am wishing for summer right now. For another summer at our families beach instead of standing in the snow and staring at the frozen lake of Denocte. I remember back a few summer’s ago when I had been small, stepping onto the beach and greeting my grandparents. “Good to see you, Granny and Grandfather. I look forward to a happy summer,” I had said as the dutiful daughter. Granny Colette had hugged me before looking down at me with calculated eyes. “Your mother told you to say that, didn't she?” She asked with a smile. “Yes,” I had responded almost guiltily before leaning closer to my grandmother. “And I am also supposed to see, nice to see you again.” I could have been in trouble for this, she could have scolded me, told my parents, but she just kissed me forehead. “Good girl.” Good girl. It was then I started to realize that whatever I truly thought, however I wanted to act on the inside, it did not matter. It did not matter in the Foster family with whatever shifted in my bones, or ran in my blood, if as long as on the outside I was Isabella Foster, darling, polite daughter, upholding the name. It did not matter how fake my smile was, as long as it was there.
Bennett laughed at me, so I kicked him in the shin when no one was looking.
It is freezing in Denocte, colder than it feels in Terrastella. I do not travel much outside the Dusk Court, but my parents had decided that the event happening all over Novus was a good chance for me to be noticed and therefore, the Foster name to be noticed as well. As an ‘eligible’ member of the family, it was determined that I would be going. It was not meant to be so much a date as it was just a networking opportunity hopefully for me.
Silver eyes spin around the snowy scene looking for someone named Tenebrae. He is a monk of the Night Order, this much I know, of course I know. Our library holds not only Terrastella’s history, but history from all the Courts. His name had been easy enough to find with the help of my sisters. “Maybe he will be cute,” Imogen had said. “He is a monk.” Is all I had replied. A monk. Of all the people to be matched with, we would have nothing in common, I knew that. So I picked the activity ice skating, hoping, perhaps, it might at least provide me some entertainment from his dull company. After all, what do we have to discuss? His Goddess? I have my Goddess and By Her Hand, that is the only one I wish to know.
I place the ice skates on my feet and start moving out towards the lake, eager to get started. I look back one more time and see a man near me. “Are you, Tenebrae?” I ask him with slate grey eyes directed on his face. “You’re late.”
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Are you Tenebrae? You’re late.
The monk’s name rings out across the crowd of gathered skaters. He turns to see a girl pale as a fawn standing before a man. The stallion stutters, confused. “N-No?” His head tilts as confusion twists through his bright gray eyes. He is holding two mugs of warm chocolate and looks keen to escape back to his actual date.
A soft sigh curls from Tenebrae’s lips. It rises like white smoke from a snow dragon’s maw. He moves toward the girl, his darkness drinking in moonlight. It reaches out ahead of him and presses upon her skin. “I am Tenebrae.” The monk says from behind her. He does not know how she has already struck their date off - a date. How could it be anything like that when he is vowed to his goddess? Though he has made a mockery of his vows.
He glimpses up, away from her for a moment, drinking in the bright lights, the smiling faces. He listens for laughter, hears it and searches for his source. Tenebrae drowns himself in the vision of this night. His hours of sight are few now. Only a solitary night lies between him and eternal darkness; an eternity in Caligo’s black. An eternity to remember who he is vowed to. An eternity to remember and honour only her.
He drinks the girl in, with her pale skin. He imbibes her beauty and yet only wishes she were someone else. Elena, Boudika. One last look… but Boudika was right, he was not worthy to look upon her, nor Elena. Not now. An eternity of blindness seems almost welcome now, guarded from temptation. He is a man resolved and a monk repentant.
“You must be Isabella.” He says lightly, but he does not smile. She expects a dull monk and this night she will likely get one, so sober is he with what is to come. But ah, he glances away, out across the beauty of the Lake. He would drink in the splendour of everything for his one last night. “Have you skated before?” The Disciple looks to the ice and back to her. “I am afraid I have not. You may need to catch me.” He smiles, merely mechanics, the light is gone from his eyes.
don’t like Denocte, not the way I like Terrastella. Denocte is loud and bustling, there are too many reaching towards you, creepy smiles with missing teeth. Denocte is too closed by their mountains, they are too hidden among the dark alleyways of their Court. No, I do not like Denocte, not the way I like Terrastella.
