tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Moira brushes his cheek, easing the sorrow that gathers tight in his muscles. Then she presses her brow to his. He nearly flinches, he nearly rips himself from Moira’s hold and… and… he does not know what. All of him is a cacophony of emotions. He broils with them. Every part of him is overwhelmed, full of a teaming darkness of searing ire and depression. Instead he groans, “She touches me like that.” It is pleading in his low whiskey voice. Stop, Moira and yet, please, I need this.
Moira speaks his name as she holds him and he is glad her voice is nothing like Boudika’s or Elena’s. She speaks of love and he listens, as if Moira Tonnerre holds the keys to understanding it. She calls it a terrible thing and it feels right to name it thus. So often he hears of the wonder of it. He hears the purity of Caligo’s love and yet here he is wounded, aching, feeling only the shallowness of his Goddess’ love. His devotion is a pool running dry.
Moira talks of her home. He thinks of a world without Gods, like Mephisto spoke of, like Moira speaks of. What would you be if you were not a monk? Again and again Boudika’s words haunt him. If he let go of Caligo now and renounced his faith in her, what would he be then? He was partially made of her magic. His devotion to her was already latent in his body at the moment of his conception. His birth killed his mother and his father. He was made to have no family but his brothers and his goddess, Caligo. If he left the Order, if he renounced the part of him that belonged to the Night Goddess, what then would be left of him?
Slowly, painfully, he realises Moira has no answers for him, not where gods and goddesses and the tangling love of mortals are concerned. She said so herself, yet he asks her anyway, he asks her like a man clinging to a precipice of a bridge wondering whether to jump and see how the water below will change him, “What would I be if I were not a monk?” Tenebrae prays Moira knows him because he does not think he knows himself at all.
The Disciple takes a breath. It is deep and harrowing. The stars in their firmament shudder with the force of the monk’s fetid grief. “I need you to tell me to stay with the Order, Moira. I need to turn back to Caligo. Or else I might lose myself.” And it is fear that works his tongue. It is innocence and ignorance that fans the flames of his fear. She cannot tell him, his decision should not be based upon Moira. He knows, he knows. Yet he asks, he begs.
“Divine love is supposed to be the greatest love of all. Yet I am drunk upon the love of women… If they find out how i have broken my vows, if I dare to step away from them, my magic will be stripped from me. It will take my sight…” He breathes and looks up at Moira, the brilliant red of her, glimmering as a ruby uncovered beneath the moon. He looks up beyond her to the stars and weep as they watch him. The sea reaches for him and whispers of Boudika. If you were not a monk, what would you be? The sea asks him in the kelpie’s voice. He knows his answer now, I would be blinded by love, Boudika.
