tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
The monk.
Oh. Was that how he was known now? Tenebrae is a fool in love, but he is no fool here. The realisation that his blinding has spread all through Denocte is not surprising. Gossip moves faster than wildfire and, occasionally, it is more deadly too.
Yet, to be known as the monk, it stung with the poison of a wasp sting. The Disciple does not think the wasp is content with just one attack. He is sure more will come, that poison will sing its pain out through his blood.
He lifts his muzzle from the flowers. Tenebrae had reached down to touch them, to ponder which one might be beneath his lips - were those daisies or dandelions with small petals like miniscule daggers. How did colour feel beneath his touch - did different colours have different textures?
The Disciple had been pondering one when the golden stallion spoke of the sun. The plant was taller than the others, reaching up as if for the sun August spoke of. Its leaves were thin as grass beneath his touch. Tenebrae considers it carefully, but the moment he thinks of his blindness, he lifts his head slowly.
“I am the monk.” It is said almost casually, as if the question did not deliver like a jab into his lungs. He laughs, rough and low and looks up, as if he can see the sun, up beyond the blue, the black, the clouds, the stars… “Yes and no.” He smile is there upon his lips, a dark thing, darker even than the shadows which still rake through the fine leaves of the broadleaf cattail he was just touching. “They blinded me with sunlight so that I might focus on nothing else but darkness. The temptation of life is apparently too much for a monk like me.”
And that smile grows hard as a weapon. It cuts like it remembers how they met in the temple, gold and black clashing like the sunlight and midnight. He would only think of that again (if he could see), if he had not met Elena and her skin so bright and gilded brighter than any sun. She turned his hunger from that of light to that of things forbidden.
