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
The wild flowers sway atop the cliff and they do not care how he is remade.
It is only now, with their touching, simple as breathing, that he realises how numb and incomplete he has always been. It is easy for a monk to never be touched. It is easy for an orphan to never be embraced. It is easy for them to never realise how much they have craved it.
They are fire and smoke upon the cliff top, a sign of something consuming, a sign of something becoming destroyed. Tenebrae and Elena are a warning lamp seafarers would know. One that warns do not land here, but here they are, turning to ash upon the wind. Waiting for new life. As if in knowing his shadows begin to drift out upon the wind, trailing over the sea in tendrils of smoke from Elena’s fire.
If she feels the cold of his darkness, the acute absence of light, he does not realise it. How can he when she burns him with the fire of her fae-soul? How can he when he has always been numb within his solitary darkness?
He thought salvation was in the spaces they left between them. Oh he thought to keep himself apart as his goddess had (from her siblings) was right. But even Caligo had family, even she once knew what touch was.
The monk is enlightened as they touch. He is remade and remodelled by Elena’s embrace. It was not like their hold when dancing. It was not like Boudika’s kiss that ripped his soul and made sure it never forgot her. This was the light of revelation resoldering back the parts of him that fell away, untended to with love. This was realisation dawning, shedding its light at last upon his impenetrable shadows of unknowing.
At last the monk realised what it was to touch, be touched and realise how he needed it as much as living.
Time does not rush them. It gilds them in the glow of Elena’s skin and lets a monk’s dark magic fade away a wild meadow and a beckoning sea. Still they burn together as bound together as flames upon wood. Already Tenebrae is new life from the ashes, yet still he gives oxygen to Elena’s fire as she turns him wholly to charcoal in her hold.
Now he thinks he might be able to name that look Elena had cradled within her dark eyes. It was a look that had betrayed the lovely, storybook smile upon her lips. It was a look that had been dark with the eternity of space between them. It was a look that had wanted touch. Was this the curse of orphans? Were they destined to always wander and crave touch and comfort and love?
In the dark of the dorms the boys had never spoken of their parents. Their histories were identical in this regard. Mothers unable to survive the births of their boy children and fathers who disappeared, unmade by magic, unmaking their sons as they dissipated. None of the Disciples knew their mothers. None of the Disciples were ever told they should need love.
Now Elena embrace opens him like a book and he longs to read his story upon its pages. To learn about himself and the ink that fills in the pieces he never knew he was missing, until now, until this golden fae-girl and her confessions.
She whispers more admissions across his shoulder. The words seep into his skin, reaching into his soul with grasping fingers. Her voice is breaking into a thousand pieces and he cannot collect them all; he laments.
His shadows grow restless with the need to morph and transform his sorrow into shapes and creatures. The monk wonders what animals represent death, what objects, flowers or piece of nature. All he knows is those he has used to bring death upon others, shadow spears and knives. But there is violence gleaming in the shards of her broken voice. He can see where it has painted her red and so his shadows burst into fleeing butterflies, taking flight across the cliff top where Elena and Tenebrae cling together.
“You knew them,” He observes that small and joyous gift of hers. “How were they taken?” He asks and wonders how many children he has left orphaned too. Ah.
Oh.
He drinks in the smell of her skin, the soft of her body against his, anything to avoid the sinking of his soul. It was easy to be bloodthirsty when you do not consider the collateral damage of war. She is slim and fragile as a dove. Still Tenebrae finds himself wondering where she hides her wings, but still he sees no evidence along the curve of her back, the slope of her fine shoulders. He exhales as they part and already he misses it, already he grieves for what it was like to be held.
Yet Elena grieves too and her lips trail his jaw, his cheek, his chin. There is darkness when his eyes close, better to listen to the nerves she sets alight with her touch. He does not dare to forget this moment of awakening and his eyes open again to watch her. They meet in bluelight and starlight eyes. The monk exhales and moves forward, pressing his brow to hers because already he is greedy, already he feels bereft of touch. The fae-girl has given him too little and yet too much.
Her forelock tangles with his closed eyelashes. All of him is filled with meadow flowers and summer heat. “Me too,” He says of all the years he has lived without them. “But do you ever wonder,” He dares to breathe, ever sinful, ever blasphemous, “What it would have been like if things were different? What would you change about your life until now, Elena?”
Then, in a whisper, "I did not know mine. I unmade them both." And that is all he says, because Disciples do not talk of their creation.
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