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
Maybe the difference between Tenebrae and King Solomon is that, when Bathsheba became pregnant he had her husband, Uriah, killed. Unlike King Solomon, Tenebrae knows nothing of the man who waits for her upon the star-strewn mountain top. He knows nothing of another man to whom her heart might belong. But of course there would be another man; a better man. Elena is beautiful, loyal, caring, as gilded as the sun and as free-spirited as the sea, the woods and the fae that inhabit both. Tenebrae is but a Disciple with loose morals. He clings to the few he has left and will not stop her falling into the man atop the mountain. She deserves more. He deserves less.
But, if he did know of the man atop the mountain - the man a better suited lover - what would he do then? The answer for Tenebrae is simple, he would not lie with Elena this night, he would not keep her from the arms of the man she should be with. In many ways Tenebrae is not King Solomon, though he watches Elena as if she bathes and dares to fantasize about all the ways things could be different.
But Tenebrae knows nothing of a lustful king and the great son awarded him through his adultery. He knows nothing at all.
Elena does not believe him when he says he has to push people away. The sun laments for her. It turns its gaze from his dark shadows. It lets them bloom, black like sin.
Her anger is divine. It sharpens the line of her face, it makes her fierce and brave. She becomes a gilded eagle in his sights. Tenebrae feels little more than a fawn beneath her gaze. Elena picks apart each piece of him that he exposes. He is flayed open before her…
Yet she sits, regal as a sunflower, soft as the fae. This girl is fierce, yes, and yet soft. There is something that trembles within the monk. It whispers to the part of him that is not weak, newborn, inexperienced with love and girls. Elena is lovely in her righteous anger, in her sadness that hollows him out with the blue of her wild-water gaze.
The Disciple smiles and still there is no joy in it. Sadness draws itself into the dark corners of her downturned lips. He sees it. The fine lines of her face make her slender, delicate, sun-born. He sees that too. Her ire is salt in his veins, it stings and his body feels sick with its presence. Yet even in her ire she vows to keep his promises. Wretched, Tenebrae does not question her. The monk does not think for a moment that she would not. Maybe it is because of the loyal honesty in the way her chin tilts up and she watches him. Or maybe it is the fact that something lingers deep in the darkness of her blue eyes, something like devotion, like…
He dares not name it. He fears it. He recognises it for it is within him too. It has a voice that yearns and answers hers.
Tenebrae breaks her with his revelation. She has a man waiting atop a mountain for her. He has a girl within the sea waiting for him. (Though he cannot have her either!)
His words pick at the threads that hold her heart together. He watches her unravel. The monk is not ready for the pieces. He will cut himself upon the sharper parts of her, bleeding as he tries to reassemble what he has broken.
Elena denies him the broken fragments of herself. Instead he watches as she hastily pulls herself together. There is nothing neat in the way she holds the pieces of herself - all twine and uneven edges and sad, broken eyes - yet there is grace in the way she stands, a pride that sets his body ablaze. His fae-girl glows like coals, embers reigniting beneath the night. He moves to her, wanting to hold her, to together keep the pieces of her whole. But Tenebrae is still too-blind to know how he has managed to unravel himself too. So wrapped up in her is he that he does not see how he is unspooling, unspooling, unravelling.
She rises, more a queen than a girl with his blood smudged across her body.
“Elena…” Her name is strangled when it comes from his lips. It falls fragile as glass and shatters across her, across him. It hurts more than the wound at his throat. She closes her eyes. In doing so she denies him the sea, denies him a look at that raw emotion that gathers in the deepest parts of her. Tenebrae’s eyes trail across her lashes, he lets light pool upon her cheeks..
She glows like Bathsheba.
The monk watches her.
He is close enough to drink in her every word. But they hurt. They carry the poison, the ire in her core. The Disciple takes every piece of her righteous punishment as if she were the whip that cuts his back. He dares not breathe as his fae-girl whispers her decree. They are so close he can taste the words of it across his lips.
The Disciple reaches for her, his darkness clutching at the gold of her body, to offer his own vow in turn and seal it with a kiss, a touch, a press of his forehead to hers. But she is leaving and he is banished. Her body pulls from him and something within him is breaking - even while he feels like he can breathe, at last.
Tenebrae turns from the hospital, his wound still aching, his body more painful, more vacant than when he had come. Yet the truth is that neither he nor Elena leave complete. They each have lost a piece of themselves and gained a piece of each other.
