth is only made so by the death of who you were. This growth is a sudden ending, a lost beginning. It is the putting back together of pieces that don’t fit, forcing them together until they do, and pretending like that could ever be enough.
But it has to be, because that’s growth, it’s how we learn from our mistakes.
We learn how to recognize them the next time we make the very same ones.
But we don’t learn to not make them again.
But she looks at him, and Elena knows she would make this mistake again and again just for the chance to catch a fleeting look, a casual glance, all from her man of shadows.
At first it had felt like her soul was unraveling, all those carefully knit-together pieces coming irreparably undone. But it felt different now. She had been so certain she'd never see him again. Except in her dreams where everything that could never be has lived. Here, Elena is able to tell herself that she can be enough for him and that what he can give her will be enough. She believes him when he says he will remember her, that this will last for an eternity, that he will not forget her, tire of her, will never find another to warm his bed, to warm his heart. She tells herself that this is true, that his love was rooted and that he would bloom flowers in the fissures of her heart. (That thing that has been shattered and never made whole again.)
It is all enough to cause her to tremble, her heart races in her chest.
She looks at him, looks at that face and she shatters into pieces like a porcelain doll as her eyes race to the sky. And she hopes, hopes that he can put back the pieces of her, to make her whole again. Hope is a dangerous thing. It flutters in her throat, presses against her bones, turning the insides of her into a softness she doesn’t recognize. He whispers into her lips and she is unraveling beneath his touch, a million stars shattered across the furthest corners of the darkest galaxy.
He must know what he is doing to her, must be able to feel the tremble of her golden skin where it presses flush to his, must be able to count the beats of her heart and realize it hums faster than her stars, now. Love has her trapped like a moth in a web and the golden girl does nothing to free herself, instead the spiders finds her and Elena huddles closer to him, as if he will never hurt her.
He could rip her apart.
He could be the end of her.
Still, she cannot tear herself away. Instead she warms herself like his words were fire, forgetting too, how such things can burn if you are not careful. Elena has never been careful. So she takes the flames he offers her and tells herself she it will never go cold. “Tell me, Tenebrae,” she whispers in the broad plane of his neck, her breath hot against his skin.
‘I love you.’
“I love you,” she whispers back to him, her voice steady despite the desire that curls within her. The words are the same, but they are so much more than just an echo. She wants to tell him what he does to her, how she could shatter to nothing but dust if only it were his hands that crushed her. But she doesn't say anything of those things, she just presses her forehead into the angles of his neck and breathes him in, tries to press the memory of him within her so that she can remember what it was like to be loved by him. “I think I’d like to stay there forever,” she says to him finally. Forever, in his soul. She pulls away, but it is not with that winter chill she had beside a cliff where he had pulled her from the sea. It is with that desire to look at him, to memorize every angle, every curve of his face.
“I have asked so much of you,” she says and those blue eyes fall down in something like defeat. “But, please, I have one more wish,” And those blue eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, that shine only from starlight and the flame that rests in her lantern that comes to sit between them, casting bright shadows on both their faces. “I wish you would dance with me like it was summer all over.” And she lifts the lantern into the sky. Only one wish, they had told her, and so she only had given one. Elena watches it go, and it is only when the light no longer touches her, when the only fire here is Elena’s own, that she brings her face, flush with desire back to his own. And she walks into the water like it wasn't autumn, like he hadn't hurt her already once, like she hadn't pushed him away, like this wasn't a lake at all, but a sea of fire.
Elena’s eyes change then, they look different, here, in the moonlight reflected off the lake, but altogether, too familiar. They glow with a wildfire, a summer’s night, a festival, forbidden desires, daring the stallion of shadows once more to dance with her.
Lost things always find each other.
And what is an orphan, if not the most lost thing of all?
