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
Among their people, there was nothing stronger than the bond between lovers and it is said that when one dies, the other will follow. It is a shame Tenebrae does not know this piece of lore that winds like gossamer thread through the darkest truths of Castalla’s previous community. If he had knowing the monk would have likely used it as yet another cautionary tale against looking at girls.
Ah, he sighs, deep like the ocean. There is an emotion that stirs within him. It is great like a behemoth and yet it does not disturb the shores of him. Maybe it is grief, Tenebrae dares to name it. Yet maybe it is something that should not yet have a name. A part of himself not yet to be understood. So instead he shifts, restless, weary with training. He feels the ache of his joints the light groan of his muscles as he moves them in the night air that cools with the whispers of winter.
She is quiet, this girl beside him. Quiet in the way that all wild creatures are. He turns to Castalla, for he is still brave, he is still foolish (he is not yet bitten) and drinks in the sight of her pale skin. Still the candles adore her, still sadness paints her as a statue in the deepest of the woods. Yes, she is the quiet of the wolf, the lonely howl in the deepest of night. And, just like the wolf, her eyes are gilded with strength, they are unbowing. Her gaze is sharp as the claws she keeps hidden. Castalla is dangerous. As dangerous as him. Tenebrae knows that death does not just creep from the darkness but the light also.
That cold winds sighs between them and he might have shivered, if he were not used to the mountain tops where snow flurries and the wind howls like the look in Castalla’s gaze. He would think of her again, when he is up there and the west wind blows. The light of his crescent moon sigil glows upon her brow. It pours out silver-light into a diadem that seems to slip from her poll. It makes her seem fallen but all tenebrae can think is how they are all fallen. He just does not yet know how far he will go, how deep his punishments will cut him, how long he will have to kneel uttering his penance before his Night Goddess.
Castalla has begun to smell of woodfire smoke, of extinguished candles and sea-salt air. Each is fleeting this night. Each ascends like souls, like prayers up to the realms of the gods. Is that where they are? He wonders, though he no longer looks up, but as the diadem of light that slips, down, down as his gaze trails down the many scars that mark her face, her throat, her shoulders.
His shadow magic sighs for her, for that sorrow in her gaze. It shift to let moonlight shine into her gaze. That darkness, that Tenebrae calls she (for it is the darkness he is wed to), reaches up toward the girl he watches. It dances over her scars, it maps them out one by one and Tenebrae wonders what story they weave, what tales, terrible and joyful they keep.
Tall, tall he stands with his sigils that glow as they watch the moon tilt her way across the nighttime sky. “I am not new,” The Disciple murmurs, whiskey rich. “I was not born here. Though my father was. I came when Caligo called the Stallions back.” Darkness blossoms like buds across his tongue, it adorns every word that pours past his lips. The candles tremble with its rousing and at last, when he has looked too long, when the monk has wondered too much on the beauty of girls and the weight of the Night Order vows, then Tenebrae looks away and it is something like fleeing.
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