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+---- Thread: [P] you cannot find peace by avoiding life (/showthread.php?tid=5707)
you cannot find peace by avoiding life - Tenebrae - 10-27-2020
tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
The grasses brush at his feet. They sway, perfect and golden, with the vitality of the coming spring. Even the air has begun its change. It is sweet to his tongue. To his nose are floral smells he has never thought to find the source of before. Now he stands, wondering at the shape and colour of the flowers which might create smells such as these.
Still his eyes ache, yet here, stood beneath the midday sun, his shadows scattered, his back warmed with light, it is easy to forget the pain. Tenebrae listens, still and silent he drinks in the voice of the meadow. It is a symphony, a choir of noise, from the chirping of the birds to the cricketing and creeping of the insects in the growing grasses.
About his eyes his bandage is growing dirtier, more frayed. Threads have come loose, they tickle across his nose and mouth as the breeze comes, cool and pregnant with spring. A stranger comes, the Disciple thinks. He has yet to learn the sound others make through woodland and grassland. Yet the grasses rustle rhythmic, heavier than the wind.
“Are the tulips out yet?” The monk asks the stranger. Tenebrae knows Elena was growing them ready, he found her tending them in the Dusk fields. Her festival was this weekend, did they bud in time? He thinks only of flowers, for to think of Elena in any other way was to invite in that unwelcome little jab that reminded him her child was not his, a family was not his to have.
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - August - 11-14-2020
august
—« that boy went stone-cold crazy »
H
e hasn’t come to the prairie since…well, since before a lot of things. Since his whole life flipped, since Aghavni left, since he left too. None of them ever came home. And even though that wasn’t outside the grand plan, it still smarted like a healing burn. But Sideralis has always been a peaceful place. He prefers it this way, with no festival, no maze - only the grasses, greening in the spring sunlight, swaying pleasantly with the wind. Overhead swallows dart, dark v’s across a true-blue sky, and the air is full of birdsong and the drone of insects.
August had come here to be alone - to run, to roll, to doze away the afternoon under the warm hand of the sun. At first when he catches sight of another, he intends to turn away - but then his interest is caught by the tattered bandage bound around his eyes. A closer look reveals the crescent moon marking, in the same place where the palomino’s scarab brand sat. That strange night in the temple of Caligo felt like a long time ago - a lifetime. But here both men stood, in a place almost its exact opposite.
When he wandered over he made no attempt to quiet his steps, and he was not at all shy about the way he measured the other stallion from ear-tip to tail.
In truth, he didn’t look so good. But August could hardly judge him for that.
The moon-marked man turns toward him, and August falls still a few lengths shy. He isn’t surprised that he asks a question - but he doesn’t expect that one in particular. August might have laughed, except there was something almost sad, almost pained, in the words. Instead he shakes his head and answers, looking around at the colors dotting the wide sweep of prairie, “Not here. There’s some lupine, some lilies, some daisies.” He turns back, measuring the man again, wondering what lie beneath the dirty bandage. “You’re the monk, aren’t you? What’d they do, forbid you to look at the sun?”
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - Tenebrae - 11-29-2020
tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
The monk.
Oh. Was that how he was known now? Tenebrae is a fool in love, but he is no fool here. The realisation that his blinding has spread all through Denocte is not surprising. Gossip moves faster than wildfire and, occasionally, it is more deadly too.
Yet, to be known as the monk, it stung with the poison of a wasp sting. The Disciple does not think the wasp is content with just one attack. He is sure more will come, that poison will sing its pain out through his blood.
He lifts his muzzle from the flowers. Tenebrae had reached down to touch them, to ponder which one might be beneath his lips - were those daisies or dandelions with small petals like miniscule daggers. How did colour feel beneath his touch - did different colours have different textures?
The Disciple had been pondering one when the golden stallion spoke of the sun. The plant was taller than the others, reaching up as if for the sun August spoke of. Its leaves were thin as grass beneath his touch. Tenebrae considers it carefully, but the moment he thinks of his blindness, he lifts his head slowly.
“I am the monk.” It is said almost casually, as if the question did not deliver like a jab into his lungs. He laughs, rough and low and looks up, as if he can see the sun, up beyond the blue, the black, the clouds, the stars… “Yes and no.” He smile is there upon his lips, a dark thing, darker even than the shadows which still rake through the fine leaves of the broadleaf cattail he was just touching. “They blinded me with sunlight so that I might focus on nothing else but darkness. The temptation of life is apparently too much for a monk like me.”
And that smile grows hard as a weapon. It cuts like it remembers how they met in the temple, gold and black clashing like the sunlight and midnight. He would only think of that again (if he could see), if he had not met Elena and her skin so bright and gilded brighter than any sun. She turned his hunger from that of light to that of things forbidden.
