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
I think she’s out, for the moment...You can probably get up.
The words are loud, the voice is cold. They echo in the temple, reaching every secret place until every stretch of stone knows of this blasphemer.
Tenebrae hears - how could he not? But he does not stir. He keeps his knees bent, his body supplicant before the stone table of his goddess. His brow is cold where it presses upon the ground, he can feel the burn of his sigil as it scorches a black crescent moon upon the floor.
Still sins pour in a litany from his lips. Still his errors bleed out like a letting for Caligo’s judgement. His lips and tongue move with the heavy weights of his confessions - how many they are! How myriad are the ways he falls short of the divine grace of this goddess?
Only when his mouth is empty, only when his prayers are through does he speak, “She is out, but not that you would know.” Slowly he lifts his head, the burn mark of the half moon shivers in the cold dark of this divine place. He makes no move to rise, but turns his skull slowly so his eyes find the golden man at the edge of the temple space.
The stranger is radiant, gilded in gold and warmed by candlelight against all that Tenebrae has turned as black as pitch. Beneath the tendrils of his ebony painted fringe, the Disciple’s bright white eyes study the man. Tenebrae’s gaze is as two bright stars swallowing light. All around them seems darker, all around them seems so utterly midnight drenched. “I shall get up when my prayers are done,” How low Tenebrae’s voice is. How deep it sinks, oozing like ink into stone and into flesh. It is the warmth of amber and gold, kin to the stranger’s flesh. How ironic it is that the cold of the stranger’s words are as pale as Tenebrae’s own skin.
When he rises, when his knees unbend, bearing the bruises and cuts of penitence, it us upon his own choice. He falls to stillness as the shadows curl about him and then pull, pull as their attention turns upon August. Tenebrae turns with them and all becomes darker yet. All becomes the ominous black of the Night Order. He moves toward the man, the man who smells of Denocte’s starlight magic, who smells of the fetic rancor of the Island magic - ah it is still upon Tenebrae’s skin too. There are few who smell of anything but that savage island magic.
“Caligo can form from nothing at all. She listens in the shadows more often than any might dare to believe.” Tenebrae moves as if he is the weapon his shadows forge. He smiles with a grin as sharp as a dagger and as warm as ochre. Still the cold of the man’s words are upon Tenebrae’s skin. Still they send shivers through his spine. Tenebrae continues to close their distance until they are nose to nose, dawn meeting night with a banishing kiss. “But it is not me you are angry with, is it?”
@August
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