tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
The look that is upon Morrighan’s face, he has seen so many times before - but this is the first time he sees it upon hers. He suspects it will be the first of many. He watches as incredulity and suspicion sculpt her face in arched brows and a deepening frown. She does not believe how whipping himself could bring him any closer to his goddess. (He has begun to wonder too. For, no matter the number, the bites of the whip leave him only feeling numb. Was this what losing your religion felt like? A slow slip into apathy and disbelief? It is a pool he dreads falling into. One he thinks he might drown within).
Morrighan says nothing and he is glad. The monk knows why and how the whip should help, but he does not wish to divulge more when the words might taste as nourishing as ash upon his tongue. Tenebrae wishes the self-flaggelation would bring him some absolution. He truly does pray so.
The monk asks his Regent of duty and she starts, tentatively with Caligo. It was not what he meant. Yet he smiles, small and encouraging. She looks to his goddess but Tenebrae does not. He knows how the obsidian statue behind him is beautiful and impressive. How it looms out of the shadows, resplendent. No matter its beauty, it does not bring the non-believers to their knees in converted piety.
A moment passes for Morrighan, another darkening pass of thought across her expressive eyes. What did she think? He wishes to know, but he does not ask. She tells him of her loyalty to Denocte and all who believe in her. Then, oh then she tells him to live.
He is silent for so long. The glow of the half-moon sigil atop his brow reflects light upon the stone floor, the marble pillars of the temple. “I have put another before Caligo and in so doing broke my vow as a monk and as a Disciple of the Night Goddess.” Now he looks to the statue, his light gleaming white and bright across her chest and throat. “Would you put love before the people of Denocte? Would you break with your duty to them in order to love what you should not?” The words hang as intimately as if he whispered them through the slatted screen of a confessional. But he does not expect absolution from Morrighan.
Yet all the same he waits, to listen to her thoughts, curious and frighteningly hopeful.
