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
The way she watches the meadow and the way it responds to her. Still her knees are pollen dusted as the meadow paints the vestiges of summer across her pale body. The fine dust is as bright as a splash of paint across the white canvas of her skin. The monk has not realised, until Stellanor, how much he has come to be stagnant here within Novus. Being beside her and seeing the pale of her skin, the way Novus learns from her and of her is as welcome as the cool winds following a humid afternoon’s storm. Though already Novus seeks to change her, to mold her, to make her fit within its lands. Don’t - , Tenebrae wishes to breathe into the ebbing light between them. - Don’t let it change you.
The monk thinks that he could stand here for an eternity, watching her, feeling the newness of her…
But nothing remains new.
He asks of how she came here and her answer is sad, whimsical, filled with need and judgement. He watches her, the smile on her lips, the sadness that tips their corners down and weighs the thick curl of her eyelashes low, low. What sins had she committed in her life before this? What deed was so terrible she needed to be pulled into another world.
He looks over her, her lovely smile, the ivory of her skin, the soft of her eyes… “I cannot imagine you would commit a crime so terrible as to need to flee judgement, Stellanor.” There is a seriousness in the way he speaks, yet it is softened by his own smile that blooms like black roses. It is soft as petals yet sharp with a playful mirth like thorns, “But I stand to be corrected.”
The monk’s head bobs and he laughs with her, her next words giving him a greater stature than he ever could deserve or even fit. “Oh no,” Tenebrae breathes with a smile, “I am no oracle. I just feel how the shadows respond to you and you to them. There is a darkness to you, a residual echo… It takes someone of darkness to know.”
He watches the way she speaks, the way her smile now grows warmer, filled with the sweet taste of memory. There is a want there… “Do you miss the darkness?” He asks and such a question is so thinly veiled he does nothing to clarify for her. She already knows, the other’s darkness is already here. His own shadows shift, twist and turn about and over her body, chasing memories and future hopes.
“Caligo.” The monk says and it is as easy as vital as living. “This darkness is hers. It is just a gift that we have it. All of our magic, all of us is hers.”
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