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
His body still hums with the memory of dance. His knees, his hooves, his shoulders and hips still bear the echoes of how they bumped with hers. There is an ungracefulness to his dancing and he recalls it again and again through his body. It is like fighting and yet the soft of her skin is nothing like the cut of a blade or the punch of a hoof.
Tenebrae does not know that as the memory of dance ghosts upon him, the memories of lovers’ touches ghost upon Elena. He has felt nothing like that and dangerous it is to think, even for a moment that he might just wish to. He does and so very quickly, he does not. He wants as men do. He wants as monks should not.
He inhales and she smells nothing like Boudika (with her salt, her sea and wild girl smiles). No, clinging to Elena is the scent of a wild wood, of flowers he has no name for and the incense burning at the festival. Across her skin is the gold of the setting sun, dark and liquid bright. She moves like the lick of a flame and already the monk is burned.
The Disciple breathes in the smoke of the festival, the smell of alcohol clinging to the lips of the dancers who swirl about them. Together they are still as a rock amidst the sea of dancers. Though about them his darkness billows, it swirls as if he and Elena are still dancing, tendrils twining, twisting, tangling. It is not fighting and maybe his shadows learn faster than their master.
She says they are not steel and stone and, “I believe that of you.” The monk murmurs, his voice low and smooth as it cuts through the music. Another song has taken to the night and dancers changed, they move like planets again yet Tenebrae knows Elena is not of the stars but the earth. She is fae- fire and flowers, smoke and laughter. She is the point where Dusk and Night meet. The gloaming embraces her and she gleams as the sun beneath it. Tenebrae hungers.
But Elena is no sun for him to consume in violence and greed. Her wildness not of the sky nor the sea. Her smile is meadow soft, her hair sways like grasses caught in a breeze, her eyes like a river wending through an untamed wood.
I will follow you, Elena says and Tenebrae exhales, he cannot help but think that those are words he should have said to another. But here they are, clinging to Elena’s fae-lips.
She laughs as the music stops, the sound bright as stars against the dark absence of song. But her words are soft confessions that burrow their way into his chest, into his soul that aches. Tenebrae smiles then too and it is a small, solemn thing. The shadows play along it as if to memorise this new curl of his lips. “No, it is not weak,” the Disciple says, as if he knows - maybe he does, maybe he does not. Their breaths mingle where shadows still dance and tangle. “We all want easy, Elena.” He says her name at last, freshly given, freshly felt upon his tongue, his lips.
“We are all brave and courageous in different ways.” His skull tilts, the blue and white of their eyes tangling. It is something electric, sharp as lightning and yet maybe cooling, soothing as ice, like water for a parched throat - he cannot decide. Tenebrae settles for both.
“I pray for easy every day,” He says low, low, the words spoken for her ears alone. “But things are not meant to always be easy.” Darkness drowns him as his eyes close, against his confession, against the admission he makes to himself. He knows he is falling, he begs that life were easy again, away from temptation.
When he opens his eyes again, she is looking up, up, up at the stars. The moonlight limns the contours of her face, her throat and Tenebrae’s eyes trail her cheeks, the curve of her throat until they fall away, guilty. He will not deny her. His name is upon his lips but she stops him with a quick voice soft and full of dreams.
There is only silence between them after her request. Her smile speaks into the darkness between them, the bonfires light and cast gold across the butterfly smile upon her lips. In answer a smile suddenly breaks across the monk’s lips and it is nothing like the dark, pained smiles of before. Despite its beauty there is something dangerous upon his mouth now, something wicked in its delight. Within him, black magic sings in his white-bright blood. He laughs, low and rough and ancient as Caligo’s Stallions who preceeded him, it fills the space between them, pushes music out and presses against the wings of her butterfly smile. “I will come to Terrastella, Elena,” he breathes, her name once more upon his tongue. “But you might struggle still to see me for all the darkness.”
The Disciple chuckles, low, low and shadows peel from his mouth as smoke from a dragon’s maw. They reach for the fae-girl and playfully curl about her mane, tangling with fire-bright of her hair.
The monk leaves her an ember smoldering beneath the moon.
But all he can think as he goes is that daylight is when he is at his hungriest.
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