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Night. Silence.
Greater both than a simple absence of the opposite. Together, they draw out the deepest, hidden discrepancies in each and every soul. By day, the light smoothes away the bruised creases and the sounds of the living out-sing the gentle keening of a tainted heart.
And so the man of white - the judge - plies out his trade under the sharp, slow-cast void of nightfall. Seeking out the black amongst the innocent trails of white - a twisted echo back against the canvas of the night. The fine, tense string of life and duty - slowly shaken from the well-worn trail and eager to take the purest ones along, deep into dusty tracks of dry, black blood and bitter symphonies.
An infectious evil. Kept in check by a fallen angel - a tireless hunter, keeper of the light.
He crouches tight down to the ground, deep among the brittle plant stems and the ice-shot blooms, waiting for a sign. The gardens are still in the darkness, the greens and yellows beaten back under the moon into delicate silvers hung amongst the black. The smell hangs in the air, the rotting, cloying scent of the tainted. It twists around the gardens, hanging, dripping from the most fragile petals of the most beautiful winter rose - stamped into crystal grass by bare, narrow feet - set swirling in the water of the fountain by an idle, careless fingertip.
The air changes, imperceptibly so, the whisper of a sinful dream slicing through the bolted glass. With delicate fingers - four-jointed and free of nails - he lifts a small, square book wrapped in the whitest silk from his cloak. He notes down a name, a number, and the quality of the light with a thin, red-leaded pencil. Time enough to cleanse away the swelling rot, and leave the day to those who deserve it.
The night deepens, the silence grows, and he moves out towards the house.
*
Embers flare up as the smoke rolls in - near-liquid, blue-metal tendrils of suppressing drug fill the room. The old man sighs in his chair, feels the pain recede and the night shift on. In the orange half-light his hair is translucent and thin, the lines on his face ragged and deep - carved out by the fight. He holds his crooked, fused fingers together under his chin - waiting, waiting for the dawn and with the first light, rest.
Midnight passes. Frost cracks across the house of oak and glass.
The soothing smoke twists from his pipe, stays a heavy balm in the air.
In the small room he sits, everything focused in to him. The runes, carved into the panelling; the endless shelves of skin-bound books. Every object contained here is a lens - and every movement outside burns through the smoke, through the night, through the pain, the age, and the endless fatigue to him.
The white judge shifts in the silence. It is time.
The old man stands, joints locking, clicking, snapping as he moves.
Over to a small, ebony shelf set by the door.
Closer to a small, ivory book set between guardians of parchment and human skin.
The page falls over and he sees - in delicate, meticulous, red spider hand: a name, a number, and the quality of the night.
The smoke, dry as sand, brittle as bone, swells with tears from paper cheeks. So close, so close now. It was only ever a matter of time. He does not have far to travel tonight.
*
She is beautiful.
As a glass phial of poison is beautiful. As a stillborn baby is beautiful. As a blood-laced sword is beautiful. As a furious tide, a falling moon, a cornered viper, a sliver of broken glass.
As are they, so is she.
But she is disease also - death, pain, a taint on holy soil.
It is well past time.
The white judge silently crosses the room, as much smoke as flesh - white smoke, trailing back into the gardens. The wind picks up, carrying the night in through the glass doors, pushing the oppressive heat of sin back to the source.
His robes flare white - the silk-wrapped book an icy heart under the material, the words within straining towards reality. The red marks eager to be fulfilled, to absolve, to reclaim the light.
She sleeps on as he leans over the bed, his four-knuckled fingers dancing above her brow.
Her skin and hair is as pale, as pure as the face of the moon. He looks within and sees - as he knows - they both have a dark side. Lines, invisible, stretch out from her throughout the house. Black and tense, needles of corruption from her soul.
The blood vessels under that perfect skin rise to the surface, drawn out to his ethereal call.
A net of veins press up behind flesh - across sin-blushed cheeks, over delicate nose, bunched tightly around her sleeping eyes, over smooth lids. The book beats out against his committed robe.