When that first moment happens, that first instance where your heart soars in your chest and you feel more dangerously alive than you ever have before, you don’t remember to take a second to consider how far it is you have to fall from that point, how broken you will be when your heart crashes against dirt and stone. That is the flaw of loving. Of loving freely and with all of yourself. Falling out of love, out of a life that feels like electricity, like lightning under your skin, is wholly obliterating. The pieces of who you were and who you are get scattered so far, so savagely, that it becomes impossible to be that self any more. We call it growth, justify it by saying it’s a lesson learned, but this growth is only made so by the death of who you were. This growth is a sudden ending, a lost beginning. It is the putting back together of pieces that don’t fit, forcing them together until they do, and pretending like that could ever be enough.
But it has to be, because that’s growth, it’s how we learn from our mistakes.
We learn how to recognize them the next time we make the very same ones.
But we don’t learn to not make them again.
But she looks at him, and Elena knows she would make this mistake again and again just for the chance to catch a fleeting look, a casual glance, all from her man of shadows.
At first it had felt like her soul was unraveling, all those carefully knit-together pieces coming irreparably undone. But it felt different now. She had been so certain she'd never see him again. Except in her dreams where everything that could never be has lived. Here, Elena is able to tell herself that she can be enough for him and that what he can give her will be enough. She believes him when he says he will remember her, that this will last for an eternity, that he will not forget her, tire of her, will never find another to warm his bed, to warm his heart. She tells herself that this is true, that his love was rooted and that he would bloom flowers in the fissures of her heart. (That thing that has been shattered and never made whole again.)
It is all enough to cause her to tremble, her heart races in her chest.
She looks at him, looks at that face and she shatters into pieces like a porcelain doll as her eyes race to the sky. And she hopes, hopes that he can put back the pieces of her, to make her whole again. Hope is a dangerous thing. It flutters in her throat, presses against her bones, turning the insides of her into a softness she doesn’t recognize. He whispers into her lips and she is unraveling beneath his touch, a million stars shattered across the furthest corners of the darkest galaxy.
He must know what he is doing to her, must be able to feel the tremble of her golden skin where it presses flush to his, must be able to count the beats of her heart and realize it hums faster than her stars, now. Love has her trapped like a moth in a web and the golden girl does nothing to free herself, instead the spiders finds her and Elena huddles closer to him, as if he will never hurt her.
He could rip her apart.
He could be the end of her.
Still, she cannot tear herself away. Instead she warms herself like his words were fire, forgetting too, how such things can burn if you are not careful. Elena has never been careful. So she takes the flames he offers her and tells herself she it will never go cold. “Tell me, Tenebrae,” she whispers in the broad plane of his neck, her breath hot against his skin.
‘I love you.’
“I love you,” she whispers back to him, her voice steady despite the desire that curls within her. The words are the same, but they are so much more than just an echo. She wants to tell him what he does to her, how she could shatter to nothing but dust if only it were his hands that crushed her. But she doesn't say anything of those things, she just presses her forehead into the angles of his neck and breathes him in, tries to press the memory of him within her so that she can remember what it was like to be loved by him. “I think I’d like to stay there forever,” she says to him finally. Forever, in his soul. She pulls away, but it is not with that winter chill she had beside a cliff where he had pulled her from the sea. It is with that desire to look at him, to memorize every angle, every curve of his face.
“I have asked so much of you,” she says and those blue eyes fall down in something like defeat. “But, please, I have one more wish,” And those blue eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, that shine only from starlight and the flame that rests in her lantern that comes to sit between them, casting bright shadows on both their faces. “I wish you would dance with me like it was summer all over.” And she lifts the lantern into the sky. Only one wish, they had told her, and so she only had given one. Elena watches it go, and it is only when the light no longer touches her, when the only fire here is Elena’s own, that she brings her face, flush with desire back to his own. And she walks into the water like it wasn't autumn, like he hadn't hurt her already once, like she hadn't pushed him away, like this wasn't a lake at all, but a sea of fire.
Elena’s eyes change then, they look different, here, in the moonlight reflected off the lake, but altogether, too familiar. They glow with a wildfire, a summer’s night, a festival, forbidden desires, daring the stallion of shadows once more to dance with her.
Lost things always find each other.