I offer little more to the stallion than a disgruntled narrowing of my eyes and frown to go with it. I wish for just a second that I had brought my bow, but mother had refused the idea. Unlady like, she had said, and would not represent the Foster family well at an event like this. I would never shoot another person, but just having it in my hand offers me some sort of power that I cannot feel with a quiver of arrows slung across my back.
Shadows. I should have known the Denocte monk would have had shadows. Magic, it was all the same. Maybe I am biased, to the fact that our leader, Marisol, she does not have magical powers or gifts, she is the only one in all the Courts to lead without the gift of magic alongside her. “I guess you are,” I say. I do not mean to sound cold, but I know little other ways to speak.
He is not the only one who wishes the date were someone else. I think how much I would rather he be that woman of gold chains, russet hair, and that I were in a Solterran palace. But, I think, Hagar would probably not be caught dead here. Just proving all the more how much cooler and sophisticated she was than me.
“I am,” I respond with my own lack of a smile. We were like to students paired together on a group project rather than two dates beside a romantic winter scene. “I have,” I say, of course I have. A Foster’s biggest fear is embarrassment, so of course we learned to ice skate. “On this very lake actually,” I comment with a strange lack of nostalgia. Terrastella lacked the great lake Denocte has. We stayed in a cabin, the whole family, built snow animals, ice skated, drank hot chocolate. My father read quietly, while my mother played cards with my sisters. My brothers and I warmed our breath on the windows and drew shapes int he fog, only to watch them disappear.
We put on our ice skates and I stand up with him and head towards lake. “You can lean on me to start,” I offer, the ounce of compassion I am capable of. We begin to move, though ungracefully, we are still at least, on the ice. “So you are a monk,” I says, the sparkling conversationalist that I am. “Tell me about that.”
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
And this is the curse of blind dates, is it not? To not be enamored with your date. To be unattracted, to be disappointed, to not share enough in common - to be too different.
The monk does not smile and neither does she. They both share space, share a moment in their histories. He will likely remember Bella, but for all the wrong reasons. It is not fair on her, or him. This date will always be clouded by what is to come tomorrow. Clouded by the fact that he looks to her and wishes she was another. He is sure she thinks the same, for the way she looks to him finds him lacking. He wonders if he can count the ways - or are they too secret, too numerous?
She has skated before. The girl says it with such confidence. His heart is a gazelle within his chest. He should be ashamed of how it runs at the mere idea of skating and falling. She learned to save herself from embarrassment. He avoided to achieve the same. Tenebrae knows who was the wiser now. He has never been wise, the last time he was at the lake was that night with Elena. He is not wise, he is a fool. The monk knows what he is with Boudika, with her it is simple. But Elena… Her child is not his, her love not for him either. There was another. They were as bad as each other.
Skating makes the warrior, trained for deadly grace, ungainly. First the putting on of skates, then the walking and then the skating. It seems ludicrous, but he does it. He holds fast to Bella and does as she does, follows her lead. Her compassion is a small thing, but he is grateful all the same. He slips, and stumbles and threatens to fall and a look to her face, devoid of a smile, a mirror of his, at last has him smiling, laughing, It is a noise low and rough and melodical. Who would think he would be laughing the night before his eternal punishment?
Tenebrae laughs and ignores her question.
“You do not wish to be here with a monk, teaching him to ice-stake. I do not wish to be here with you either.” He offers the last, to alleviate any guilt. “Yet here we are, the worst of dates.” Now his smile is a warm and vibrant thing, it mocks, lightly, amused. “Do you really wish to learn of my monkhood, Isabella?” He asks. “Or shall we get off this ice and drink, before I injure us both?”
do not know if this counts as my first date. Because there was once a boy who i met behind bookshelves in the library. Fitting that a Foster should have her first kiss tucked behind book cases, with words of tales and facts spilling over pages written by other, older members of my family. I remember that kiss though. Electric and soft, and tentative and certain. Terrifying and exactly right.
And then all that feeling was gone.
We went back to our seats, to our studies. He passed me a note, I opened it, shrugged. I passed him on the way out. ‘It was just a kiss.’ I said and left. He didn't come back to the library.
