tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
He does not know what memory reaches out to her from the mirrors. Tenebrae cannot hear how it speaks with the sound of a razorblade slicing through silver-white hair that falls silent as snow upon the floor. If he did know of the dream, that unwinds itself from slumber within Seraphina’s mind, the monk might have felt some sliver of understanding. He too was raised young, groomed to fight, groomed to love a goddess whose hand he had to thank for his very existence.
Yet Seraphina’s eyes reveal nothing of the memories that might stir behind her silvered gaze. Her shadow yawns out from her feet, angular and pointed, as if her shadow can reveal the true nature of the thoughts that stir within.
Her lips bow down like the curve of the earth. He wonders how she lets her anguish weigh her lips in such a manner. Darkness pools in the corners of her lips, it rises like floodwater and drenches her mouth in sorrow. She should be beautiful, the monk notices, but her eyes are pillowed with black shadows.
The monk studies her. He smells the heat of the sun, the dust of the desert. Yet sunken and hollow and riddled with shadows as she is, she is more a tortured creature of Denocte then Solterran light. Slowly the monk moves to her, feeling his own sullen shadows reaching out to her. Greedy for the sight of another, desperate to see and see and see before his sight is robbed from him, he watches her without shame. He studies the parts of her that are beautiful, those that are strange and lastly those full of aching emotions that lie complex and painful. He looks to her and knows he will remember anguish, but he does not want her to be the last thing he sees. He hopes she might smile, remind him what companionship is.
The monk is beside her, the mirrors whispering alternate truths. He looks to one, too slow to look away, and he sees Boudika and him an embrace, easy and loving. It steals his breath, oh it cuts him deep into the threads at the very core of his being. It frays them as readily as butter melting in the sun. Agonised, distraught, swallowing down his perfect grief, he looks to the girl and she seems a walking portrayal of his own distress. “At first I found the temptation of seeing the ‘what ifs’ of other worlds enchanting… but now I am not sure if it is not just torture.’ The Disciple swallows and lifts his head from the mirrors. He should know better than to dwell upon things he should not have.
