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
Don’t come back to Terrastella.
Tenebrae would like to honour her words (that haunt him at every turn). But he has become a less than honourable man.
He can still see the way her lips tipped down, the way hurt crossed her face raw and heartbreaking. There is no part of the Disciple that does not still ache with it.
The sky is smudged with gold. He watches Praistigia’s festivities from a small island just offshore. Denocte is silent behind him, little more than a shadow, low on the horizon. His court seems to sleep, though the monk knows well that he only need to swim toward her shores and the sounds of her festival would reach his ears too.
But it is not Denocte that calls him this night. His body is slick and wet with swimming. The ocean still coos to him. It begs the monk back in. He does not know what to. He fears it, honestly. There is a crimson girl who swims in its depths with teeth his body knows so intimately well. He yearns for her as he yearns for the golden girl who banished him from Terrastella. It is safer here, where indecision and guilt can consume him whole. Where two girls can pull him apart and feast upon the remnants of his bones. He is ruining them. He is ruining himself. He is becoming godless - because soon, he is sure, Caligo will forsake him.
Still, the autumn wind blows in with warm breath that dries the salt-water from his skin. The sea ripples inky black. Atop the cliffs of Praistigia he can see dark shapes moving.
The whimsical breeze throws down words for his ears to catch. Their syllables drift like feathers, slowly, slowly, gentlly as they land.Tenebrae breathes in the smoke that drifts out across the sea.
There is a twist in the monk’s gut, something deep and yearning. He realises that he is not merely watching, but searching. A dismissive breath blows past his lips and his shadows stir like smoke. The Disciple is about to turn when a figure tumbles from the steep cliff’s edge. He watches them tumble down, down and the water rise up, up to meet them. It is all too swift, too violent in the way the water catches them.
With a splash they disappear and the waves roll over the sight of their fall.. The sea drinks them in and tugs them down. There is no recognition upon the cliffs, no sign that anyone saw the shadow slip off the edge of the world. The tide pushes and pulls, in towards land, out into the deep. The figure does not surface. The ocean has already forgotten them.
Tenebrae is in the water, swimming before he has even thought what he might do. The water rumbles in his ears, salt pressing into his lashes. The tide pushes the monk on and on faster, faster.
It seems to be age until he reaches the point where the horse disappeared. His lungs are constricting but all the water remains unbroken by a surfaced body. They still sink, they still fall into the blue.
He gasps air in and dives, down, down, down. His star-bright eyes illuminate the darkness. There is a glint of gold. It strikes something deep within his chest. He swims down harder, further, deeper. The glint of butter-soft light glows brighter, bigger the deeper he descends. It calls to him, a siren’s song. That small, pale light grows and grows and grows. Tenebrae’s fear matches it, until it blows his heart wide open. Panic clutches at his throat. Deeper and deeper he pushes and it is not as fast as Boudika’s grasp. For a moment he regrets that she did not turn him, that he did not bite back. Was this the cost of saying no?
Elena floats in a halo of flaxen hair. It unsettles the monk to know how readily he recognises her lifeless body. Already he knows her curves, the fan of her lashes, the hue of her hair, the delicate contours of her face, her limbs. The black water of the midnight sea paints her gold darker and darker still. It cradles her. There is an elegance in her quiet descent into the deep. Elena is beautiful in a terrible, awful way. It takes only a moment for Tenebrae’s magic to reach for her. Darkness clutches at her body. grasps her, pulling her up, up, up.
Tenebrae raises her from the depths of the ocean. They ascend until the water’s surface breaks across their faces. His fae-girl is limp, her lashes jeweled with salt-water. He does not rest until there is beneath his feet and the sea does not reach her. Only then does the monk realise he has pulled her to the island. Still he obeys her. Still he has not returned to Terrastella - maybe he is more honourable than he first thought.
The monk sweeps the wet ropes of her hair from her face (no longer does each fine strand frame her like rays of sunlight). There is no inch of her that seems to waken. She lies still, fragile as flotsam washed up upon the beach. “Elena.” Tenebrae breathes where he knees, his muzzle close to hers to catch the too-shallow, too-soft breaths that escape her. They are weak across his lips, his nose. Sand lies as gold dust in her lashes and across her body. Oh she is too still.
So terribly still.
“Elena!” Her name breaks with his voice. Though it is only the sound of her name that shatters upon the rocks, he knows there is something else falling apart within him.
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