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
And she shatters.
The lights of her magic are nothing compared to the thousand shards she becomes in her sorrow.
Tenebrae’s darkness is nothing but a swallowing void through which the shards of her anguish cut. The light seeps in an Tenebrae stands, exposed.
Moira Tonnerre breaks and yet the Disciple stands as if unmoved. The white of his eyes are not the bright of stars now, but those of moon-caught-cobwebs capturing memories as dust upon the glow of its gossamer thread.
She breaks and her light sputters out. No more does light battle with darkness. No more do the tongues of light dance across his skin, fine and elaborate as tattoos. In the darkness, the shadows knit themselves over where her light left it wounded. Within its grasp this girl stands as at peace in the soul of his darkness as she is in the light of her own. The black coos to her now, it adorns her in the silk of silence. Gone is the war and oh, this is the silence of its wake. It is an inhalation and the Stallion feels the temple groan with the effort of breath.
Beneath the wrath of his magic this girl had stood as a phoenix ready for the coming of death and life. She had stood already in pieces, fractures littering through her skin, her soul, her heart. He had missed it all. Hungry, hungry warrior he is! Born only for war, for a destiny he is hell bent upon meeting. Yet this silence, the girl who watches him with eyes like the sun - oh eyes that make him hunger- reminds him of more than war.
Solitude, Moira speaks into the silence. Every syllable off her tongue is as sharp as ice, and beautiful as hoar frost. Cold, cold she is now an ice queen with sorrow dusted across her cheeks and lips as snow and grief frozen in tears upon her lashes.
Oh phoenix will you burn in ash or snow?
The girl smiles slow and small and beautiful as she tilts her head back, back. Moonlight shines through the parts of his darkness he has not yet healed and tumbles in rays down the groove of her slender throat. Tenebrae stands, black as midnight, his weapon lost with the groan of the temple. It aches for its warrior, these walls of stone and marble. It aches for its phoenix girl who burns in ice and silver.
How does it feel to conquer? Though he is stood tall and great before the altar, a formidable barrier to stop her path, already Moira has made herself a sacrifice. She is a lamb before the lion, the phoenix ready for its change. Tenebrae wonders what she will be when she rises from her ashes.
“How does it feel to be defeated?” He murmurs low, low to the girl upon her altar; it is a table gilded with gold and ice, woven with feathers of her fly-away soul and ashes of the phoenix. There is no victory for him or her - Moira has left no space for it, not now. Not when her fight puttered out like the thousand flames that pressed and burned across his torso. He wants no victory in this. He deserves no victory. Her ash is in his mouth and it is bitter to his tongue.
No longer does his darkness press as if it reach into her bones and banish the fire, the light from the essence of her being. Now it reaches for her, soothing along the contours of her cheeks and settles in the dark of her lashes. “There is no victory to be found in solitude or sorrow.”
Still he stands, the black of his magic breathing ominous and whole, reaching out to the corners of the temple. It holds him and from its depths his white eyes glow, glow. Yet it is his half-moon sigils that illuminate her skin. Within the darkness the Disciple watches her, the contours of his elegant face drawn in whispering lines of burgeoning understanding.
“Forgive me.” He says like a vow, like a pledge. The temple trembles with the weight of it, with a girl’s agony and a man’s contrition. Tenebrae knows what it is to be consumed in sorrow, to turn to the dark and hallowed pieces of himself and the foot of his goddess’ altar for peace, for comfort.
There is a part of him that knows the sacrament of silence, the healing of it. He takes a breath, it is wrong to leave his post and yet he knows it is best for her. So he turns and leaves her to the silence of her thoughts, her sorrow, her grief.
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