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
He did not know, when he speaks like a foolish man, that his words will be gasoline upon the embers of Elena’s ire.
But he should have. (All foolish men should).
This is a valuable lesson for Tenebrae to learn. All of him is filled with his own regret. He is selfish and his soul is not at rest. So inward looking is he, he does not see when her blue eyes spark like lightning. So concerned with his sins is he that he does not witness how they press pain deep into Elena’s breast.
It all began slowly, slowly, something like a storm that brewing out at sea. The moves to leave, no, to flee. Yet in answer Elena turns to follow him; a flower leaning toward the sun.
Tenebrae is no sun.
He has nothing with which he can nourish her, no light he can cast upon her slim body. She was already sun-kissed - was that not why he followed her first? He was a Stallion starved. He is always a Disciple yearning to swallow the sun and, oh, is Elena not so much like the sun? Is it not there in the way her soul is fire, the way her skin is limned in Solis’ purest light?
He pushes her away and yet the monk stays; unholy, sinful. He barters because he thinks he has anything at all to barter with. But Tenebrae has nothing. A monk always vows to possess nothing.
He remembers.
He remembers too late.
Elena.
Her name sits like a possession on his tongue. Names have more power than you may believe, Denocte, The sun-girl breathes into the space between them. He watches the way her eyes narrow, clouds drifting together until the blue of her eyes is a thin flash of wicked lightning. It is enough to electrify his veins.
“Elena,” Tenebrae speaks her name back to her. He lets her name form across every part of his mouth and up from healing throat. Already his lips know the shape of her name. Already his mind knows the sound of it in the air. It has become a familiar song upon his tongue - too familiar. So now he speaks it, as if it contains a mystery, as if within it is a formidable magic. He says Elena as if it is taboo. From his lips, it might as well be.
The monk stands closer to her than he ever should and lets his eyes roam across the contours of her sunbright face as he watches her reaction to her name spoken aloud. “And who does your name give power to? You, or me?” When her eyes lower into a blink, he watches the dapples of light across her lashes. The Disciple waits until they lift again, until he can feel her electric gaze spark across his vision. “I am a monk. I am supposed to possess nothing and exert no power over anything at all. So I shall give you this: My name is Tenebrae.” He reveals himself to her now. Giving away his name feels like peeling his shadows from his skin, leaving him exposed, able to be summoned. Able to be asked after.
Don’t ever ask after him, Elena. Don’t.
He has played a dangerous game and now he is caught within its tide.
Knowingly, his dark magic seeps its shadows across her face. They paint Elena darker, darker until all that glows is the bright blue of her eyes. In them he settles his gaze, drowning, drowning. He can feel his lungs constricting, remembering the deathly embrace of the deep. Boudika’s bite claiming, killing, cradling.
Then she burns. Elena ignites like kindling caught by a spark and by his gasolene. She burns, she glows. Her words bite at his cheeks. He turns his head from them, from her. In that movement he surfaces from the ocean of her gaze and breathes in deeply, deeply. But the sun-girl is not done. She scolds the monk with words that burn like a dragon’s breath. Anger paints her in a resplendent glow. Elena scolds him as she becomes transcendent in her ire. Ascending. She becomes more goddess than a girl.
So he lets himself bleed from her words. He lets them feast upon his flesh. His body has learned the ire of women now and a part of him is struck in wonder. When Elena is done, when her words have drawn his blood and wrapped themselves around his sins, exposing them, only then does he turn back to look at her.
Tenebrae smiles as he clasps her in his star-bright gaze. His sigils burn and paint their reflections across her body. Sun and moon and stars bow down- before him or before her? The Disciple does not know but the celestial skies are kneeling, stooping low.
Do not lie to me, Denocte.
And Tenebrae does not.
“I want you to stop wanting to see me because, clearly, I cannot stop seeing you.” The truth hangs heavy as iron between them. “Of course I have missed you, Elena.” Again he says her name, slowly, slowly, asking her again with it, Who does your name have authority over, Elena, you, or I?
Her name makes him a slave. His want of it, a sinner.
The man smiles. It is a dangerous thing, as sharp as the knives his shadows forge, able to cut the sun and slay his enemies. He turns it upon her where it softens to smoke, blowing across the fire of her ire. “You already know I am a monk and that I want what I should not.” Tenebrae’s voice is rough, rough with the trauma to his throat, rough with the confessions that claw their way up from his soul. “I came to you now because I could not take my wound to my brothers to be healed.” He laughs and there is nothing joyous in the sound. It is the sound of a man drowning, struggling. “I am already a sinful man, Elena.” He breathes, across her poll, where her hair smells of salted honey. “Please do not add to my sins.”
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