tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
She might be the wisest creature he knows.
Boudika steps toward him and closes the rest of the distance (that space which Tenebrae’s hesitancy could not cover). The sea attempts to hide the sound of her moving, it works, except that he feels her proximity. Of course. Tenebrae’s body has learned her more intimately than even his faith and the bite of his whip.
She warms the air with the heat of her skin - its colour too, warm as lit coal. The monk feels the heat of it. He feels how the air stirs against his nose, his lips, as she breathes.
The monk prays.
He prays to Caligo that he will not reach for her in that moment. He might dare to pray he never will again; but he is weak - did you know that, Boudika?
Though close, though so near he can reach out and kiss her, she feels so utterly beyond him. There is nothing he deserves less than this wild, free, brave and bold woman. She is the girl he was never meant to have and yet the one that has claimed him: heart, body and soul. No part of his body or life remains untouched by her. She is everywhere now, in everything.
Does she know how she moulds his soul with every word that pours from her lips?
Does she know how she has not stopped touching him since the moment they first met?
And now she is stood before him...
And she might be the wisest creature he knows.
The kelpie’s words lie upon him and he frowns. He does not understand their meaning, let alone how they feel upon him, within him, in the place where his heart lies wounded, in the place where his soul feels shattered. It feels like the words should bind him back together, but he cannot see how.
Boudika takes the monk apart, his soul, his heart, his everything.
His ears twitch, his breath slipping out in a sigh, as if to loosen the knots of unease that have wound themselves tight with her proximity and words.
Tenebrae still wants to touch Boudika. He still wants to pledge himself to her, but she does not want his love in the way he said…
“But that is all I know, Boudika.” Tenebrae pays for things, he always has. The cost of his life was the loss of his parents. The cost of becoming brothers and with that the cost of loving Caligo, was paid for by turning from any other life and pledging himself into a monastic life. He has paid for Boudika with blood and pain and his sight.
Though he does not understand her, he longs to. Tenebrae clings to her words, as if they are salvation - a salvation he does not yet know how to earn or how to live by. “Teach me how,” He says, his voice breaking like seafoam over rocks. “I have seen those in love, how they argue, how they weep with hurting one another - even the smallest of arguments.”
And then he stops. She has been unravelling the bandage from his eyes. His sudden silence, as the bandage slips away from his changed eyes, is almost like he now sees…
His eyes are newly black. Black as deepest night. Black with the swallowing, writhing and consuming darkness of Caligo’s matter. There is no light left within him. He cannot see out beyond it, to where Boudika stands framed by the bruised, setting sun sky. Setting, falling, ending; like them, he might tragically think, if he could see.
No. He does not fall silent because his eyes see. He falls silent because he sees the truth of her and the truth of him. He sees a foolish man, broken and confused by a love he can barely begin to understand or comprehend. He is young and foolish, he sees now. Tenebrae sees his own foolishness. His untried youth and naivety. He seeks to compare them as a couple; but they are nothing of the sort. The monk dashed their relationship upon the rocks and it shattered, fragile as a shell. He does not know how to glue the pieces back together. He cannot understand the process of it - not in the way she does.
But.. gods... he wants to.
Hope.
“I will.” He says and again, “but please teach me how.” His head droops and the new born stars cry their first light upon him. “Payment for redemption is all I know, Boudika.” Tenebrae’s head twists, away from his pain, away from his shame. “I will wager in hope,” the Disciple says as his head lifts, his muzzle coming near to hers, until their breaths mix in the fading light. “But is there any hope left for us? Do you love me?”
And he realises that her answer might be the truth to his everything.
