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
Her description of her homeland intrigues him. It seems like Novus and yet… not. She comes from a place called the Winter Court. Tenebrae feels the chill of such a place. It blows cold and wicked along his spine. Tendrils of frigid magic skip across the lacerations that lie across his spine. Winter is coming in Novus. The trees are growing scarce of leaf, their twisted, undulating limbs stripped of colour like clothes. Their bodies are naked, the knots of their trunks exposed. Winter will come, adorning them in frost, but for now they grow red and gold and then fall into barren nakedness as the ground gathers their leaves.
The Disciple considers Mephisto, the blues of her, that quiet, dark knowing within her gaze. He has seen a land built of magic and how magic ruled over it, changing its face with every season. Tenebrae no longer knows if the island is at the whim of the gods or if a new, stranger magic lays its hands upon it, twisting and morphing it at leisure. “Was your homeland anything like the island off Terminus Sea?” He asks of her, lightly curiously. Mephisto mentions no gods in her homeland - just a place ruled by magic and time. Could time be its own master? The shadow stallion has only ever known Tempus to rule over time - the idea that time alone can rule… What would Tenebrae do, be there, in a land without gods? He thinks of Boudika’s question. If you were not a monk, Tenebrae, what would you be? He has no eloquent answer. He flounders over such questions. He is too young, too narrow minded. His world has been filled up upon Caligo and duty and religion. There is little of himself left to dream of anything else.
What other curiosities has your goddess granted to her disciples? Mephisto asks of him. Tenebrae turns his starlight gaze to her. Fireflies illuminate along her cheeks, begging for more wishes, even as she asks to know more about him and his brothers. What else does she give him? He knows how he should answer, but all of those replies, given so easily by his brothers, feel as bland and cloying as dust upon his tongue.
“Do you miss your old home and its lack of gods?” He dares to ask. He dares to wonder what a world might be without gods. Would he ever leave the monkhood? What would his life be without it - what if he was never born to a goddess - what then? Who would he be?
What other curiosities has your goddess granted to her disciples? Tenebrae blinks, slowly, the starlight of his eyes glowing wicked bright. He smiles, shadows breathe over his lips, they make stark the lack of humour there. Tenebrae’s look is pained with its darkness. He does not have the answers he should. Boudika stripped him of them first and then Elena. They have left him with nothing of himself lefts to give to Caligo. Or so it feels.
He breathes an honesty comes from him, it gathers like darkness and spills from his lips like an ominous, consuming monster, “I do not know.”
@Mephisto <3
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
