oh, but sweetheart,
i am a goddess
i am a goddess
S
ilence feeds her soul, festers as a puss-riddled wound between them, boils as the ocean does when the gods are displeased, and how it pains her tonight. Silence, she knows, is as beautiful as it is terrible. Silence is the purest home she's ever known. Silence is not for them.
The phoenix watches, perched before him as some mighty bird waiting for its prey to fall, watching as he crumbles. A great echelon of control, a pyramid of a life devoted to a single cause, a single being, beginning to crumble, beginning to burn. Did she look like this, so hopeless, so despaired when she fell before him, too? Would the glass castles that rise up when he finds his footing once more be just as strong, just as beautiful and resilient? To these things, she cannot speak, cannot dare to know the answers. The future, as always, remains a mystery clouded by decisions not yet made and decisions still to come.
Moira Tonnerre, so short a time ago so solemn and lonely as he is in her own fortress of ice and moonstone, is now humbled before him as he screams, as he cries out to whatever holy or unholy beings would listen. Could she take away his pain, she would in a heartbeat, but it is not her burden to bear, it is not a cross she could so easily lift from his brow and unnail him from his post. Tenebrae shatters and the shards left before her are beautiful and terrible and she wishes so dearly she could panic, but to soothe is as much a part of her as the light on her back, as the crown she made upon his brow.
So she does not, she does not speak until he is again panting, silent.
Hers is a soft brush of phantom hands against his cheek, hers is a mother's embrace as she grips his cheeks in those same hands and presses her forehead to his. The saltwater on his face is not wiped away, left to run uninterrupted into the sand that devours it as easily as it takes all of the ocean and still finds a way to stay in place, to keep on living. "Tenebrae," she murmurs so gently against his nose. Her own skinny face is thin against the long, straight line of his. In that moment, the phoenix seems so delicate, so breakable, as just a girl before a boy, embracing him as though he were her own flesh and blood, her heart beating within his breast - broken, unhinged, utterly clouded by grief and doubt and blame.
She knows what it is to hurt so badly, but she does not know his reverence for Caligo, for his is a religion she would never share. "To love is a terrible thing. It brings as much sorrow and suffering as it does joy. I wish I could take it from you so that you would not be brought so low. I would wish for a great many things, I think, if I were able to. But," she pauses, she sighs and shakes her head quietly against his.
They are bound, connected, and she does not wish to break that, cannot pull herself away from him in his grief. Moira is a black hole eager to consume, as eager to study and feel and know what it is for another to hurt as she dissects herself, too. "I do not know what it is to belong solely to a god... I do not know if I ever told you that I am not a believer, not truly, in all that is divine. Where I am from, we worship no deity, we fall at the feet of no greater power; our ancestors watch over us, they guide us if they so wish it, and when we die we would join them and take care of our family even in death. It is a comfort then, I suppose, to not wear your guilt. But Tenebrae," she lifts his chin just barely, looking into his eyes until they are but a single focal point. "We are all fools in love, and if we are not then we are liars."
How do you comfort one who is not sick or dying? She cannot tell him it will be alright, she cannot diagnose him with some cold, or poison, or a death sentence and hold his hand until he goes. All she can do his exist beside him, offer herself as his comfort, the only thing she knows to do now when she lowers herself to her knees so that they are level, and breathes the same air that he does, syncing up with Tenebrae until, slowly, she normalizes the tempo of their inhales once more. When he is not huffing and puffing, panting before her, she settles further, slides nearer, and wraps herself around him like a rope about a tree. Her wings, those lovely pinions that haunt her still, home up and curl as a tent above the two, effectively hiding them from the world, ensconcing him in shadows that he loves once more.
The only light is the light of his halo and the light of her stars.
{ @Tenebrae "speaks" notes: <3 }
