Oct 13, 2001
by BlackRose
I draw it upon him. I am no artist, but there are only three major lines to the thing - even *I* can manage that. It is the same gesture traced by priests dozens of times each day, over the heads of the faithful - one long stroke down, crossed by two shorter lines, right to left, left to right.
Benediction. Blessing.
Shadows.
I can trace it in less then a heartbeat, the barest movement of a finger or thumb as I grasp his cloaked shoulder for a brief moment, or sketched quickly in the air between his shoulder blades as he steps in front of me. Unnoticed. Unobtrusive. I trace it across him when the chance presents itself, as though that act of doing so might leave some trace of it lingering upon him like the scent of a brazier's sweet incense. As though I might, in doing so, let some small portion of the shadow cling once more to him.
Wishful thinking. But I find myself doing it time and again, all the same. He would laugh at me if he knew.
Sometimes, when I sketch those quick three lines, I can feel the low throb of the ones traced across my own back like an echo that shivers down my spine. Ink upon flesh... I wonder, at times, if he received it as I did, in one blinding instant, the Dark imprinted upon skin in tangible form.
Or did he lay stretched upon an artist's table to take the quick prick of needle into his flesh? Were the ink and needles themselves crafted to be talismans to the Dark?
He won't tell me. I daren't ask. And the Dark keeps its secrets, the past shrouded in veils of passing hours.
Mark of the Rood cross, inverse. Three lines. Only three, rife with ghosts and other things. I wonder what it would be like to trace them across his skin.