*
A wave of blue-metal smoke shatters the monochrome picture of light and shade. Heat follows, knocking back the winter ice, the frozen faith of the purest white. The old man stands shaking, tired - eyes glazed, narrowed, tearful. In his own house, he stands facing his love - sleeping gently, unaware, innocent - and his hate - eyes brimming with conscripted, consecrated blood, mouth twisted into a welcoming, mocking smile.
The blood vessels fall back down into her skin - she sleeps on.
The judge turns, folding his hands back into his robe, the book pounding a steady reminder: it has been written: it will be so.
The old man squares his shoulders and blinks away the last of the soothing drug.
He is fading - the fight too long now. False judgement against true souls.
Snatched away, snuffed in the night - secretly stolen under pretence of light.
Not tonight, not tonight.
He places his callous fingertips together and pushes as hard as he can. Each joint snaps back in turn - tiny breaks in the silence - until his grey, aged fingers are bent right back, touching the back of each wrist. Blood blooms and flows from the barely-healed joints, dripping down.
But the crimson-black drops do not reach the floor. They collect, in spheres, shaped in the air - twenty perfect spheres of life hanging in the frigid air.
The judge steps away. The spheres follow.
His white robes, the white smoke around his feet, stretches back to the double-doors, out into blackness. He stands longer, the sacrificial blood in his eyes - his celestial sight - calling out against the tainted drops from unclean heart. Measuring, carefully, the similarities in the two faces he sees, the raw exhaustion contained in one, he places a soothing hand on his silk-wrapped heart, and turns.
The white smoke tumbles from the room, sucked into the void of winter and out, over the balcony. A single gossamer tendril remains. It hugs the floor, slowly drifting over - onto the bed - across the sheets. One end touches gently to her forehead, the other to his.
The night is whole, the silence everything. For a second everything is balanced, perfect, settled.
Then the tendril tenses,
And he sees: sees the dark folds the daylight forced away.
A touch, a plan, a blade. A heart, a hold, a bed. Blood, wealth, darkness. A smile, a note, a handshake. Small, pale fingers flipping through his books as he sleeps, making notes, forming shapes in the air. Black eyes, twisted tongues, flames. A final breath.
He sees.
A soft keening fills the room. The wisp of holy smoke disappears.
The noise grows as she sleeps on. All is revealed. Exhaustion washes over.
Images flash by again, he crawls to the door, the screaming, wailing sound forcing blood from his ears, out onto the white rugs, onto thick oak floors. Into the hall his body drags - on broken fingers, with broken heart, blood marking his trail.
By his worn teeth, the key turns in the lock. Sleep calls through the pain, the desperation, the reality. It is still dark, hours from dawn. He has never yet fallen asleep before sunrise.
But maybe he was wrong.
Sleep calls, endless rest, the fight over. Broken, elderly mind left wondering ... wondering ... wondering who has won.
*
Just before dawn the white judge returns. Red writing fades to black. She does not stir.
The fight is over now - long over.
But not won.
Spots of shade still hang over the pure. A world cast in swelling shadow.
He turns to the day, the noise, the colour, the glory of the light.
With no rival, no unholy blood to beat him back, soon all will be white.
Rein daesin. Alma-giudice.
Greater both than a simple absence of the opposite. Together, they draw out the deepest, hidden discrepancies in each and every soul. By day, the light smoothes away the bruised creases and the sounds of the living out-sing the gentle keening of a tainted heart.
And so the man of white - the judge - plies out his trade under the sharp, slow-cast void of nightfall. Seeking out the black amongst the innocent trails of white - a twisted echo back against the canvas of the night. The fine, tense string of life and duty - slowly shaken from the well-worn trail and eager to take the purest ones along, deep into dusty tracks of dry, black blood and bitter symphonies.
An infectious evil. Kept in check by a fallen angel - a tireless hunter, keeper of the light.
He crouches tight down to the ground, deep among the brittle plant stems and the ice-shot blooms, waiting for a sign. The gardens are still in the darkness, the greens and yellows beaten back under the moon into delicate silvers hung amongst the black. The smell hangs in the air, the rotting, cloying scent of the tainted. It twists around the gardens, hanging, dripping from the most fragile petals of the most beautiful winter rose - stamped into crystal grass by bare, narrow feet - set swirling in the water of the fountain by an idle, careless fingertip.