And what is an orphan, if not the most lost thing of all?
so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me
@Tenebrae <3
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Tenebrae - 07-12-2020
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
Tenebrae does not stop to think how dangerous they are for each other. He does not stop to think how he should not be here with her, but back repairing Caligo’s altar. There is no space for doubt this night.
He is a foolish man. He thinks of nothing but his wants, his desires. The night illuminates her, limns her in silver and turns her fierce gold into the softness of a dream. It is as if Elena comes to him carved out of paradise. She is midnight’s gift and the shadows unveil her.
He is a foolish man because when he stands before her, his lips upon her throat, upon her lips, he lets himself be so consumed. There is a beauty there, yes, but he lets himself think of nothing else. All of him is consumed by Elena. All of him made whole by the sight of her, by the press of her brow to his neck, the whisper of her words across his skin.
They undo each other and remake themselves together. “You have changed me.” He breathes, before her admission, before she confesses her love.
Then it comes. The stars are blinding, the lake dark with promise. Her words are pressed into the scant space they leave between their bodies. It sinks down into his breast, his heart. It takes root within his soul.
Love.
It stings as she says it. Terror pierces him with an arrow laced with bitter poison. But its twin is joy and her arrow pierces deeper. Delight slips like liquor through his veins. He can deny her nothing. He has given himself wholly to this, to the gold of Elena. He comes to her a man ailing and she vows to set him alight. Tenebrae is building his pyre before her. He might be her first martyr.
But he is a foolish man.
Forever with Elena. He is drunk upon them, upon her. He lets her fill up every piece of his heart and inch of his soul. “There is no rush.” He murmurs, could he offer her forever? He is still a monk after all. A monk who rejected his goddess upon her festival night. His punishment awaits and it may not just be a whip across his back but something more, something worse. What is the price of Elena this night? His faith? Would he pay it.
Forever.
Elena tattoos the word upon him as the pierces him with her blue eyes. They are deep enough to lose himself within and Tenebrae is falling into her. He smiles against her cheek as her confession strings itself in starlight. His shadows press in upon the contours of her face, they paint her dark, dark. “You will have my forever.” Tenebrae murmurs, as if he knows what it means. But he is a foolish man and has no ability to see the future, to know what forever could ever mean. Yet he vows it all the same. Pledges himself across her skin.
The monk aches when she leaves him. The cold of the night air presses in across all the places their bodies had been touching. He watches her lanturn ascend, her wish a bright light against the night. OF course Elena’s wish would rise in smoke and fire and golden light. Up and Up that wish of hers rises, until the universe catches it and turns it into starlight, into the wanting dreams of men.
He lowers his gaze from the lanturn and returns to Elena. He follows her as she leads him out into deeper water. “Is that what you wished for?” He asks as he presses close to her again, until it is impossible to know where he ends and she begins. So intertwined they have become. “Because that is a wish I can give you.” Then lower, low, “You who asks so much of me.” He smiles a dark roguish smile across her skin. “Tell me you wished for something more than just a dance with a monk.”
And he is holding her as the lake reflects the sky into a silken floor of stars and moonlight.
@
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Elena - 07-14-2020
and bury it before it buries me
Elena has spent so much of her life needing, her whole life even.
Needing her parents. Needing to be saved from the monsters that threaten her. Needing to feel loved, or something of the sort, even if it was a lie. Needing to feel anything but the weight of the grief that always presses into her bones enough that they bend but do not break. She needs things like a child does, reaching for them, desperate to hold, believing this thing she needs will make her whole.
And right now, Elena needs you, Tenebrae. She thinks maybe she ought to tell him so. She doesn’t, the silence is too captivating. She just closes her eyes to the feel of his mouth against her, the quiet beauty of them coming together, the sound of anchor and port.
Perhaps theirs was not a love to stand the test of time. Perhaps it will crumble beneath the pressure of all the demons that stand, screaming behind the door. Perhaps one, or both, will fall beneath the weight of a love from their past, the pressure too much for their mortal spines to bear. Perhaps, but she doesn't know. Right now, with his mouth on hers and his emotions blossoming inside her chest as her empathy hums like lightning in her veins, she doesn’t care. They are the only thing that matters—the only thing that could feasibly ever matter.
