Private Homecoming - Printable Version

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tenebrae

let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final

It is natural that the first place he would come is here. As if it knows the woodland shrouding the entrance parts, branches lifting like gnarled arms upon the wind. Leaves point like fingers, there. Though he does not see them. Thia gathers her darkness at his ear whispering the steps he should take, directing him. His sight was never restored since the Night Order punished him for his transgressions. Still his eyes are milky white, dull, not filled with light as they once were. His ears twitch, listening to the rustle of leaves that whisper to him below Thia's directions. Obediently he goes as directed, stepping over root and vine and rock. The Night Order gate of hewed stone swallows him into black.

Of course they would have never welcomed a disgraced monk back warmly. The air from the brethren is as cool as the air that clings to icy, mountain walls. His breath is frigid, the ice freezes his lungs. Tenebrae blinks, pointlessly, and turns from them. Down, down the spiralling steps he treads, down into the gut of the mountain where the smell of herbs and ointments rise. Thia whispering still in his ear. She directs him to an old friend, a healer, talented.

"Can you heal them?" He asks, rough, ears tilting to catch the sounds of his old friend's movements. The silence is long, painful. Thia breathes, irritated and his shadow magic blooms at her irritation. Claws climb the walls and the once-monk murmurs for her quiet, her calm. Deflated they shrink, the walls no longer squealing like splitting stars.

RE: Homecoming - Luvena - 02-21-2022

The life of a monarch was busy. While Israfel managed the soldiers, the mages, the delicate balance between preparedness and and paranoia, Luvena busied herself with the inner workings of the court. Labour laws and welfare. Supply and demand. The tenuous connection between night and day. Opposite that had always been at odds with one another.

Still though, she found time for the little things. Visits to the poorer areas, ensuring that they at least had the means to live. Lunch dates with Israfel in the citadel garden. At the same little square where she’d proposed to her a crown. Sitting in with Caelum at her tea shop. One of her favorite outings was her monthly trip to the Monastery. She’d go at the start of every month, and stay for a night or two. They were self sufficient, disconnected from the inner workings of the court. But they were not insignificant. They gave to caligo more devotion than anyone else. They embodied the fundamental truth of Denocte.

It was where she had grown her roots into denocte’s earth. She had left dusk with little notion or purpose to where her life would go. A monk had found her at death’s door, and dragged her up to the moss muddled temple. A creation that spiraled into the mountains core, filled with shadows and faith. Every step created an echo, a memory bounding off the walls. It was strange to come these days, without a trace of that monk left.

He had just… disappeared one day. Gone without a trace. Yet still she made her visits, staying in the small unlit room they had let her keep. She hadn’t been since the fall. The winter was a risky journey, and after her tumble in the pass early in the season, she had been far more cautious.

She entered now with her dogs in tow, one on either side. They had grown into rather majestic creatures. Spoiled now by the citadel staff, their coats were always sleek and shiny. She stopped at her room to tidy up the fur cloak she now regularly wore, and pulled her small wooden circlet out of her bag. It was this one that she wore most days. Made of delicate branches intertwined. She wore it on her head with hair woven through. It was simple enough that it drew little attention.

She regathered the herbs she’d brought with her, and made her way down to the healers hall. As usual it was filled with young apprentices having their training wounds nursed by irritated medics. Some of them stopped to say hello as she passed, others simply nodded her way. “ Dorian!” she called as she walked into one of the side chambers. “I’ve brought a new store for you-” she stopped abruptly as she saw the patient at the medics side. Felt the cool touch of the shadows that always curled over his back.

“Ten?”

@Tenebrae

RE: Homecoming - Tenebrae - 02-21-2022

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tenebrae

let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final

Ten?

He knows that voice. The familiarity of it curls within him. It roots, burrowing down, down until it finds that dusted place it once resided.

Oh familiarity.

No. More than that.

An ear twists and slowly his head turns to where her voice came from. It is old habit alone, there is nothing in his eyes that can see her. But he remembers.

Luvena is there, her body swathed in her sunset hues, her body slim, her eyes filled with warmth, with caring.

Yet he remembers her then, he does not see her now.

For a man who worked beside a Denoctian queen as her Regent, he should know the rustle he hears. it is the sound of every subject showing respect to their monarch. But he is too lost in his remembering, of piecing the sight of her back together within his mind. Already the memory of her has become like an old photograph, faded, falling apart for all the times it has been looked at and remembered through.

"Lu." Low is his voice, ragged and rough.

Where his name was a question from her lips, his is assurance.

"You came back." Ironic. Since it was he who left them altogether. He who was the sinner enough to be cast out. He who left and raged his broken way across worlds.

But now he stands within that darkened healing room, amidst the smell of herbs and ointments and healing wounds. And she stands within his memory, so very real. He curses his blindness and turns to where he thinks she is stood. Gods, he longs to see her again.

"How are you?"

RE: Homecoming - Luvena - 02-21-2022

She moves towards him with the grace of a queen, and the lumber of a the frail older woman that she has grown into. The cold darkness of shadow pools over her as she pressed her muzzle to his neck, breathing in the old scent of moss and stonework. A scent that is now tinged with the touch of other lands and journeys.

His eyes hold little more than a miky white film, but his features hold the memories of times long past. “Tenebrae, my old friend” she greets him, just after her own name spills from his lips. Her heart sings every time someone calls her lu instead of Luvena. It is a name that holds so much more to her than Luvena ever would. The name her sons called her when they were small. The name that Kodarki murmured to her when she found him once again. The name that Israfel whispered into her mane beside her every night. It was spoken only off the tongues of those she cared for.

“I always come back,” she replied gently. “Though it seems I have a fate of others disappearing on me too” the words came out a quiet murmur. Nearly being sucked away by tenebraes shadows. “I’m well. I live in the court now… In the citadel. I…” She paused. So much had changed since she had last seen the man. Her clinic, picoro leaving, her health… Oh her health. The effects of the years passed were evident in the grovel of her voice. “I’ve taken up the throne of denocte… alongside Israfel. She’s holds my heart as I hold hers. And you old friend?”

@Tenebrae

RE: Homecoming - Tenebrae - 02-21-2022

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tenebrae

let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final

He hears her coming, that uneven gait - of a body that has known so many years, done so many things.

Patiently he waits, for the moment he knows will come, for this is how they have always been: she presses her muzzle to his neck. He feels her breath and it is another wash of familiarity, another gasping moment of remembering.

Tenebrae turns into her. His body wrapping about hers. It is a returning.

I always come back, she says. And he smiles, small and crooked and warm.

"Then we are the same in that." Then a moment, a pause, as if gathering as if - "I have missed you."

And when love was gone. When hearts were torn and ragged and broken apart, what was left but friendship? Lu and Moira, they were who he returned to. Like the moon dalliances with the day and yet returns to the night.

His shadows reach for her, Thia there, pressing the darkness into every dip between his friend's ribs, every stretch of twilight skin. Across her face the shadows trail like fingers, remembering, redrawing her in his mind. Over cheekbones, down the slant of her nose, into the dips of her temples. He remembers it all, Thia breathing it through his conscious.

Tenebrae does little more than smile at her confession.

Sovereign.

"Forgive me, your majesty." He says whiskey rich, soft. It is earnest, for he has always been that. Forever would he be loyal to Denocte. "I always knew you would do well here. I am proud of you."

And you?

Ah, she speaks of love. He laughs, low, rough, coarse as the stone at their feet. It is a sound as bruised and ragged as his heart is, as his back is for all its whip scars. "I am glad you have found love, Lu, but there is no love in my fate."