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - August - 12-05-2020
august
—« that boy went stone-cold crazy »
H
e’d laugh, not kindly, if he knew how Tenebrae had interpreted his words. Or maybe - being less angry than he’d been, back when they met in the dark of a mountain temple - he’d explain, almost gently, that he had heard no rumors of a wayward holy man. If he really did know all of the man’s toils and tribulations, he would certainly be interested. Also impressed. August had been trying, and hadn’t managed to get up to so much trouble.
But of course he doesn’t know. He only knows that the stallion’s smile is a bladed thing, when he lifts his head from the foliage to give it. Normally, such a smile would put August on guard - but in this case, he can hardly blame the man. He’d be pretty bitter, too.
The monk can’t see the way August’s brows lift, then furrow, when he explains his punishment. The palomino is no stranger to repercussions - there had been discipline given often enough in his time at the Scarab, and sometimes he’d been the one to deliver it - but it is difficult for him to imagine what sin such a man could commit that warranted blinding.
“That seems harsh. You seemed pious enough to me, last time we met.” He remembered it well - I shall get up when my prayers are done.
If this is the reward for such devoutness, August is glad he doesn’t pray at all.
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - Tenebrae - 12-07-2020
tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
Tenebrae laughs rough and scathing. The whiskey warmth it normally holds is turned to flakes of ice that skitter in the air around them. It is a coarse noise, stone upon stone. A friction that rattles bones as it warms the skin.
“I have not been that man for a long time.” He tilts his chin up and tips his head toward the man as golden as Elena. Oh, he thinks, what is it with sun-forged palominos finding him? He sometimes thinks that life would have been only a fraction easier if Elena had not come to him that fated night. At least then it would only be Boudika his soul and heart would have to wrestle with as she settled herself deeper within him.
“It is amazing how much things change with time.” Tenebrae muses turning his head from where it had been pointed toward his fellow Denoctian. Now his bandaged eyes gaze sightlessly out across the silver-moon water of the lake (not that he knows). “You have changed since then. You are less… angry.” Such irony it is, that their roles are reversed, that the monk stands the more sour of the two. Back at their first meeting he had been the keen young monk, bent upon his duty, swallowing the sun, belittling the light.
Yet now he stands, wondering what life exists beyond the tenets of the Night Order. Would a life with a family have been better than this existence of loving his goddess but wanting… more?
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - August - 12-16-2020
august
—« that boy went stone-cold crazy »
H
e’s heard the laugh of a man like that before. Many times, in fact, usually well after midnight, when the Scarab’s main room was hazy and sweet with smoke, and only the serious players remained. The ones who had lost everything before, and seemed intent on doing so again. It’s a strange sound to hear from a holy man.
But that makes sense, as soon as the paint speaks. The dirty rag wrapped around his fine-boned face makes more sense, too, though it also makes August a little sick to his stomach to think of them doing it. Tenebrae is not the only one to have broken vows (though perhaps his were technically met - it wasn’t like Aghavni needed his protection anymore). At least August hadn’t been punished by his former family; he’d only done it to himself.
He watches the stallion, and not the pretty, sunlit day or the way the wind plays over the grass like a light hand, bending the seed-heads. He doesn’t say anything, which maybe isn’t fair, at least until the monk (past monk? Outcast monk?) says he’s changed. Then, he snorts something that is not quite a laugh. “I was having a rough night.” It’s hard to think back to that time, as distant and faded as the city through a haze of smoke. But also like smoke, there are parts of it that still cling to him, cinders caught in his lungs.
Maybe it’s because Tenebrae can’t actually meet his eye; maybe it’s because he is - or was - a religious man, and so someone it felt almost natural to confess to. Maybe it’s because August didn’t really care about him (they are as good as strangers, after all), and he’s sure the feeling is mutual. Whatever it is, after a moment he says, “Did you go there - the island? When it first appeared. I was one of those who tried for the Relic.” He tries to sound offhand, nonchalant, and not like an urgent little boy who needs to express that’s when it all fell apart.
It seemed like the kind of thing that had to do with gods and monks, anyway.
RE: you cannot find peace by avoiding life - Tenebrae - 12-30-2020
tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
Tenebrae had heard of the Relic. He has heard how the hunt to reach it had been violent. It had broken men and sent children scattering. “I did not go there.” In truth, Tenebrae had never been drawn to the Relic.
But he has heard of what it cost men when they pursued it. Tenebrae turns his head towards the man’s voice. “Was the relic worth it?” He asked, but expects no answer, not tonight, not after all that has come to pass.
The monk sighs and feels the warmth of sun upon his spine. He is not sure what he has to do with monks and gods any more. He feels like a fool playing at being a monk, a follower of a god and now a court Regent. He is merely a player.
Tenebrae sighs once more. “I have much to attend to in the Court, but thank you for this conversation. I hope to see you soon.”
With that, the monk leaves, disappearing into the trees and the hazy sunlight.