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
When the endless day broke, shadow-caster, and I swam beneath Caligo’s bright moon.
Tenebrae cannot help but smile. Oh, he cannot help but see the scene of her ending and becoming. There is violence in Boudika’s death but is it not in everything? It is there in the bleeding sunset, in passion, in the ravaging of the sea. So Tenebrae does not stop the smile that curles the ebony of his lips. It is dark, dark like Denocte’s soul. “Sounds perfect,” the Stallion murmurs for though she is changed, though his tongue begs for the fire of her to return, bright as a spark, he revels in the ritual of her becoming.
The shadows press upon her salt-slick flesh and feel the way she stills beneath their touch, allowing. Curious, feline, those shadows weave between her limbs and wonder what they felt as they ran across the bottom of the ocean. Tenebrae feels their restlessness, they tremble into the threads of his being that wind together within him, holding him tight, ascending him up, up into the living and existing.
“Is your trident gone for good?” He asks, almost a lament. He does not dare to wonder why a warrior girl with teeth, a taste for flesh and a weapon would be any more appealing to him than the leonine creature before him. Was she not dangerous enough? Should his heart not be racing?
As if she knows, as if she yearns to hear his heart skip, Boudika steps. She steps delicately, sensuously over the seal carcass and moves, no, prowls toward him. Her face is bone white, long and graceful, her curves are not curves but the undulations of the sea, the twining of a river as it bends and winds its way out to sea. It curls around mountains and hills and carves the valley into its image and there is nothing that can stop it - nothing that can stop her.
She has his heart stumbling now, she has this man leaning back, back away from her. His shadows adorn her. They become the dark of the coals her crimson skin lights. She is the rippling heat of lava tumbling into the sea and Tenebrae is but the smoke the parts as she melts the world.
His breath escapes as if this is his seventh hour of battle and his body is breaking. Her smile is a vice about his lungs, it is wide and sharp and endless, endless. His darkness shatters like the sea upon the rocks of her and there is fear within Tenebrae. There is fear that has his heart fleeing like a gazelle before her leonine gaze.
It is fear, fear, fear.
It is desire, desire, desire.
She looks up to the moon but his gaze is tumbling down, down, down the column of her throat.
How am i to defend against teeth? He had asked her, but she chases his smile from her lips with a flick of her tail, tiger bright in the moonlight.
Perhaps you don’t, Tenebrae. He says nothing though his smile is like a groan across his lips for already she has him held. Already he can feel the way her teeth hold him and it feels nothing like a seal’s agony and death. It feels like living.
His ears fall back, his nape arches and the shadows billow they rise before her, as wings as warnings. They reach for her, they push at her, the press upon her, they drape themselves across her adorning her, mocking him.
Slowly, slowly he breathes out and measures his every exhale - holding back desire and the fear that spirals below. Boudika steps toward him again, slow, slow, carving the sand beneath the toe she drags. Hunger, hunger rises ravenous and dangerous between them.
Tenebrae’s eyes snap up from her leg, up to the glow of her ember eyes and the horns that spiral, spiral. Run, Run, Run, the word presses into the space she leaves between them. What would it be to run? A part of him longs to, just to see what this new nature of hers might do. Already she has met him with a trident and now, now she is something so wholly more dangerous, alluring.
His vows whisper along his soul, echoing into every part of him. He was not made for girls, only a goddess and her night kingdom. He was made only to crave the wild of the sun, not the wild of kelpie girls. He is made to swallow the sun.
He is a Disciple and safe in such knowledge he no longer leans away but stands up, warrior tall before her. Slowly, slowly he smiles as he meets her question full of lupine glory. “No.” He murmurs reckless and yearning. There is a violence within him that rises to meet and match hers, he knows only prayer, only war.
It is craving that has him reaching forward, that has his head tilting, neck twisting as his lips reach out to the corner of her too long smile. “Well then, I had better know what I am up against,” The monk says as he moves to touch her, like his darkness had, to feel the line of teeth behind her mouth.
“I am no seal, Boudika.”
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