written: september 2025 | minorly modified: october 2025
authors note: i dont remember what i listened or thought to to make this, but i was filled by this feeling and imaginary memory of what my original character barney moore would explain how he found tenebris again. some notes:
barney is immortal. he drank from a spring that granted him eternal life.
Shadows are the thoughts and speeches echoed into the shadows, creating an echo and imitation of life. usually appears as what they imitate, like a human or cow. they are not always sentient. tenebris is an exception.
read this in a texan country accent.
the night after we found eachother, we spoke and shared stories until we realized the sun was rising. i spoke of my journey to the eternal spring and my journey to to the east.
... i didnt speak of how much it pained to go on that journey. how many days i was deeply discouraged. how many days i wished raising my shotgun to my head worked, or wishing the bullet that bandit shot found home in my abdomen instead of spitting it back out.
instead i searched for the complete joy and admiration i heard in his laugh. really, all i wanted in the end, was to make him proud. he was the first person to give me it. it was so lovely to hear his voice again.
you know his voice changed? it was still the same comfort i heard on humid nights, but it was older. deeper. like he grew up hardened too.
the night he disappeared and left me those words, i had believed i would spend even a century just to spend 10 more years with him.
but my journey hardened me. it held my naivety high above my head out of reach in mockery. i wont lie, the second half, i felt only half-motivated to look for him. i felt deeply angry at him some nights. i hadn't seen him in 80 years and he still ached in my mind like a bruise wanting to be kissed. i felt i was in love with a dead man.
and it was funny, the day i found him. it was the day i least expected it. i felt no kept-on light in the back of my head thinking 'you think you'll find him today?'
no, that day i expected to get my groceries, count my money, and go to the farmer's market by train. i expected to fall asleep at night reading my book and wake up by alarm.
i wasnt even sure if it was him or not. yes, i shouldve assumed that the now tall Shadow standing in broad daylight was him, but i still felt this inhibiting fear that it wasn't him. still, with my mind barely catching up with my feet, i walked up to that Shadow and asked him his name.
instead of staring at me in silence like when we were children, he turned and met my face and greeted me with confidence, like it was something he rehearsed. but he stopped the minute he saw my face. the closest way i could describe it was someone yelled "cut" to his audition. it felt like the musical he was acting in stopped and he realized who he was singing to.
then, barely audible over the crowd beside the train station, in the softest ive ever heard his voice, he said my name.
i think to him too, that was the first time he saw me cry.