The air changes, imperceptibly so, the whisper of a sinful dream slicing through the bolted glass. With delicate fingers - four-jointed and free of nails - he lifts a small, square book wrapped in the whitest silk from his cloak. He notes down a name, a number, and the quality of the light with a thin, red-leaded pencil. Time enough to cleanse away the swelling rot, and leave the day to those who deserve it.
The night deepens, the silence grows, and he moves out towards the house.
*
Embers flare up as the smoke rolls in - near-liquid, blue-metal tendrils of suppressing drug fill the room. The old man sighs in his chair, feels the pain recede and the night shift on. In the orange half-light his hair is translucent and thin, the lines on his face ragged and deep - carved out by the fight. He holds his crooked, fused fingers together under his chin - waiting, waiting for the dawn and with the first light, rest.
Midnight passes. Frost cracks across the house of oak and glass.
The soothing smoke twists from his pipe, stays a heavy balm in the air.
In the small room he sits, everything focused in to him. The runes, carved into the panelling; the endless shelves of skin-bound books. Every object contained here is a lens - and every movement outside burns through the smoke, through the night, through the pain, the age, and the endless fatigue to him.
The white judge shifts in the silence. It is time.
The old man stands, joints locking, clicking, snapping as he moves.
Over to a small, ebony shelf set by the door.
Closer to a small, ivory book set between guardians of parchment and human skin.
The page falls over and he sees - in delicate, meticulous, red spider hand: a name, a number, and the quality of the night.
The smoke, dry as sand, brittle as bone, swells with tears from paper cheeks. So close, so close now. It was only ever a matter of time. He does not have far to travel tonight.
*
She is beautiful.
As a glass phial of poison is beautiful. As a stillborn baby is beautiful. As a blood-laced sword is beautiful. As a furious tide, a falling moon, a cornered viper, a sliver of broken glass.
As are they, so is she.
But she is disease also - death, pain, a taint on holy soil.
It is well past time.
The white judge silently crosses the room, as much smoke as flesh - white smoke, trailing back into the gardens. The wind picks up, carrying the night in through the glass doors, pushing the oppressive heat of sin back to the source.
His robes flare white - the silk-wrapped book an icy heart under the material, the words within straining towards reality. The red marks eager to be fulfilled, to absolve, to reclaim the light.
She sleeps on as he leans over the bed, his four-knuckled fingers dancing above her brow.
Her skin and hair is as pale, as pure as the face of the moon. He looks within and sees - as he knows - they both have a dark side. Lines, invisible, stretch out from her throughout the house. Black and tense, needles of corruption from her soul.
The blood vessels under that perfect skin rise to the surface, drawn out to his ethereal call.
A net of veins press up behind flesh - across sin-blushed cheeks, over delicate nose, bunched tightly around her sleeping eyes, over smooth lids. The book beats out against his committed robe.
*
A wave of blue-metal smoke shatters the monochrome picture of light and shade. Heat follows, knocking back the winter ice, the frozen faith of the purest white. The old man stands shaking, tired - eyes glazed, narrowed, tearful. In his own house, he stands facing his love - sleeping gently, unaware, innocent - and his hate - eyes brimming with conscripted, consecrated blood, mouth twisted into a welcoming, mocking smile.
The blood vessels fall back down into her skin - she sleeps on.
The judge turns, folding his hands back into his robe, the book pounding a steady reminder: it has been written: it will be so.
The old man squares his shoulders and blinks away the last of the soothing drug.
He is fading - the fight too long now. False judgement against true souls.
Snatched away, snuffed in the night - secretly stolen under pretence of light.
Not tonight, not tonight.
He places his callous fingertips together and pushes as hard as he can. Each joint snaps back in turn - tiny breaks in the silence - until his grey, aged fingers are bent right back, touching the back of each wrist. Blood blooms and flows from the barely-healed joints, dripping down.
But the crimson-black drops do not reach the floor. They collect, in spheres, shaped in the air - twenty perfect spheres of life hanging in the frigid air.
The judge steps away. The spheres follow.
