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
Nothing about Euphrosyne is bold or bright.
But all of her is moonstruck and deep-dream soft.
The night reveals her slowly, unveiling her from beneath its dark wings, as if she is fragile, as if she might startle and disappear like a swallow at the turn of autumn.
The moon watches them. Her silver face restful yet scarred with tears - for chasing the sun she is no closer. And when the sun comes to find her, she flees, chasing, chasing.
But neither Tenebrae nor Euphrosyne watch the moon’s sorrow, not when they watch each other. He offers the slender girl every piece of his attention and captures the way the moon’s tears glitter like diamond light, pouring down the curls of her hair.
The stars wish to claim her. Tenebrae knows her wings should make her a shadow in the sky this night. Darkness that repaints the sky and commands all below to look up, up at her as she drifts from constellation to constellation… He nearly misses the soft of her voice when she claims the sky is not her own. His ears tip forward catching the words before they are stolen away on the evening breeze.
Tenebrae feels her regret the moment the words have tumbled from their lips. The corners of her mouth tighten and heavy remorse tugs, tugs her bow-lips down. “Is it not?” He asks as his head tilts slowly. His eyes slip from hers and fall down to where she unfurls her wings for him, like a dancer, their arms.
The air still swirls for her. It dances a spiraling waltz that slips about her wings and beckons them up, up, up. But the wind cuts itself upon the sharp of her shorn feathers. Tenebrae’s gaze feels the sting of that too-sharp line. There is no grace where her wings end so suddenly. If her body is a symphony these feathers are a jarring note.
She looks away. The exposing of her altered wings is an intimate thing. Euphrosyne lets her gaze flee his as colour blooms along her cheeks.
Still her mouth does not lift into a smile. Not even a memory of the one she had just worn there. That once shy smile is little more than a ghost at the corner of her sorrowful lips. The monk looks to it and then up to where her eyes hide beneath the river of her sunset hair.
“Why do you feel shame?” Yes, he knows the feeling that pushes her silver lashes down and shields her gaze from his. He knows the way shame is a serpent in his veins - does it slither in hers too? He knows how it has brought a whip to his spine and his whip-scars throb with their remembering. His scars know the perfect pain that paints itself across her face. Wicked, terrible shame.
The girl turns her head away. The space she makes for her pain, he closes. As she trailed him through the teaming streets, her body an echo of his, so now he echoes hers.
The Disciple’s lips reach for her exposed, sharp-shorn feathers. He breathes and the air sighs along their cut length. The feathers do not arch for the sky as they should. They tremble.
Tremble.
Retreating, he turns his gaze back to where the girl now watches him. She searches, she digs into his gaze. What does she look for there? He does not look away. He does not smile. He lets silence frame them both, lets it wash across her aching soul.
“The sky longs for you.” The DIsciple says at last, for never has he seen a creature who belonged to the sun, the moon, the stars as perfectly as she. “Just because they have stopped you flying, does not mean the wind has disowned you.” The shadows turn thin at his command. They drift as smoke in the breeze that twirls through her feathers. “They cannot take what is rightfully yours. No mortal can stop what the gods have decreed.”
Ah, those words slip from his lips like ichor, pooling in terrible gold upon the floor between their feet. Though those words are both comforting and sinister, Tenebrae keeps his starbright eyes on her, still not letting her pull away, to hide, to veil herself in humiliation and shame.
He holds her where she watches him and murmurs, low, potent as liquor, “You are already free. Even if they do come for you, catching what has slipped free can be much harder than keeping what is already caught.” A smile, warm as embers, slips its way upon his lips. A corner of them tips up toward the moon, the stars, the sky, the sky, the sky. “What you now have, they cannot take. Not unless you let them. Do not let them” The last he whispers, soft, impassioned, coarse across her ears. Heavy with friction to remind her, remind her.
“What did they do to you?’ Now something darker stirs. Now his shadows gather and bloom thicker, darker. They twist like thorns, even as they still cut themselves like silk across the sharp-shorn feathers she moves to hide again. In his question something terrible stirs: a vow of vengeance.
What do you fear?
The laugh returns, low like an ache, a groan. Darkness lays itself across his cheeks, his lashes, down the sharp line of his nose. “What do I fear…” He repeats her question, his words rough where hers were smooth. Yet his whisper matches hers and he turns his head to watch her, his half moon sigil atop his brow laying light across her ivory face. “I fear that my faith in my goddess might never be strong enough to save my soul from itself.”
And so it is that a girl more free than she realises meets a boy more trapped than he recognises.
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