tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
He does not know how dark it is within her room. Nor how his shadows make it darker still. They run like ink into the darkness that already looms up the walls in every corner.
But he feels the cold and the way it sinks its fingers, like frost, down below his skin and under, pressing along his nerves and into bone.
Tenebrae longs to ask her why she sits here, in the dark liek sorrow and the cold like detachment. She sighs at his remark. He hears it, louder than he ever has heard a sigh before. Maybe it is because her room is so cold, so quiet he hears how it echoes off the walls. Though maybe it is simply that his remaining senses are growing, working themselves harder.
He smiles against her hair as he stands above her. “No, really,” the Disciple attests, “I am fine. This is what I deserved, I have accepted it. It is just learning to live differently and that… is a challenge. But I am not at death’s door.” The last he says with gentle accusation. He still recalls how she arrived, broken and cold and so nearly gone.
Now seated beside her he laughs lightly, “Men.” Tenebrae murmurs by way of an answer. Then sighs lightly, “Antiope has stepped down and Denocte has a new queen. That is the biggest topic of conversation now. Well, now that the gossip of a brother being blinded has died down…” He finishes ruefully but quietly and sighs. “Why did you come back? It is wonderful to have you, of course, but i never thought you would leave Terrastella for a new home here - amidst monks, of all places.”
