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
Candles warm the midnight and around their glowing tongues his darkness dances considering, toying, feline.
My dead are too numerous.
Tenebrae stirs from where he watches the flames and the numbered souls whose once-lives glow bright before him. He wonders how they all went - whether death was slow or long, gentle or cruel. Slowly he turns his gaze upon Castalla. She is gold, lit by the firelight that dances as dragons across her skin. It paints her in shadows and appears as if the darkness does not know how to truly touch her for it skims across the pale of her skin and draws only caramel darkness into the contours of her body.
How shadowed is her soul? Is it like his? Swathed in black and clad in armour thick enough to resist the piercings of loss and living that fly as arrows toward its core.
The girl rises from her knees, where dirt still clings and stains her as holy, as penitent. She moves, sleek and lupine and all Tenebrae can think then is she has not knelt for long enough. Her joints are not stiff with cold and being bent upon a hard surface for hours. He has not prayed enough today, his knees do not hurt, his back does not ache.
The young Disciple sighs, his eyes close. Sweat is cool upon his skin, the aches of fighting and training still whispering in his limbs. He may be the holy one, but next to this girl, gilded and clean and perfect, she is the holy one.
No matter where you travel, there will always be so many dead. Tenebrae nods at her truth. His sigils blink their lament. “It is a universal truth.” He agrees with her. Where there is life there is death. “It comes to us all.”
And some deliver it. He does not say and idly begins to wonder, of the candles here, how many are lit because of him? How many will be lit because of him? The shadows gather as a shawl. They shroud him in melancholy dark and whisper of goddesses and sun gods and the darkness within his DNA.
Tenebrae is not made for anything more than lighting candles.
Slowly he pulls his white gaze from the candles. He turns his smile upon the girl and breathes smoke between them. It stirs restless. “My name is Tenebrae. What is yours?”
His eyes follow the golden light that pours like metal into the intricate curves of her face. He watches where moonlight dances with firelight until all is sunlight and starlight. She wears both like a bridle painted upon the angles of her cheeks, her brow, her nose. Tenebrae snaps his gaze away and thinks of wolves as the wind howls over the candles. It mocks him with knowing and slowly his gaze returns to the girl and the shadowed parts of her that howl with more: more than horse. The moon croons where she hangs beckoning and lupine his lifts his skull up toward her.
Wolf, Wolf, Wolf...
Tenebrae knows nothing how how the moon plays them both this night.
“You are Denoctean aren’t you? Have you always lived here?” His question is small and wondering. Though he was made here, though his father was a Stallion forged by Caligo Tenebrae knows nothing of what it is to be born Denoctean.
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