His white robes, the white smoke around his feet, stretches back to the double-doors, out into blackness. He stands longer, the sacrificial blood in his eyes - his celestial sight - calling out against the tainted drops from unclean heart. Measuring, carefully, the similarities in the two faces he sees, the raw exhaustion contained in one, he places a soothing hand on his silk-wrapped heart, and turns.
The white smoke tumbles from the room, sucked into the void of winter and out, over the balcony. A single gossamer tendril remains. It hugs the floor, slowly drifting over - onto the bed - across the sheets. One end touches gently to her forehead, the other to his.
The night is whole, the silence everything. For a second everything is balanced, perfect, settled.
Then the tendril tenses,
And he sees: sees the dark folds the daylight forced away.
A touch, a plan, a blade. A heart, a hold, a bed. Blood, wealth, darkness. A smile, a note, a handshake. Small, pale fingers flipping through his books as he sleeps, making notes, forming shapes in the air. Black eyes, twisted tongues, flames. A final breath.
He sees.
A soft keening fills the room. The wisp of holy smoke disappears.
The noise grows as she sleeps on. All is revealed. Exhaustion washes over.
Images flash by again, he crawls to the door, the screaming, wailing sound forcing blood from his ears, out onto the white rugs, onto thick oak floors. Into the hall his body drags - on broken fingers, with broken heart, blood marking his trail.
By his worn teeth, the key turns in the lock. Sleep calls through the pain, the desperation, the reality. It is still dark, hours from dawn. He has never yet fallen asleep before sunrise.
But maybe he was wrong.
Sleep calls, endless rest, the fight over. Broken, elderly mind left wondering ... wondering ... wondering who has won.
*
Just before dawn the white judge returns. Red writing fades to black. She does not stir.
The fight is over now - long over.
But not won.
Spots of shade still hang over the pure. A world cast in swelling shadow.
He turns to the day, the noise, the colour, the glory of the light.
With no rival, no unholy blood to beat him back, soon all will be white.
Rein daesin. Alma-giudice.
Page:
woOTT
*burp*
Tee-hee. Nice story FFF, just thought I'd ruin the ambience. A little OTT again in places, but that's the effect that you seem to work best with
Tee-hee. Nice story FFF, just thought I'd ruin the ambience. A little OTT again in places, but that's the effect that you seem to work best with
Night. Silence.
Greater both than a simple absence of the opposite. Together, they draw out the deepest, hidden discrepancies in each and every soul. By day, the light smoothes away the bruised creases and the sounds of the living out-sing the gentle keening of a tainted heart.
And so the man of white - the judge - plies out his trade under the sharp, slow-cast void of nightfall. Seeking out the black amongst the innocent trails of white - a twisted echo back against the canvas of the night. The fine, tense string of life and duty - slowly shaken from the well-worn trail and eager to take the purest ones along, deep into dusty tracks of dry, black blood and bitter symphonies.
An infectious evil. Kept in check by a fallen angel - a tireless hunter, keeper of the light.
He crouches tight down to the ground, deep among the brittle plant stems and the ice-shot blooms, waiting for a sign. The gardens are still in the darkness, the greens and yellows beaten back under the moon into delicate silvers hung amongst the black. The smell hangs in the air, the rotting, cloying scent of the tainted. It twists around the gardens, hanging, dripping from the most fragile petals of the most beautiful winter rose - stamped into crystal grass by bare, narrow feet - set swirling in the water of the fountain by an idle, careless fingertip.
The air changes, imperceptibly so, the whisper of a sinful dream slicing through the bolted glass. With delicate fingers - four-jointed and free of nails - he lifts a small, square book wrapped in the whitest silk from his cloak. He notes down a name, a number, and the quality of the light with a thin, red-leaded pencil. Time enough to cleanse away the swelling rot, and leave the day to those who deserve it.
The night deepens, the silence grows, and he moves out towards the house.
*
Embers flare up as the smoke rolls in - near-liquid, blue-metal tendrils of suppressing drug fill the room. The old man sighs in his chair, feels the pain recede and the night shift on. In the orange half-light his hair is translucent and thin, the lines on his face ragged and deep - carved out by the fight. He holds his crooked, fused fingers together under his chin - waiting, waiting for the dawn and with the first light, rest.
