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
Away, away, below, below he hears the sigh of bonfires breathing smoke up into the sky. They laugh with glowing sparks that are nothing compared to the light that dances and crackles across his flesh victim to the Tonnerre girl’s magic. Oh that revelry, that mid-winter delight so warm with joy that it is mid-summer sticky across the flesh of all who gather at the Queen’s command.
But they are so far, so far away that their laughter is but a whisper dream in his ears. It is temptation that wraps itself about the mountain base and croons to him like a cat. Yet tenebrae is here, held by his shadows that swell and billow across the temple. They crawl across his goddess’ walls and rise like wings. The crescent moons atop his brow and emblazoned across his shoulder grow with greed as they swallow, swallow every piece of flame-lit magic Moira gives it.
Ah their magics - their magics! They tangle and loop and circle and no longer does Tenebrae know which came first - his darkness or her light. For all his magic swallows her light, her magic grows brighter, brighter. Tenebrae is a reveller here. Light dances across his flesh, it caresses like a lover, it delves beneath his skin as if between the pages of a book. What does it read of him there in the words of his DNA… there in the novel of him, his past, his existence? Ah! He smiles for this is how he was made, of light verses dark, of sunlight and darkness, Night versus Day.
She is not here to worship and oh, who is the heathen now? It should steal the smile from his lips, that smile as lovely and dark as Night’s deepest hour. Yet his grin grows, it is the space between stars and the moonlight glitters across his lips as if they are glass, black as a raven’s wing. His smile is sharp as shards and soft as feathers. “Blasphemous.” Tenebrae murmurs, low, dark, amused. He is not appalled for none could be like he and his brothers, devout and holy and deacons to his goddess.
Slowly he blinks as her words slide like serpents of sunlight, such is her ire. Her phantom lights align into a row of flames that lick the darkness with tongues of endless light. His spear of darkness does not reform though the temple’s bones still echo with the song of their meeting. It is a song to which their blood has words that clash and harmonise and clash and harmonise.
His starlight eyes glow bright beneath the shroud of his darkness (the parts of him her magic allows him still to keep secret). Tenebrae closes them slowly, to better listen to the ancient whispers of all the sacred magic Caligo has left here. “Then what brings you here?” His skull tilts listening no longer to the song of Caligo but the echoes of the sun that play across the temple, held in the essence of this girl’s magic.
A part of him begs, a part of him rises like a storm at sea and gathers with hope that she might dare, that this girl might challenge as the sun once foolishly challenged Calligo. Tenebrae hungers as all the Stallion’s hunger. He has a taste for stars and gods of sunlight. Yes, her voice whispers small in the temple and yet he hears her every syllable as her tongue forms them. His eyes open, bright and brilliant, keen and wild with scattering moonlight. He turns to her ravenous and delighted with her challenge.
His laughter is mercury pools warm and rich and beautiful - dangerous as a blade. The shadows gather keen and sharp, they level themselves into a sword whose tip is lined for her heart. “I hoped you might be so foolish.” He breathes as soft as her challenge, and yet he does not move. For all his magic, for all her ire that rises in challenge of his, beneath this girl is a torrent of sorrow. Tenebrae is the dark between stars, yet she is the emptiness. She is unspooled and in pieces and so he waits with his smile upon his lips and his eyes bright, bright, bright.
Come girl and lay down your sorrows and your ire.
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