tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
The snow grows thick upon his back, settling into the grooves of his whiplash scars. Spring cannot reach her green fingers up the mountain to this height. So the vegetation grows more sparse and the winds grow louder, stronger, ever more frigid. As frost begins to feather along his torso, settling into the grooves of his jaw and ribs, a part of him might begin to wander if it was worth it. But always, she is worth it and, of course, he would find her here.
Thia drives on through the bleak blizzard. Her form this day is a mountain cat, black as a panther. But she takes no material form, remaining as shadow in ordee to glide over the snow. She waits for him, still breathing out his every step. Ever his partner, his guide. Tenebrae sees nothing, white eyes unhealed despite his attempts to heal them. Caligo's magic lingers within them, destructive, depriving me of sight. A punishment that resides, always.
Eventually, the ragged path levels off and bends around the mountainside, opening up into the sacred temple. He once stood guard here, a young and foolish monk and warrior. It was where they first met, where they first shed each other's blood. Silence greets him and he stops just within the temple's open mouth. He listens, Thia silent at his side.
Ah, there it is. The soft breath of air pulled in, pushed out through slumbering lungs.
Tenebrae turns to that soft, whispering sound. He is silent, his shadows filling every corner of the temple, billowing, calling out for the light of the girl who slumbers. Beside his eyes, he looks the same as he always has. Young, only just out of adolescence, barely over 3. Immortality was always a curse and oh how he wishes he could see her too. Has immortality kept her frozen too? He is sure she is as cursed as he, for two souls as bonded as theirs could only ever be as cursed as each other. And Tenebrae was so terribly cursed.
He stops when Thia says, when he is above the slumbering mare. He can see her red, her gold, her light in his mind's eye. She is more beautiful there, he thinks, he hopes. Yet he lowers his lips all the same to brush over her brow, to remember the contours of her face, the heat of her skin. "Moira," the once-monk murmurs, voice rough, broken with disuse. He breathes her name against her skin, letting his lips run to her temple, lightly to where her eyelashes still press together. "Wake up for me. I cannot be here alone." And oh, how his voice breaks at the last, shattering and with it, his shadows obliterate.
