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
From his shadows Tenebrae watches the taller man. He watches as the dream-catchers eyes drift away and out across the shifting secrets of the island. What mysteries does he find there? What secrets does the island yield to him - or maybe hide from them both?
The water seems to slow, as if Tempus winds down the pulse of night until it beats slowly, slowly toward an eternal night. The monk would not resist, even as a part of him worries. How will he stave off his hunger if there is no sun in the sky upon which to feast? Tenebrae, as much as he is a Stallion of the shadows, needs the rising dawn and the endless, relentless stark gleam of daylight.
The dreamcatcher rises, he paces past the Disciple and a staff fits itself into the stranger’s grip. How the island seems to watch him with great baleful eyes limned in silver. How is there innocence here when the island keeps the bones of those she swallowed deep down in the pits of her abdomen?
Yet, Tenebrae cannot deny the beauty of this strange place, where nothing is quite as it seems. The place is different, unkempt in its own strange way. Everything is not as it should be, the grasses are blue and the water green and gold. But at least it is awake, at least things here are living. When Tempus froze the island, suspended it in time, that might have been the time that Tenebrae was the most uneasy.
Time was never meant to stand so still. To be so still is to be living and yet dying, feeling every cell in your body striving on and getting nowhere. It was blistering in its monotony.
Slowly the monk moves to stand beside the dreamcatcher and watch the quiet waters at the edge of the pool lap against the shore. “Because we all reach a point where we reach our limit on what we can tolerate.” Tenebrae says and wonders where his might lie, when temptation will become to much and his limit is breached. Will he manage to change then? Or will he freefall down, down into the pit of unrighteousness?
“His children were squabbling, their courts were squabbling. He sought change.” At the cost of lives. He does not say, but the words are salt on his tongue. Distasteful.
Tenebrae smiles when he thinks of this place as always new, that he has never walked here before. “Maybe you are right.” The monk agrees, ‘Except that there are bones beneath this island. Bones of those who tried to flee and yet were swallowed up. They live on here, even when she changes her face like a dancer a different mask at a masquerade.”
In the corner of the island a memory stirs for Tenebrae and it is one of brotherhood and enlightenment. “She keeps your memories here too, even when she changes… What was she before?” He repeats the question and then turns his gaze to focus upon the dreamer, “Before she was just the sea. She did not exist before Tempus brought her into existence.”
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