tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
The hazy golden light of lit torches illuminating stalls, fought off the moonlight as it ran along the cobbled path. Light lived and breathed and swirled and danced over the path as hundreds of feet passed along between the vendors’ booths. Tenebrae moves with the tide. Though he has been released from his pledge as a monk and a soldier, there is no freeing him from a life which has ingrained the behaviour into him. So he passes every stall that gleams with jewels, mysterious wares, arts and magics and sweet foods. Children run around him with sugar coated lips, smiles widening their mouths. He does not look to any of them, but his shadows sweep in, a shawl about his shoulders, draping along his spine in perfect, veiling black.
At the end of the row, pushed back, away from the fires, the dancing, the shouts of bartering, there is a line of stands. No, altars. Upon them are gifts to each of the five gods. There is only one that interests him and in ominous silence he walks to it. Jewels and foods and flowers all lie around her altar. He sees none of it.
Tenebrae had not seen the stalls, the lights, the children, the trinkets, the altars… He sees, nothing. His silver eyes are sightless, filled brimful with Caligo’s punishing magic, bestowed upon him by his brothers. This was her curse upon a man who was supposed to love her and honour his brothers above all others. But the heart, he has learned, is a wayward thing.
His shadows crawl to their creator’s altar, smother it in black. Like worship, like sorrow, like silent apologies. Before them Tenebrae stands sightless, trapped in the black of his own body. Always engulfed in his own darkness, his own shadows. In such darkness he can only think of her. That is why her monks took his sight.