Midnight passes. Frost cracks across the house of oak and glass.
The soothing smoke twists from his pipe, stays a heavy balm in the air.
In the small room he sits, everything focused in to him. The runes, carved into the panelling; the endless shelves of skin-bound books. Every object contained here is a lens - and every movement outside burns through the smoke, through the night, through the pain, the age, and the endless fatigue to him.
The white judge shifts in the silence. It is time.
The old man stands, joints locking, clicking, snapping as he moves.
Over to a small, ebony shelf set by the door.
Closer to a small, ivory book set between guardians of parchment and human skin.
The page falls over and he sees - in delicate, meticulous, red spider hand: a name, a number, and the quality of the night.
The smoke, dry as sand, brittle as bone, swells with tears from paper cheeks. So close, so close now. It was only ever a matter of time. He does not have far to travel tonight.
*
She is beautiful.
As a glass phial of poison is beautiful. As a stillborn baby is beautiful. As a blood-laced sword is beautiful. As a furious tide, a falling moon, a cornered viper, a sliver of broken glass.
As are they, so is she.
But she is disease also - death, pain, a taint on holy soil.
It is well past time.
The white judge silently crosses the room, as much smoke as flesh - white smoke, trailing back into the gardens. The wind picks up, carrying the night in through the glass doors, pushing the oppressive heat of sin back to the source.
His robes flare white - the silk-wrapped book an icy heart under the material, the words within straining towards reality. The red marks eager to be fulfilled, to absolve, to reclaim the light.
She sleeps on as he leans over the bed, his four-knuckled fingers dancing above her brow.
Her skin and hair is as pale, as pure as the face of the moon. He looks within and sees - as he knows - they both have a dark side. Lines, invisible, stretch out from her throughout the house. Black and tense, needles of corruption from her soul.
The blood vessels under that perfect skin rise to the surface, drawn out to his ethereal call.
A net of veins press up behind flesh - across sin-blushed cheeks, over delicate nose, bunched tightly around her sleeping eyes, over smooth lids. The book beats out against his committed robe.
*
A wave of blue-metal smoke shatters the monochrome picture of light and shade. Heat follows, knocking back the winter ice, the frozen faith of the purest white. The old man stands shaking, tired - eyes glazed, narrowed, tearful. In his own house, he stands facing his love - sleeping gently, unaware, innocent - and his hate - eyes brimming with conscripted, consecrated blood, mouth twisted into a welcoming, mocking smile.
The blood vessels fall back down into her skin - she sleeps on.
The judge turns, folding his hands back into his robe, the book pounding a steady reminder: it has been written: it will be so.
The old man squares his shoulders and blinks away the last of the soothing drug.
He is fading - the fight too long now. False judgement against true souls.
Snatched away, snuffed in the night - secretly stolen under pretence of light.
Not tonight, not tonight.
He places his callous fingertips together and pushes as hard as he can. Each joint snaps back in turn - tiny breaks in the silence - until his grey, aged fingers are bent right back, touching the back of each wrist. Blood blooms and flows from the barely-healed joints, dripping down.
But the crimson-black drops do not reach the floor. They collect, in spheres, shaped in the air - twenty perfect spheres of life hanging in the frigid air.
The judge steps away. The spheres follow.
His white robes, the white smoke around his feet, stretches back to the double-doors, out into blackness. He stands longer, the sacrificial blood in his eyes - his celestial sight - calling out against the tainted drops from unclean heart. Measuring, carefully, the similarities in the two faces he sees, the raw exhaustion contained in one, he places a soothing hand on his silk-wrapped heart, and turns.
The white smoke tumbles from the room, sucked into the void of winter and out, over the balcony. A single gossamer tendril remains. It hugs the floor, slowly drifting over - onto the bed - across the sheets. One end touches gently to her forehead, the other to his.
The night is whole, the silence everything. For a second everything is balanced, perfect, settled.
Then the tendril tenses,
And he sees: sees the dark folds the daylight forced away.
A touch, a plan, a blade. A heart, a hold, a bed. Blood, wealth, darkness. A smile, a note, a handshake. Small, pale fingers flipping through his books as he sleeps, making notes, forming shapes in the air. Black eyes, twisted tongues, flames. A final breath.