Kill me softly. I have always loved this line. Maybe because there is such simplicity in the statement. We agonized over the line in class. ‘What does it mean?’ My instructor asked repeatedly. We wanted context, but she would not give it. We guessed it was like placing a pillow atop of someone, or the gentle dying of poison, but all of them were wrong. Until my sister, Ainsley, spoke. “It is a lover, who takes pieces away at a time, but you want it—you want it.” I think of Hagar with the line. Kill me softly.
Maybe all of us are dying the same way.
He holds onto me and I find myself bristled by the closeness of him. I do not dislike him, but he does nothing to spark me either. This perhaps the exact type of first date my parents would want for any Foster child. Polite, quiet, without great events. But then he is laughing, slipping and stumbling. If I were another I would join in, but I offer a simper on my lips that is well enough a gift to him. “Try it yourself the rest of the way,” I say, try to be encouraging.
“In truth, it was my parents suggestion,” I say, as if suggestion were not just another word for command. “Come,” I ice skate towards the edge of the lake and wait for him to catch up. “What do monks drink? Are you at least free to tell me this?” I ask with a raised eyebrow as I remove the skates from my feet. “Is mulled wine off the table?” I say, knowing I am not old enough, but some how, this night feels like exceptions from the rules. “Drink and tell me three secrets,” I ask of him, this night would not entirely be a waste. “I will do the same,” I say as I take a generous drink of the warm wine that makes my body feel as if I were next to a quiet fire and not out in the icy snow.
Drink.
One. “I do not fit in with my family as a Foster should, but I would never be allowed to voice such a complaint.”
Drink.
Two. “I wish I was part of the Halcyon, I would kill to have a pair of wings.”
Drink.
Three. “There is a woman, in Day, Hagar, who I am irrevocably attracted to and I can never tell if she feels the same or if she is simply trying to destroy me from the heart on out. And if I wish to do the same to her.”
Drink.
Drink.
Drink.
Mulled wine and three secrets.
One.
Two.
Three.
Three secrets and mulled wine.
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
She is drinking.
Tenebrae can barely remember how they got across the ice to here, to the point at which the simper left her lips and was replaced by glistening alcohol. She throws her secrets at him in between drinks. Each one feels like an arrow, but they are not striking him. For once, the pain of secrets is not his to bear. These are not his secrets.
Yet he has secrets like them.
The monk listens and darkness seeps. For every drink that slips between her lips and down her throat, darkness descends, thick and total. It breathes between them. If Tenebrae knew what was to come, he might recognise this as one of the moments in which his shadows began their change.
They press across the Dusk girl’s lips, as if they can mop up the residual drops that sit there. The monk knows it would do nothing for already there is a reservoir of alcohol within her. He is sure it will already be numbing her nerves and addling her mind. He never answered her when she asked if he drank. But his lips are still dry and he holds her with his sombre gaze. That is answer enough.
Maybe he should keep his secrets to himself. Maybe he should not reveal to her his own pain, yet his compassion is bleeding out of him. Her pain has already cut him. The stare of her blue eyes is a dagger pressing along his skin.
One.
“I am a terrible monk and an even worse brother to my fellow Disciples. I will be punished for my secrets.”
Two.
“I wish I was not a monk and yet I never want to leave the Night Order.”
Three.
“I am jealous of my friend’s family because I wish it was my own.”
He wonders which is worse, secrets delivered with alcohol, or those driven out with all the abrupt violence of three nails hammered into wood. One. Two. Three. He did not drink once, he did not swallow or even blink as her served out his secrets in a guilt soaked answer to hers.
The monk takes a breath and he feels like his laughter only a few moments before were actually a lifetime ago. The monk has almost forgotten what it felt like.
Of her third secret he says:
“I think love is the most painful and violent thing I have ever known. It is both wonderful and awful.” And he knows how unwise he is this moment.
Of her second secret he says:
“We always want what we cannot have. If you had wings, you would not be you and everything would be so different. You might not be any happier than you are now.”
Then, of her first secret he says:
“Then are you too afraid to voice or act out a complaint, Bella?”
And the monk tilts his head and feels the way his whip-scars pull across his back. Sometimes, if you are not made for something, you cannot help acting out against it.
