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
She wanders, as phantoms do, through the deepest parts of the flower-strewn meadow. Grasses brush at her knees and hocks and bow down within her wake, reverent. She carves her path with the silence of a ship through waves.
The sunset limns her in gold. Lavender flowers open for her exposing the pollen dusted across their stomachs. Her body is the pale light of the moon. Has she come as its herald? It rises behind her, its face silver. They share the same glow, the moon and she; Both have a light as soft as wraiths.
Across her body curves patches of purple (that the lavender flowers so adore). He wonders if they are sore to touch, tender as bruises. She walks as more than a wraith, he realises now. The girl is a soul untethered, a heart slipped free of its ties.
Twilight owns this hour. All the meadow is readying for sleep when the monk arrives like the coming of night. Upon the wave of his shadows roll the impenetrable black of midnight. There is nothing of him that is similar to her. The girl is a star amidst her meadow, an ethereal thing that has loosed herself from the sky like a star, shedding her darkness and holding tight to her light.
He comes to her in black, black, black. A black as dark as pitch and all the flowers bend their faces toward the earth. Night commands sleep and they turn their bodies from the sun and fall still, ready.
They are a strange pair when they meet within the resting heart of the sunset meadow. Beneath the sun’s sleepy, summer light they are turned soft and dreamlike. Closer to her now, Tenebrae sees the way tears are dried upon her cheeks as stories once inked upon paper. He wonders of the tragedy of her words. Where is the sorrow whose fingers untied the knots that grounded her? It set her loose, like a kite to be carried until the winds cast her down.
Darkness presses upon her skin, darkening her lilac as though they truly are bruises whose distress he deepens. Tenebrae’s shadows seek to map her body and better learn the shape of this stranger, who the moonlight so carefully cradles. “You are new,” the Disciple breathes at last. The words feel cumbersome upon his tongue. He realises he has not spoken all the day long, so silent were he and his brothers in their worship.
His whiteglow eyes gaze at her from the midst of his shadows. His dark magic gathers commanding sleep to bloom, soft and sweet, in the dark lines of her delicate face. All the meadow holds its breath, lying still and dream soft. Darkness smiles, small and lazy. Religion lies woven within his bones, within the magic that generated him and all his brothers. “Welcome to Novus,” Tenebrae breathes, his tongue and voice growing warm as whisky as they remember what it is to speak.
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