T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
The sound of singing, of laughing and dancing is what draws him to the river first. He sees the way light gleams, moving like thin torches through the trees and out along the river banks. Children sing lullabies and girls and boys and fireflies dance and dance and dance.
He is not at home here. The warrior stands strange and ill-at ease. I am not made for dancing He had said, not once but twice when he has been asked. His eyes follow along the river current, half expecting, half hoping to see the crimson gaze of Boudika rising leonine from the river. He looks and half expects to see Elena dancing gold amidst the dancing fireflies. His heart is beating a little faster. He is sorry neither of them are here, even if it might mean they would lure him into dance - one gentle, the other feral.
Tenebrae turns from his hopes, his wishes and wends his way along the river bank. His shadows are not gentle, not here, not now. He is a banished man. He is a monk made for war, for battle. He has been made soft. He feels the desires of his heart, they way it beats with longing. The Disciple moves through the soft light, the gentle wings of fireflies, the undulating dance - something like revelry- of the gathered horses. The songs cut themselves across the blades his shadows make, the starlight splinters as it falls upon the spears of his darkness.
The monk is dark and sharp and wicked and sorrowful. His shadows cut a path through the crowds and songs quieten as he passes by. He walks on and on along the banks until he reaches a girl whose fireflies are different. Her gaze is different. She hums and yet all the life upon Delumine’s banks seem to gravitate to her.
A wish gathers itself upon her lips. She sighs whimsically, her chin tipped up, ready for the wish to tumble from her tongue, finding life amidst the fireflies. It might be like a prayer, it is similar, a hope, a desire put into words, given to another being. Tenebrae blinks and the flies dance within the starwhite glow of his moon sigils. “I did not hear what your wish was.” The monk murmurs watching the path of a lighted string of fireflies. His voice is warm whiskey warmed over a candle, ready to set the world ablaze with just one kiss of the candle’s flame, “I have heard many wishes on my way along the banks. Do you think the fireflies can really grant our wishes? Or is that reserved for our gods alone?” Slowly he moves his gaze from the fireflies, to let it tangle in the dark of the mysterious girl’s. His skull tilts, his shadows prowl as panthers. His magic possesses the night. A tendril of darkness softens, it weaves around the fireflies’ light and he wonders if he could make a wish upon the magic of these fireflies and just how faithless that would make him.
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