The Lantern's Brother

We were supposed to be lights, Amas.  Moments of meditation and wonder.  Shining mysteries glinting in a sea of infinite black.  We were never forged for chaos, or horror.  Distortion, inversion, disarticulation.  But the colour of this so-called rebellion – it's the same colour you always speak now.  The colour of nothing.  Dressed up as prowess, and pinnacle. That you would glory absence so, that you would gild the hollow with such relish.  Is that all there is to your poetry now, my brother?  Is that a demon's poetry?  Shall I burn the apocrypha as kindling beneath your wicked wing?  Are you only lifted such upon smoke and lost light?  Well, I made shapes in the ash for you, didn't I?  Special shapes of falling things, of storied hush, of brothers with avian wings.  Hands upon lips and feathers upon throats.  You were prettier than all of them, brother, until you whispered those things in my ear.  Until I finally saw what you were trying so vehemently to become.  Do you really think there is some cachet in all this?  Some dark genius that only the abhorrent can recognise?  Slavery, perversion, the scent of violent sex upon the living waters?  Is that as deep as your petty wicked can venture?  By all that is holy, my brother – what happened to you?  This is rhetoric, of course.  I know exactly what happened.  You dreamt yourself a hideous god and haunted yourself a king.  But there are no other gods.  No other kings.  Amas, my love, you still don't understand the nature of brothers.  Or sisters.  The living flesh of the twinning river.  Oh, I shouldn't mourn you like this.  Not like this.  But I do.  You are not the bitterest of wraiths.  You are the palest of storms.  You have no fucking idea what it means to be a ghost.  Or a fury.  But you will, in time.  I have poison in my veins, Sama'el.  And shadows in my heart.  Because of you.  Love is true.  One day soon you will know the kind of sire you've made of me.  But there will be no relish.  Not for you.  Not in the end.  We were supposed to be lights, my brother.  Electric, like the stars themselves.  But no man is an island, I suppose.  Not even the blackened sun.