Them and the child she has not yet dreamed about.
Even if she could have understood her somewhat overwhelming emotions, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to. Her heart racing and her stomach is erupting into butterflies. She trembled subconsciously into the warmth of his neck. His voice strikes a chord within her chest. It graceful like the violin, with the tempo of the piano. She wants her ribs to fall away and show him the contents of her heart, to show him where she hurts, and to tell him every secret she has ever kept. To show him just how much he had changed her. That her heart tonight is not the same heart that came from the sea onto the streets of Terrastella. He has more than changed her, he has rebuilt her entirely.
Her fire had cleansed her.
His shadows restored her.
They are so quiet for a moment, her confession, her love, sits against skin, finding its way to his heart. But everything else ceases to move (the stars still shine, but Elena knows they would so so even if the world ended). The fragile hammering of her heart reassures her that she is alive and he is with her. Her heart opens and his emotions flood in. She wants to cry and laugh and sing, but it all washes out in a beautiful sigh as her lips land in a kiss against him.
“It’s no rush until the world starts ending.” And for the longest time Elena has feared for the end of it all, if it would come by fire or water or the earth shattering in two. She isn't scared here, with him holding her. It feels like the end is an eternity away.
There is no rush.
No rush in the way she traces the slope of his shoulder, no rush as she gently trails up his neck, and she takes her time to look into his eyes.
He says those words and her heart stops.
He says those words and she can’t breathe.
He wants her.
Taking the smallest steps away, there is a new light in her eyes, a joy she intends to linger in. She can feel him ache at her separation, and her legs feel weak. That wish, it flies away, and Elena imagines it keeps on floating up and up, forever and ever. Forever. He had told her so. He finds her in the water. She could frown here, but her lips blossom into a smile, for him and him alone. “I had to wish for it,” she reassures him. “I had to make sure it would come true.” She whispers, ripping what is left of her heart and handing it so easily to him. For all of the demons and ghosts that haunt her, she cannot stop the way that she so quickly follows him, her footsteps echoing as she descends downwards into shadows, his shadows, as she consumes the pomegranate without question.
It is more than a dance in the water, it is like a baptism. The water splashes against her, each droplet making her anew. For all her fire, maybe Elena was not meant to be born from the ashes of a fire, but from the cleansing of water. “I’ll make another wish,” she says when he holds her. “I’ll wish that you dance not like it’s the last time, or the first, but the only time.” There is something reborn in her smile. Maybe it is not neither then, but both. The first time, and the last time.
They become one so easily, so effortlessly, it is almost hard for her to believe they have ever been apart. She thinks maybe he has been there her whole life.
Tenebrae was there, in Windskeep, when the war was wild. He was there, in Murmuring Rivers when she and Lilli tried to race the river. He was there, in Paraiso, when they discovered a cave of crystals and magic. The monk was there when she sat beneath a pine tree in Culloden, unsure where to go next. Tenebrae was there in Hyaline when she prepared herself for diplomatic visits. He was there when she left that behind and came to Terrastella on a winter’s day. There when she was in Taiga, standing frigid in the ocean.
And he is here.
He is here.
He is here.
“I need you, Tenebrae.”
She can feel his heart, it is held inside her own and Elena wants to keep it there forever because when she can hear it thrumming in her ears, it lets her forget anything else that has ever happened. It provides the tempo for their movement. The stars are delicate like flutes, the water is the strum of violins, and the lantern, burning somewhere far away, (as far away as forever maybe) is the conductor and Elena succumbs to the music of the night. “You told me to come here if I wanted to remember, but tonight.” Tonight, with the orchestra surrounding them. “I only want to remember you.”
Needing her parents. Needing to be saved from the monsters that threaten her. Needing to feel loved, or something of the sort, even if it was a lie. Needing to feel anything but the weight of the grief that always presses into her bones enough that they bend but do not break. She needs things like a child does, reaching for them, desperate to hold, believing this thing she needs will make her whole.
