la luna incostante
Intentionally ambiguous as to Italy v. Camp setting. Either short drabble or one-person scene from Camp backdated to a few days ago. :|b;
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Late night, damp air, stars not as jewels or pearls or silver-edged birds but as cold space in a dark velvet. They were the gaps between stitches, glimpses of light that shone through the waft and weave of fabric. The night was cold and Cesare ignored the prickling on his bare neck, the breeze brushing through his hair like intimate fingers, the dark curls that lay on his shoulders as he drew his left leg up and folded his arms on it. He rested his chin in their crook and looked out over the small collection of buildings and low plant life, broken up by the occasional tree reaching up, naked and black, against the horizon.
He was a shadow in the night as well. Dark doublet, dark hair, blue eyes shaded like the sky. Dressed all in black, he needed light to stand in contrast to, to struggle against, to tear down as a corrupt and false gilding. Not la lux beatissima, but… He furrowed his brow, aware of the winding nature of these thoughts. He was tired, and it was making him introspective. Or vain. It was hard to tell the two apart sometimes.
A cloud passed overhead but he barely noticed. There was no moon for it to block out and dim, and his thoughts flickered through the ordering of the heavenly bodies. That had been the excuse he had offered to the empty room as he had gotten dressed in the middle of the night and slipped quietly out of the building, being careful not to waken any of its other inhabitants. No moon, where Dante said the inconsistent stayed. A glance could find him Mars for the valorous and Venus for the passionate, unless they were covered by the trailing cloud.
And would he count as passionate or lustful, valorous or proud? What an arbitrary twist of words, a prophecy written and sanctified when the end was already known. With a predetermined path set out as orthodox any way not taken became a heresy, a sin into potential good. There was no moon in the sky and he felt it heavy on earth, weighing him down in that lowest heavenly circle, daring him to step beyond its boundaries and either slide down the plush fabric into further folds of shadow, deep valleys of despair, or fall through the waft as through the eye of the needle into the brilliant light.
What was the light? And did it need him to rage against it? Just as the dusk needed the day to fall upon, cool and soothing, he wanted to believe his urge to stare down the light was valid, that it was not tricks of his eyes that caused him to see demons in it, burned onto his sight so that when he turned away from it they hovered and pulsated before his face. Taunting, teasing, fading slowly from view when he left Rome and returning in full force when he was confronted once more with that blinding light in the university-in the candles held before his face by any number of individuals, whether knowingly or not. They were the ones who lettered the texts, who, with sharp lines of ink on bare paper, condemned ideas to become mere dogma. They framed the sacred and let the heretical fall away, slapping away any hand that attempted to draw forth its hidden benefits.
Cesare frowned. He must be more tired than he had thought. Giving in temporarily to the lure of the moon, he fell backwards, lying in the grass, damp with dew, and stretching his legs out to their full extent. What an annoying lunar pull. His thoughts drifted back and forth with the tides, jumping from one possible choice to the next, roaring up on the rocky shore and slinking, momentarily defeated, away.
From his new position on his back, he could better see the choices laid up before him and for a moment he felt the metaphor he had crafted to be literal and he had to stop himself from gripping the grass to prevent himself from falling into the night. He turned his thoughts instead on a memory, a few moments of time several years before, when he had stood in a room with his younger sister and looked up at the ceiling painted with stars.
“God is in the heavens above those brightly shining stars, is he not?”
“Yes… In the heavens, there are the sun, the moon… and the innumerable stars.”
A faint smile came to his lips as he lay in the field, remembering how Lucrezia had stared at him, surprised at his unwillingness to confirm her question. At the time he had been twelve and already too familiar with the light to automatically assign sanctity to its glow. No, there was no need to doubt himself. The time for that had passed. The smile lingered on his face as he stood, brushing himself off, and with the absence of the moon no chance passerby would see how bitterly he tasted it or with what sense of determined self-satisfaction he angled his shadow to loom behind him in dark legacy as he faced the light.
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Late night, damp air, stars not as jewels or pearls or silver-edged birds but as cold space in a dark velvet. They were the gaps between stitches, glimpses of light that shone through the waft and weave of fabric. The night was cold and Cesare ignored the prickling on his bare neck, the breeze brushing through his hair like intimate fingers, the dark curls that lay on his shoulders as he drew his left leg up and folded his arms on it. He rested his chin in their crook and looked out over the small collection of buildings and low plant life, broken up by the occasional tree reaching up, naked and black, against the horizon.
He was a shadow in the night as well. Dark doublet, dark hair, blue eyes shaded like the sky. Dressed all in black, he needed light to stand in contrast to, to struggle against, to tear down as a corrupt and false gilding. Not la lux beatissima, but… He furrowed his brow, aware of the winding nature of these thoughts. He was tired, and it was making him introspective. Or vain. It was hard to tell the two apart sometimes.
A cloud passed overhead but he barely noticed. There was no moon for it to block out and dim, and his thoughts flickered through the ordering of the heavenly bodies. That had been the excuse he had offered to the empty room as he had gotten dressed in the middle of the night and slipped quietly out of the building, being careful not to waken any of its other inhabitants. No moon, where Dante said the inconsistent stayed. A glance could find him Mars for the valorous and Venus for the passionate, unless they were covered by the trailing cloud.
And would he count as passionate or lustful, valorous or proud? What an arbitrary twist of words, a prophecy written and sanctified when the end was already known. With a predetermined path set out as orthodox any way not taken became a heresy, a sin into potential good. There was no moon in the sky and he felt it heavy on earth, weighing him down in that lowest heavenly circle, daring him to step beyond its boundaries and either slide down the plush fabric into further folds of shadow, deep valleys of despair, or fall through the waft as through the eye of the needle into the brilliant light.
What was the light? And did it need him to rage against it? Just as the dusk needed the day to fall upon, cool and soothing, he wanted to believe his urge to stare down the light was valid, that it was not tricks of his eyes that caused him to see demons in it, burned onto his sight so that when he turned away from it they hovered and pulsated before his face. Taunting, teasing, fading slowly from view when he left Rome and returning in full force when he was confronted once more with that blinding light in the university-in the candles held before his face by any number of individuals, whether knowingly or not. They were the ones who lettered the texts, who, with sharp lines of ink on bare paper, condemned ideas to become mere dogma. They framed the sacred and let the heretical fall away, slapping away any hand that attempted to draw forth its hidden benefits.
Cesare frowned. He must be more tired than he had thought. Giving in temporarily to the lure of the moon, he fell backwards, lying in the grass, damp with dew, and stretching his legs out to their full extent. What an annoying lunar pull. His thoughts drifted back and forth with the tides, jumping from one possible choice to the next, roaring up on the rocky shore and slinking, momentarily defeated, away.
From his new position on his back, he could better see the choices laid up before him and for a moment he felt the metaphor he had crafted to be literal and he had to stop himself from gripping the grass to prevent himself from falling into the night. He turned his thoughts instead on a memory, a few moments of time several years before, when he had stood in a room with his younger sister and looked up at the ceiling painted with stars.
“God is in the heavens above those brightly shining stars, is he not?”
“Yes… In the heavens, there are the sun, the moon… and the innumerable stars.”
A faint smile came to his lips as he lay in the field, remembering how Lucrezia had stared at him, surprised at his unwillingness to confirm her question. At the time he had been twelve and already too familiar with the light to automatically assign sanctity to its glow. No, there was no need to doubt himself. The time for that had passed. The smile lingered on his face as he stood, brushing himself off, and with the absence of the moon no chance passerby would see how bitterly he tasted it or with what sense of determined self-satisfaction he angled his shadow to loom behind him in dark legacy as he faced the light.