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
Nails of light fall like hail from the sky. They strike stone and yet are not stopped. They sink deep into the mountain with the same ease as lava through wood. Moira Tonnerre’s grief carves a cavern, a deep rift. Though her magic fell like rain, the hole left is akin to a crater left in the wake of an asteroid.
Her magic raises them. It cradles them, holding them up above the rift, the consuming darkness that sinks down into the mountain’s cavity. Tenebrae does not look to where the shadows broil below him. Instead he holds Moira as she shatters. Her screams turned to cries, strangled by grief and tears.
The monk pushes back the tangles of wild curls from her wet cheeks. She slumps, she weakens in his embrace and he holds her as their feet find the ground once more. Tenebrae does not let her fall, even as exhaustion and sorrow cut her muscles with their numbing touch. But then she lowers, down, down to the floor, an angel descending. The monk lets her go at last, yet his touch remains, a balm across the heat of her raw and broken heart.
Shadows and light, starlight and blazing fire, watch each other as the stallion and mare say nothing but look and look and look into each other’s eyes. His touch brushes across her feverish brow, it lingers at her cheek as she asks her questions. None of them are easy. Each one of them is broken and bleeding.
Each one will hurt him to answer.
For so long he stays quiet, yet holds her. The darkness presses in. No longer does it battle her light, nor seek to smother it. Instead they tangle and blend until light concedes to darkness and darkness to light.
“I do not know, Moira.” Tenebrae breathes and in his honesty he feels juvenile. “But I do not think you can compare my love of Caligo with your love for those who have left you. It is too different, it does your love a disservice…”
The young monk takes a breath. “I have not known the love of a woman. The love of a god is more… familial. Besides, I fear I will be the one most inclined to leave in my relationship with Caligo.” Such honesty flays him. Such honesty shatters something within him. Oh he feels its shards cutting him into ribbons. It hurts to breathe but, this moment is not his. This moment belongs to Moira, this comfort, this sorrow is hers.
He turns all of him back to her and her next question is easier. So much so that a smile creeps across his lips. It is a Disciple’s smile, hungry and wicked and full of savage magic. “I take the light, Moira. I consume it, swallowing it within me that my shadows might reign. To make darkness I control both light and dark.” All around them is pitch darkness, her light dissipated, her magic exhausted. He feels its weak press. Slowly he lets his own magic fall away until moonlight spills in, until the lights of Denocte glow upon the distant horizon.
“You may feel in darkness now, but you control light. You can life by darkness or draw more light down. It is up to you whether you live in darkness, by candlelight or in the glow of the sun. All of it is yours to control. We are not so different, you and I. Our magics are twins.
“They may have left you in darkness Moira, but you do not have to stay here. You do not have to let the tide of black wash over you. You are a phoenix, made as we all are to be broken and hurt by living. Yet you are made, better than any of us, to rise from the ashes. So rise and make your light and shatter the darkness of your grief.”
Tenebrae presses a kiss to her temple, it is searing with the light that lingers upon his lips. “Come and spend a night with the Order. We will see you fed and rested and you can return to Denocte tomorrow. You need a night at least.”
With that the monk turns, continuing along the path he had been taking home before Moira stepped, broken, upon the mountain. He waits for her and when she joins, he leads her to peace and to respite - if only for one night.
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