And right now, Elena needs you, Tenebrae. She thinks maybe she ought to tell him so. She doesn’t, the silence is too captivating. She just closes her eyes to the feel of his mouth against her, the quiet beauty of them coming together, the sound of anchor and port.
Perhaps theirs was not a love to stand the test of time. Perhaps it will crumble beneath the pressure of all the demons that stand, screaming behind the door. Perhaps one, or both, will fall beneath the weight of a love from their past, the pressure too much for their mortal spines to bear. Perhaps, but she doesn't know. Right now, with his mouth on hers and his emotions blossoming inside her chest as her empathy hums like lightning in her veins, she doesn’t care. They are the only thing that matters—the only thing that could feasibly ever matter.
Them and the child she has not yet dreamed about.
Even if she could have understood her somewhat overwhelming emotions, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to. Her heart racing and her stomach is erupting into butterflies. She trembled subconsciously into the warmth of his neck. His voice strikes a chord within her chest. It graceful like the violin, with the tempo of the piano. She wants her ribs to fall away and show him the contents of her heart, to show him where she hurts, and to tell him every secret she has ever kept. To show him just how much he had changed her. That her heart tonight is not the same heart that came from the sea onto the streets of Terrastella. He has more than changed her, he has rebuilt her entirely.
Her fire had cleansed her.
His shadows restored her.
They are so quiet for a moment, her confession, her love, sits against skin, finding its way to his heart. But everything else ceases to move (the stars still shine, but Elena knows they would so so even if the world ended). The fragile hammering of her heart reassures her that she is alive and he is with her. Her heart opens and his emotions flood in. She wants to cry and laugh and sing, but it all washes out in a beautiful sigh as her lips land in a kiss against him.
“It’s no rush until the world starts ending.” And for the longest time Elena has feared for the end of it all, if it would come by fire or water or the earth shattering in two. She isn't scared here, with him holding her. It feels like the end is an eternity away.
There is no rush.
No rush in the way she traces the slope of his shoulder, no rush as she gently trails up his neck, and she takes her time to look into his eyes.
He says those words and her heart stops.
He says those words and she can’t breathe.
He wants her.
Taking the smallest steps away, there is a new light in her eyes, a joy she intends to linger in. She can feel him ache at her separation, and her legs feel weak. That wish, it flies away, and Elena imagines it keeps on floating up and up, forever and ever. Forever. He had told her so. He finds her in the water. She could frown here, but her lips blossom into a smile, for him and him alone. “I had to wish for it,” she reassures him. “I had to make sure it would come true.” She whispers, ripping what is left of her heart and handing it so easily to him. For all of the demons and ghosts that haunt her, she cannot stop the way that she so quickly follows him, her footsteps echoing as she descends downwards into shadows, his shadows, as she consumes the pomegranate without question.
It is more than a dance in the water, it is like a baptism. The water splashes against her, each droplet making her anew. For all her fire, maybe Elena was not meant to be born from the ashes of a fire, but from the cleansing of water. “I’ll make another wish,” she says when he holds her. “I’ll wish that you dance not like it’s the last time, or the first, but the only time.” There is something reborn in her smile. Maybe it is not neither then, but both. The first time, and the last time.
They become one so easily, so effortlessly, it is almost hard for her to believe they have ever been apart. She thinks maybe he has been there her whole life.
Tenebrae was there, in Windskeep, when the war was wild. He was there, in Murmuring Rivers when she and Lilli tried to race the river. He was there, in Paraiso, when they discovered a cave of crystals and magic. The monk was there when she sat beneath a pine tree in Culloden, unsure where to go next. Tenebrae was there in Hyaline when she prepared herself for diplomatic visits. He was there when she left that behind and came to Terrastella on a winter’s day. There when she was in Taiga, standing frigid in the ocean.
And he is here.
He is here.
He is here.
“I need you, Tenebrae.”