He sees.
A soft keening fills the room. The wisp of holy smoke disappears.
The noise grows as she sleeps on. All is revealed. Exhaustion washes over.
Images flash by again, he crawls to the door, the screaming, wailing sound forcing blood from his ears, out onto the white rugs, onto thick oak floors. Into the hall his body drags - on broken fingers, with broken heart, blood marking his trail.
By his worn teeth, the key turns in the lock. Sleep calls through the pain, the desperation, the reality. It is still dark, hours from dawn. He has never yet fallen asleep before sunrise.
But maybe he was wrong.
Sleep calls, endless rest, the fight over. Broken, elderly mind left wondering ... wondering ... wondering who has won.
*
Just before dawn the white judge returns. Red writing fades to black. She does not stir.
The fight is over now - long over.
But not won.
Spots of shade still hang over the pure. A world cast in swelling shadow.
He turns to the day, the noise, the colour, the glory of the light.
With no rival, no unholy blood to beat him back, soon all will be white.
Rein daesin. Alma-giudice.
Greater both than a simple absence of the opposite. Together, they draw out the deepest, hidden discrepancies in each and every soul. By day, the light smoothes away the bruised creases and the sounds of the living out-sing the gentle keening of a tainted heart.
And so the man of white - the judge - plies out his trade under the sharp, slow-cast void of nightfall. Seeking out the black amongst the innocent trails of white - a twisted echo back against the canvas of the night. The fine, tense string of life and duty - slowly shaken from the well-worn trail and eager to take the purest ones along, deep into dusty tracks of dry, black blood and bitter symphonies.
An infectious evil. Kept in check by a fallen angel - a tireless hunter, keeper of the light.
He crouches tight down to the ground, deep among the brittle plant stems and the ice-shot blooms, waiting for a sign. The gardens are still in the darkness, the greens and yellows beaten back under the moon into delicate silvers hung amongst the black. The smell hangs in the air, the rotting, cloying scent of the tainted. It twists around the gardens, hanging, dripping from the most fragile petals of the most beautiful winter rose - stamped into crystal grass by bare, narrow feet - set swirling in the water of the fountain by an idle, careless fingertip.
The air changes, imperceptibly so, the whisper of a sinful dream slicing through the bolted glass. With delicate fingers - four-jointed and free of nails - he lifts a small, square book wrapped in the whitest silk from his cloak. He notes down a name, a number, and the quality of the light with a thin, red-leaded pencil. Time enough to cleanse away the swelling rot, and leave the day to those who deserve it.
The night deepens, the silence grows, and he moves out towards the house.
*
Embers flare up as the smoke rolls in - near-liquid, blue-metal tendrils of suppressing drug fill the room. The old man sighs in his chair, feels the pain recede and the night shift on. In the orange half-light his hair is translucent and thin, the lines on his face ragged and deep - carved out by the fight. He holds his crooked, fused fingers together under his chin - waiting, waiting for the dawn and with the first light, rest.
Midnight passes. Frost cracks across the house of oak and glass.
The soothing smoke twists from his pipe, stays a heavy balm in the air.
In the small room he sits, everything focused in to him. The runes, carved into the panelling; the endless shelves of skin-bound books. Every object contained here is a lens - and every movement outside burns through the smoke, through the night, through the pain, the age, and the endless fatigue to him.
The white judge shifts in the silence. It is time.
The old man stands, joints locking, clicking, snapping as he moves.
Over to a small, ebony shelf set by the door.
Closer to a small, ivory book set between guardians of parchment and human skin.
The page falls over and he sees - in delicate, meticulous, red spider hand: a name, a number, and the quality of the night.
The smoke, dry as sand, brittle as bone, swells with tears from paper cheeks. So close, so close now. It was only ever a matter of time. He does not have far to travel tonight.
*
She is beautiful.
As a glass phial of poison is beautiful. As a stillborn baby is beautiful. As a blood-laced sword is beautiful. As a furious tide, a falling moon, a cornered viper, a sliver of broken glass.
As are they, so is she.
But she is disease also - death, pain, a taint on holy soil.
