and I pretend to pray

So many falter at the bridge. They look down. I look down, too. Is it the ribs that disturb them, or the flesh? The dying muscle, the remnants of organs and once-life? Maybe it’s gross. It’s definitely gross. Rot is not the same as just-killed, still-pumping blood in the body dead. It’s too dead. Way too dead. I think the gemstones were a nice touch, anyway.

I cross the bridge. Some others do, too, now and then, but I reckon it’s not as many as usual. I haven’t been to the island before, myself - I’ve heard of lots of beautiful things coming and going with the seasons, but business has been too good for me to make it out here. I asked the Sleepmother for some awake-time and headed out here before anyone had the chance to tell me what it was like. 

I’m not disappointed. 

There is a great sparkling city, and a castle in the distance. I didn’t read many story-books as a child (I couldn’t read), but this feels rather fantastical (maybe not to those who didn't cross the bridge, maybe not to those who ever read a knightly tale). Every corner is dark and looming, a ghost-wind howling through the empty shops, between what living bodies wander the streets. I don’t talk to anyone - I don’t need to. Or want to. In a window I see a sculpture - I think - of a horse, falling, pressed up against the glass as if violently thrown against it. One of her wings is crushed beneath her body, bloody bones splintering up between the feathers, and the other flails helplessly, eternally paused, above her. Her expression is twisted into a scream. I wonder what knocked her from the sky.

I enter the shop, and in it there seems to be nothing - until I follow the pegasi’s gaze to the opposite wall, where black stone pulses with orange crystal. It takes up the entire corner, stretching to the cathedral-high ceiling; a vast shadow, and several appendages - or something like them, I am hesitant to say that any part of it resembles a living thing - reach out across the other walls. It has no eyes, no mouth. It might as well be an ore deposit, but obviously - obviously - it is a monster. The kind you see when you snuff the candle and your eyes find only melting shadows in the sudden darkness. 

I do not think this is a store at all.


@Tenebrae

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Many come to be filled with awe at the turning of the island. They come to let their eyes feast upon the unearthly and its strange magic. Tenebrae remembers when he was last here, how the island was filled with mirrors that reflected for him an eternity of alternate lives he could have led. But now, he does not come to gawp and to admire. The monk comes to learn. 


Brothers walk beside him on either side. Once he would have been ahead of them, the point of an arrow formation. A position of respect and authority. Now he moves in their midst, not trusted to be ahead or behind. Tenebrae is the monk who has erred from their paths of religion. They keep him close, despite his renewed vows and his subsequent punishment.


Tenebrae comes to learn how to walk - how to move. This land is strange, its geography unknown and too strange. The Disciples direct him, forcing him to listen and feel the map of the land beneath his limbs. 


The monk trips and stumbles. He bangs his ankles and knees upon walls and stones and branches. Some of the brothers do not help as they should. Why would they trust him? He has shown them no respect when he broke his vows and dared to look at the forbidden. So the Order took his sight. 


Tenebrae moves, locked in the eternal darkness of his sightlessness. The bandages wrapped over his eyes, about his head, are itchy and rough and dirty. His shadows press against the material, as if striving to lift the blindfold that he might see again. It is instinct alone. But Tenebrae’s body aches, it hurts from learning to navigate a world he can no longer see. He grows weary, frustrated. His brothers guide him to a spot to rest, a strange shop that is no shop at all. 


All along the monk’s spine, his hairs lift, wary of the strange eeriness that lives in the air. A stone looms at his back, it reaches forward with limbs like spiders and a magic that tastes as festering flesh might. This is no idyll, even the soft glow light is not enough to turn this strange place beautiful. Tenebrae is relieved he cannot see it.


Footsteps sound beside him and he turns his head, tilting it to try and discern the noise. The steps are light, slow, thoughtful. Or so he thinks, how can he know for sure? “What does it look like?” Tenebrae asks the footsteps and longs for the owner’s sight. “Is it a thing of nightmares?” He asks with a rueful smile that never makes it to his eyes.