tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
He could be in a chapel, but for the absence of voices echoing of stone. The voices drift off into the night and the wind is more open, more free across his skin than if feels within a chapel. So many things Tenebrae is learning about the world now his sight is gone.
The incense drifts, burned upon charcoal and flame, carried up and out upon the wind, laden with blessings and prayers. Tenebrae comes to the festival as a chastened man. His journey was long and arduous. The lessons of learning to live sightless are all across his body. His limbs are bruised and bloody. His shadow magic is not yet accustomed to reaching out before him solid and wide to feel the terrain ahead of him. He cannot read its messages so clearly yet when they press upon his awareness. So the warrior monk stumbles and trips, yet each day grows easier. His remaining senses grow more attune. Already his brothers are making him fight, blind. It is like learning anew. Listening to his opponent, sensing their presence.
Tonight he moves through the crowd that jostles him, knocks him. Crowds are not so good at sensing the impaired within their midst. Tenebrae drifts to the edge, stepping closer until the heat of a bonfire breathes across his silver skin. The bandages across his eyes warm with the heat. Tenebrae basks in the warmth for it is soothing across his now broken eyes. They still throb, filled with Solis’ light, burned out, cast into eternal darkness.
The Disciple stands upon the edge, silent, and thinks of all his transgressions. Promises, prayers and penitent whispers lie across his lips and he murmurs them out into the smoke filled night. They rise with the incense up to the sky and the eternity beyond. That is what Tenebrae has now, an eternity of a broken heart and its punishment of eternal darkness. He is cast into Caligo’s darkness now, he longs to love her more for it, but all he feels now is numb. Yet Caligo might be the only thing left for him. Elena is gone, her ire and hurt still a sun’s rage across his skin. Her child is not his and that, to this monk, is both a blessing and the most agonising curse. He cannot help but be filled with the thought of what could have been. Yet, at least it is a blessing for a monk should not have a child and a father should be able to see his daughter.
