tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
The grasses brush at his feet. They sway, perfect and golden, with the vitality of the coming spring. Even the air has begun its change. It is sweet to his tongue. To his nose are floral smells he has never thought to find the source of before. Now he stands, wondering at the shape and colour of the flowers which might create smells such as these.
Still his eyes ache, yet here, stood beneath the midday sun, his shadows scattered, his back warmed with light, it is easy to forget the pain. Tenebrae listens, still and silent he drinks in the voice of the meadow. It is a symphony, a choir of noise, from the chirping of the birds to the cricketing and creeping of the insects in the growing grasses.
About his eyes his bandage is growing dirtier, more frayed. Threads have come loose, they tickle across his nose and mouth as the breeze comes, cool and pregnant with spring. A stranger comes, the Disciple thinks. He has yet to learn the sound others make through woodland and grassland. Yet the grasses rustle rhythmic, heavier than the wind.
“Are the tulips out yet?” The monk asks the stranger. Tenebrae knows Elena was growing them ready, he found her tending them in the Dusk fields. Her festival was this weekend, did they bud in time? He thinks only of flowers, for to think of Elena in any other way was to invite in that unwelcome little jab that reminded him her child was not his, a family was not his to have.