She can feel his heart, it is held inside her own and Elena wants to keep it there forever because when she can hear it thrumming in her ears, it lets her forget anything else that has ever happened. It provides the tempo for their movement. The stars are delicate like flutes, the water is the strum of violins, and the lantern, burning somewhere far away, (as far away as forever maybe) is the conductor and Elena succumbs to the music of the night. “You told me to come here if I wanted to remember, but tonight.” Tonight, with the orchestra surrounding them. “I only want to remember you.”
so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me
@Tenebrae <3
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Tenebrae - 07-16-2020
T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
“Another wish.” Tenebrae murmurs with a smile as Elena asks for another. “You have so many.” Though he smiles, playful, a part of him is sombre in remembering how she told him to leave Terrastella and not return. There was something in the way the fae-girl said it, that was like a wish. A dark and painful one.
But here, this night, with their lips and bodies pressed together, Elena’s once banishment feels so distant. Just a bleak memory. Something has changed between them. Was it love that was able to surpass his misdeeds? Will it always be enough?
He is reckless this night and he cannot deny this girl her wishes. When she looks at him with eyes the colour of the deepest sea, she drowns him. Tenebrae sinks, willingly, swallowing down her saltwater love as if it were air. Elena is air. The monk breathes in the scent of her, the wildness of their thundering love. It runs out of control. He is out of control.
Tenebrae does not stop to think what the Order might say. He waits to be struck down by Caligo even as he touches, kisses Elena. He expects his shadows to bind shackles about his limbs, a lasso about his throat to drag him back, away from temptation. He needed something to stop him, but maybe that was the reason nothing else yet had… The only thing that could stop him is himself.
And the monk does not wish to stop. He does not think he can. Not when love blinds religion and corrupts his faith.
They dance together, through the lake, its surface the mirror of the sky above. He grants her the wish upon her tongue. He dances like this is the only time that matters with her as if the world only makes sense within this one moment.
She speaks, desiring to remember only him tonight. Her words are a whisper across his skin. He does not withdraw from her, even if he wished to. Tenebrae’s eyes close at her words. His brow presses to hers, his eyes closed. “Then let us remember only each other. We have all night.”
And Tenebrae knows the festival is too far away, the shadows too dark where they dance away, away from the crowds. He knows that tonight he is not a monk, but a man. Tonight Tenebrae is made for reckless things. Her kisses are fire across his skin. She sets him ablaze. He hungers for her light. He hungers for more too. The Disciple returns her kisses, pressing along her jaw as their dance turns to something other.
He knows he will not relinquish her this night.
@
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
RE: I look at her and light goes all through me - Elena - 07-21-2020
and bury it before it buries me
She is at home in the curve of his dark body, content against the heat of his skin and beside the ripple of hard muscle. In the dark, with her face tucked against the warmth of his arching neck, at once the knot in her chest eases so that she can breathe again. Her legs feel broken beneath her – too small, too brittle, too tired to hold her up. She could think about how she shouldn’t be here, she could think about what this will mean for her tomorrow, what it will mean for him tomorrow. She could imagine how much harder this will be when the shadows cant hide their sins. She could think about a lot of things. It is too easy to instead be wrapped up in the way that he holds her, in the way that his scent covers her like starlight – like warm lanterns and lake-water, cleaner than cold air.
Remember me.
She wants to press into him. She wants to lose herself in his touch. She wants to forget everything but the way it feels when he is wrapped around her, the way that he causes her mind to go numb, the pain of everything else to slip to the wayside. It’s not fair, the way that he does this to her. The way that his mere presence can unravel her, picking apart her threads until she is laid bare before him. She has no defenses anymore, she has no way to pull back pieces of herself, no way to shield herself from the destruction.
She is utterly and completely vulnerable before him—
and it is terrifying.
But the way his lips skim over her, the way his body melts around her, makes it slightly less so. She melts into it, taking several steadying breaths, the static of her thoughts gently buzzing from his kisses. Another kiss and it strikes her light lightning, intense and bright. Her lips are gentle and imploring, less urgent and more reserved when they move to trace the lines of his face, when they bury kisses in the deepest hollows and a soft smile against his cheek. Her lips feel wrong every time they are not on him. He is like a shooting star, brief and temporary, and she is desperate to memorize him. In this moment, she only existed because of him. And wherever he touched her became fire, the rest of her was only smoke. Moonlight plays across her face, her eyes nearly drifting shut.
