tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
When they return to Novus, he will show her what wire is and how to twine her flower crown together with it. But for now the monk listens to how she moves, the fluttering of her breaths as she considers the flowers she wants to pick. Soon he knows when she finds a flower to pick, the short intake of breath, the huff of affirmation and then the sound of the flower being plucked. The breaking of a stem.
He wonders why he never heard these things before. Tenebrae knows why - of course he does. He saw it, so he did not need to hear it too. But now he listens to the whispers of the world as every horse interacts with it. Every sound tells a story, every sound is a layer of interaction and emotion. Tenebrae immerses himself within it, drowns himself in the tide of noise and existence.
The black of his shadows reach out. They run like fingertips around petals and along stems. They feel the endless curves of each delicate fluted tulip. Until, suddenly, the flutter of small, fast moving wings, cut through his shadows. Tenebrae flinches suddenly, as if struck. A Malachite Kingfisher flies through his shadows, rising out of the flowers and up into the sky. The monk hears the flutter of its wings, he turns to track it, but it moves swift and bright. “Maeve.” Tenebrae says, “quickly look, a bird just flew out from the flowers.” He turns in the direction it flew. “Do you still see it? What kind of bird was it?” Before, the monk might never have cared, but now, with his sight gone, curiosity and intrigue made every sound and every touch a mystery.
The moment passes, too fast. The sound of the small bird is gone and it is replaced by Maeve’s quiet contemplation. When she asks of magic, it is a question Tenebrae had never considered yet he hears the tremble of her voice. He hears in her silence all the things she does not say. He knows, in that moment, why she asks.
He is quiet for so long. The dark of his shadows gather around Maeve a comfort of touch, for her, for him. “No.” The monk murmurs, honestly. “I have always loved my magic. It has always been a dear gift to me from Caligo. A sign of who I am, what I am.” The Disciple does not talk of the pain his identity brings him now. They have never talked about why he was blinded, why it was a punishment for his sins. It is too much for a child.
Tenebrae turns into the direction of her voice. He wishes he could see her, but he lets the map of her sorrow sketch her worry into his breast. “Why do you ask, Maeve? Has your magic started to come through?”
And he thinks how this is the start of many things she will grapple with as she grows into adulthood.
