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
I have seen your darkness, and your stars and your moon, I think it right I ought to see you in the sun too.
That is what she said when last they parted and like a fool he said he would find her. But Tenebrae has always been impulsive. No matter how the masters berated him as a child, no matter how they tried make their charge more mellow, still Tenebrae was untameable. Recklessness is the child’s bones was what the abbot had eventually surmised. It was this impulsivity that saw him pinned beneath Boudika’s teeth upon the beach. That had him pressing a kiss to the corner of her lips because, what could it hurt?
It always hurt, he knew that now.
Now he resists and fights and yet his recklessness makes him weak. Inside him a magic pours black and white and paints his skin in myriad grays. Tenebrae lives his life in the greys, drifting between shades of black, his brothers watch him from the darkness, wary. It was such recklessness that had Tenebrae laughing low, low, his mirth pouring out like gasoline and Elena was the match to spark alight the ravenous magic within him.
Daylight.
Oh, daylight!
His magic stirred with his thoughts of the sun. Creation and meaning forged within him, reminding their vessel just what he was made for.
And it is why he is here now, why he walks out beneath the open sun with his goddess’ gift billowing from him.
Elena stands, a shard of the sun parted. He thinks of the day he met Orestes, the Sun King, in Verenor. Ah his hunger is so similar. Their magics warred, everything Orestes gave Tenebrae swallowed down and down and down. But Elena has no light to forge and the monk is ravenous as he comes to meet her. His magic sets his eyes feasting along the contours of her body, along her spine where the light pools like ichor.
Does she see how the meadow falls to darkness behind her, gathering like the dark of the ghosts that press upon her heart, her soul. Foolish, foolish he draws to a stop beside her, drunk upon magic, drunk upon light. Darkness shrouds him, its edges fade to a mist, but all it reveals of the monk is his bright eyes, his triad of sigils.
She is perched, flighty as a bird upon the edge of the cliff. He wonders where she hides her wings and his eyes are at her shoulders, her spine, looking, looking. “It is a long way to fall,” The Disciple says at last, looking down to where the sea embraces the cliff. He does not know how her ghosts twine about her ankles and hold, hold her down like roots and vines. She is more wild than a flower or a tree. He wonders when she might realise that she is fae and all fae hide their wings.
She saw him in moonlight in starlight, but she never saw him at all. Not like his brothers and Boudika when he banished his shadows exposing his wintry body with its hues as bleak as a winter’s sea. Tenebrae is the bite of cold upon her cheeks but she is warm, hot like sun. She scolds him, yet he hungers, oh Tenebrae always hungers for things of the sun.
Night does not hide her this day though his shadows yearn to with tendrils that dance like butterfly wings. They flutter where sunlight pours upon her cheeks, her nose, her hips, her spine. He draws them back and she is gilded in sunlight once more.
I will still find you She had dared to say, but...
“I found you,” Tenebrae confesses, his voice is solemn, weighted. He should not have found her. Just as she should not find him. “But I should remain nameless to you,” And this might have been the greatest truth he has ever told. He has learned much from Boudika. The monk now knows how easy it is to want what is forbidden.
But gods how he wants.
The shadows hide the fresh whip-wounds upon his back. The pain reminds him, it makes him less reckless. But it is not enough, he is still here, despite the angry lashes across his back. He is still here with wild, black magic in his veins.
He is here because, gods, he is hungry.
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