The stars bleed through black in the night sky. She has forgotten her stars, has forgotten the memories they invoke. They stand there silently, but they are ever watching, and should they ever be asked about this night, they will remember it. Although, whether this secret is told or remains quiet on bright lips remains a question.
She is trusting in her dance, she cannot move away from him, only towards him with every step as breath clouds like heat over her cheek on golden skin that already burns fever-bright. A part of her, a part of her heart, walks outside her body and wraps itself around his own. And there it would stay forever. She promises and she paints the promise against his skin with that delicate smile. And she cant control her heart beat anymore and so she lets it run wild, she wonders why she ever tried to restrain it. “I love you.” And with those three syllables, Elena hands her heart, her soul, herself, all to him. “All night,” she repeats after him, an echo of his words. “Then let the morning never come.”
Elena has been protected by her family, she has been adored by a man, she has been hunted by a monster, and she has been stolen like an object.
And she has been loved by a monk.
By shadows.
By Tenebrae.
Then, she laughs, and it sounds like sunshine from the clouds, as she looks up at him with blue eyes. What’s the harm? She had once asked him, had once told him they were only strangers. “This night,” she says as they dance. This night, just like it had been another night, a night they meet dancing, but in the glow of a bonfire rather than lanterns and love and wishes. “Is far too beautiful to sit idly by.”
Remember me.
She wants to press into him. She wants to lose herself in his touch. She wants to forget everything but the way it feels when he is wrapped around her, the way that he causes her mind to go numb, the pain of everything else to slip to the wayside. It’s not fair, the way that he does this to her. The way that his mere presence can unravel her, picking apart her threads until she is laid bare before him. She has no defenses anymore, she has no way to pull back pieces of herself, no way to shield herself from the destruction.
She is utterly and completely vulnerable before him—
and it is terrifying.
But the way his lips skim over her, the way his body melts around her, makes it slightly less so. She melts into it, taking several steadying breaths, the static of her thoughts gently buzzing from his kisses. Another kiss and it strikes her light lightning, intense and bright. Her lips are gentle and imploring, less urgent and more reserved when they move to trace the lines of his face, when they bury kisses in the deepest hollows and a soft smile against his cheek. Her lips feel wrong every time they are not on him. He is like a shooting star, brief and temporary, and she is desperate to memorize him. In this moment, she only existed because of him. And wherever he touched her became fire, the rest of her was only smoke. Moonlight plays across her face, her eyes nearly drifting shut.
The stars bleed through black in the night sky. She has forgotten her stars, has forgotten the memories they invoke. They stand there silently, but they are ever watching, and should they ever be asked about this night, they will remember it. Although, whether this secret is told or remains quiet on bright lips remains a question.
She is trusting in her dance, she cannot move away from him, only towards him with every step as breath clouds like heat over her cheek on golden skin that already burns fever-bright. A part of her, a part of her heart, walks outside her body and wraps itself around his own. And there it would stay forever. She promises and she paints the promise against his skin with that delicate smile. And she cant control her heart beat anymore and so she lets it run wild, she wonders why she ever tried to restrain it. “I love you.” And with those three syllables, Elena hands her heart, her soul, herself, all to him. “All night,” she repeats after him, an echo of his words. “Then let the morning never come.”
Elena has been protected by her family, she has been adored by a man, she has been hunted by a monster, and she has been stolen like an object.
And she has been loved by a monk.
By shadows.
By Tenebrae.
Then, she laughs, and it sounds like sunshine from the clouds, as she looks up at him with blue eyes. What’s the harm? She had once asked him, had once told him they were only strangers. “This night,” she says as they dance. This night, just like it had been another night, a night they meet dancing, but in the glow of a bonfire rather than lanterns and love and wishes. “Is far too beautiful to sit idly by.”
so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me
@Tenebrae <3
Elliana!! <3 <3