It is well past time.
The white judge silently crosses the room, as much smoke as flesh - white smoke, trailing back into the gardens. The wind picks up, carrying the night in through the glass doors, pushing the oppressive heat of sin back to the source.
His robes flare white - the silk-wrapped book an icy heart under the material, the words within straining towards reality. The red marks eager to be fulfilled, to absolve, to reclaim the light.
She sleeps on as he leans over the bed, his four-knuckled fingers dancing above her brow.
Her skin and hair is as pale, as pure as the face of the moon. He looks within and sees - as he knows - they both have a dark side. Lines, invisible, stretch out from her throughout the house. Black and tense, needles of corruption from her soul.
The blood vessels under that perfect skin rise to the surface, drawn out to his ethereal call.
A net of veins press up behind flesh - across sin-blushed cheeks, over delicate nose, bunched tightly around her sleeping eyes, over smooth lids. The book beats out against his committed robe.
*
A wave of blue-metal smoke shatters the monochrome picture of light and shade. Heat follows, knocking back the winter ice, the frozen faith of the purest white. The old man stands shaking, tired - eyes glazed, narrowed, tearful. In his own house, he stands facing his love - sleeping gently, unaware, innocent - and his hate - eyes brimming with conscripted, consecrated blood, mouth twisted into a welcoming, mocking smile.
The blood vessels fall back down into her skin - she sleeps on.
The judge turns, folding his hands back into his robe, the book pounding a steady reminder: it has been written: it will be so.
The old man squares his shoulders and blinks away the last of the soothing drug.
He is fading - the fight too long now. False judgement against true souls.
Snatched away, snuffed in the night - secretly stolen under pretence of light.
Not tonight, not tonight.
He places his callous fingertips together and pushes as hard as he can. Each joint snaps back in turn - tiny breaks in the silence - until his grey, aged fingers are bent right back, touching the back of each wrist. Blood blooms and flows from the barely-healed joints, dripping down.
But the crimson-black drops do not reach the floor. They collect, in spheres, shaped in the air - twenty perfect spheres of life hanging in the frigid air.
The judge steps away. The spheres follow.
His white robes, the white smoke around his feet, stretches back to the double-doors, out into blackness. He stands longer, the sacrificial blood in his eyes - his celestial sight - calling out against the tainted drops from unclean heart. Measuring, carefully, the similarities in the two faces he sees, the raw exhaustion contained in one, he places a soothing hand on his silk-wrapped heart, and turns.
The white smoke tumbles from the room, sucked into the void of winter and out, over the balcony. A single gossamer tendril remains. It hugs the floor, slowly drifting over - onto the bed - across the sheets. One end touches gently to her forehead, the other to his.
The night is whole, the silence everything. For a second everything is balanced, perfect, settled.
Then the tendril tenses,
And he sees: sees the dark folds the daylight forced away.
A touch, a plan, a blade. A heart, a hold, a bed. Blood, wealth, darkness. A smile, a note, a handshake. Small, pale fingers flipping through his books as he sleeps, making notes, forming shapes in the air. Black eyes, twisted tongues, flames. A final breath.
He sees.
A soft keening fills the room. The wisp of holy smoke disappears.
The noise grows as she sleeps on. All is revealed. Exhaustion washes over.
Images flash by again, he crawls to the door, the screaming, wailing sound forcing blood from his ears, out onto the white rugs, onto thick oak floors. Into the hall his body drags - on broken fingers, with broken heart, blood marking his trail.
By his worn teeth, the key turns in the lock. Sleep calls through the pain, the desperation, the reality. It is still dark, hours from dawn. He has never yet fallen asleep before sunrise.
But maybe he was wrong.
Sleep calls, endless rest, the fight over. Broken, elderly mind left wondering ... wondering ... wondering who has won.
*
Just before dawn the white judge returns. Red writing fades to black. She does not stir.
The fight is over now - long over.
But not won.
Spots of shade still hang over the pure. A world cast in swelling shadow.
He turns to the day, the noise, the colour, the glory of the light.
With no rival, no unholy blood to beat him back, soon all will be white.
Rein daesin. Alma-giudice.
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