tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
Tenebrae laughs rough and scathing. The whiskey warmth it normally holds is turned to flakes of ice that skitter in the air around them. It is a coarse noise, stone upon stone. A friction that rattles bones as it warms the skin.
“I have not been that man for a long time.” He tilts his chin up and tips his head toward the man as golden as Elena. Oh, he thinks, what is it with sun-forged palominos finding him? He sometimes thinks that life would have been only a fraction easier if Elena had not come to him that fated night. At least then it would only be Boudika his soul and heart would have to wrestle with as she settled herself deeper within him.
“It is amazing how much things change with time.” Tenebrae muses turning his head from where it had been pointed toward his fellow Denoctian. Now his bandaged eyes gaze sightlessly out across the silver-moon water of the lake (not that he knows). “You have changed since then. You are less… angry.” Such irony it is, that their roles are reversed, that the monk stands the more sour of the two. Back at their first meeting he had been the keen young monk, bent upon his duty, swallowing the sun, belittling the light.
Yet now he stands, wondering what life exists beyond the tenets of the Night Order. Would a life with a family have been better than this existence of loving his goddess but wanting… more?
