tenebrae
The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
~Rilke
He hears the tide as it pushes itself upon the shore.
He hears the laughter of children and their delighted gasps as they find the sea’s secrets hidden amidst the sand.
He hears the sounds of craftsmen working at their stalls. The clack of a button, the clink of a shell, the heavy fall of a hammer and the sound of pears running like a train over loose rails.
The monk stands and listens to them all. These are just the flavours he grows aware of, but sound, he is fast learning, is a feast of vibrant noise. Where once he found silence, now he knows there is no such thing. There is always something to be heard, some existence playing itself out for his ears to see. Tenebrae is learning of the vanity of his eyes. They lie, he thinks and not for the first time either. There is a truth in sound that he has never paid heed to before.
The sand whispers of the approach of another. The monk’s ear, a long and fluted thing, twists to capture his approach. Footsteps, he is learning, are so much like a voice. It can be easy to identify another from their shuffle, the weight of their feet, a toe drag, an uneven cadence… But upon sand their voices are muffled, the fine pale grains muffle them, turn them all the same.
But he hears their breath, the way their bodies move. Morrighan moves with quiet, fierce precision. Maeve like feathers and sparks through the air. Moira like the crackle of light, the sigh of first dawn. But this stranger is none of them. His steps rustle, maybe with feathers adorning his ankles, but maybe not. The Regent has not heard this stranger before. He turns toward them, unseeing, but hearing. His hear tilts, as it is accustomed to do since his Blinding. Ears twist and a lock of hair falls across his black, sightless eyes. He blinks and the wind comes, tugging the silver strand free from his black lashes.
Darkness creeps in toward the strange. It presses upon their skin like fingers to learn the curve of his lips, his cheek, the shape of his eyes. They wonder if he is good or if he means harm and smother him in darkness until they might know. But their darkness passes like clouds across the moon, the monk will not have another drowned in the darkness like he.
Quite a show, eh?
Tenebrae grins, it is a slow, amused thing., lazily tipping the corners of his lips, up, up, up.
“I would not know.” He says, lightly and does not say more. Not when his predicament is so clear - his head not positioned properly, his ears turning in the way his eyes should have too. “It is nice for the shore to be busy, to come and celebrate the sea.” And all that lives in it. His thoughts sink down beneath the waves to wonder where Boudika is this night. Has she come to the beach too or is she lost somewhere in the deep, letting the sea mold her body to the shape it demands of her in that moment.
