The Saint and the Priestess

"In nomine amoris"

tw // religious imagery for the aesthetics

'Our Lady, Saint Adora of Eternia, First daughter of the House of Grayskull and Hero of the Realm. And her beloved, Lady Catrina, Priestess of the House of Grayskull and Reverent Daughter of Halfmoon'

🏵️

The temple is quiet. It is wrapped in that kind of silence that feels suspended in time, when only the cracking of the candles showering everything in golden light and the fall of ashes from the incense lamps are the only things to be heard along the shadows.

The chapel drips in richness, walls of gold covered by tapestries of silver threads and embroidered jewels. It is cold and it is dark here, everywhere except where the altar rises, from floor to roof with its open domes where the skylights allow a single copper strand of daylight to fall inside.

The goddess figure is in the middle of it all, a tall and magnificent statue made of materials that don't exist in the world anymore. Shimmering as starlight itself and crowned by ever blooming flowers, there are mirrors placed in circles around her body, reflecting every angle and crevice of the chapel like the pages of a hidden bok reflect the memories of sins and history.

From the open domes above her, yellow and orange petals saunter gently towards the carpeted floor of the temple, brought inside by the cold breeze outside, making their own kind of dances in front of the goddess before they too rest on the steps that lead to the altar.

Her daughter kneels on those very same steps. Her child, not of blood nor of flesh yet heiress of her divinity. A mortal, yes, but so much more. Beholder of miracles. Healer and warrior and martyr.

A Saint.

She is as golden as the flower petals that fall over her sun poured hair and back; her hands, battered in old scars and temple oils, joined as kisses inside a prayer void of words. There are lines as star trails on her face and her lips are as pink as ripe peaches and her eyes reflect all the wisdom and the sorrow of the statue above her head. Poor thing, born blessed and condemned to the incense weight of a world's sorrow. Held as a monument, hard and enduring, but never as a human, tender and breakable.

Poor child, poor teen, poor woman. Unreachable divinity. Saint of her land whose destiny was written for her before she could even speak. Whose has walked among the footprints of thousands like her before. Who has fallen in love. Her only rebellion, her only freedom. The palm of her lover against coal.

The Saint can hear her walk across the long corridor that leads to the altar, her feet bare against the cold mosaic, barely making a sound at all, as bird's feathered wings during the early morning. She is a different kind of quiet than the chapel and the Saint. Her silence is not a mist over the graveyard but dawn on empty meadows. She is silent on her steps but loud on the heart drumming inside her chest when she stops right behind the Saint, staring at her holy golden hair with her sea glass eyes.

The Saint has her eyes closed, forehead leaned over her joined hands, but she smiles, like a caress shared in secrecy, still guarded by the darkness behind her eyelids when she speaks.

"Shall I concede you a miracle too, my lady?" The Saint questions, her voice barely a murmur but clear as a singing bell inside the echo of the chapel. For her, whose life hinges from tearing herself apart for others, the offering is easy. Easy as dying.

Yet the person behind her does not sob or weep or throw herself at her knees as she begs for the Saint for something impossible. Instead, the person almost seems to consider the question, weighing the meaning of the offering before humming softly.

"You already have," the woman beside the Saint says. A confession that holds all the meaning of the world between them, where the small distance apart is an unbreakable ocean.

The Saint never drops her smile, this time raising her head towards the open dome above their heads, welcoming the petals brushing the skin of her cheeks. She can smell her, all over her skin, stronger than copal and redder than blood smeared on a sword.

"Coming back alive is no miracle," the Saint says, her hair falling free behind her back, twinkling with the angel coins braided there. "It is only a part of my devotion."

"To whom?"

"To you," the Saint tilts her head to the side, finally holding gold and sapphire as stained glass between her eyes, "my love."

Her beloved smiles, white pearls as fangs inside her red mouth from underneath the purple shimmer of the thin veil that covers her from head to toe. She is dressed as she is, a holy priestess of the chapel that carries the Saint's name, in the simple tunic that falls from her lean shoulders to her ankles, held in place by the rich silk of ribbons around her waist and wrists. There is kohl on her eyes and halfmoon opals on her forehead and all her warm colored hair falls free down her back, curling behind the soft fur of her ears. Her fingers are tinted in red powder as are the bare soles of her feet, knuckles and wrists tangled in rosaries made of sea glass beads and star shaped bones.

She walks closer to the Saint, kneeling on the carpet of the steps too, her hands tangled in the same braid as hers, leaning her forehead in an empty prayer too. They remain in silence for a while, filled only by the still breeze inside the chapel and the sun making its way over the dome, the warmth of the bodies spilling inside each other's bones even when they are not touching at all.

"You are quiet today," the priestess whispers, breathing softly through her nose. The Saint hums, pensive, tilting her head towards her as moons follow the planet and planets follow the sun.

"Isn't silence an attribute for prayer?"

"It is." The priestess it's looking at her, her praying stant forgotten. There is no need for it, not between them. Not when they pray devotion to each other in a thousand different ways. "Not from you though, Adora."

Adora sighs, the fresh feeling of her own name on her ears falling like rain over dry earth over her. Not Saint nor daughter of the goddess but Adora, just Adora for her beloved, who knows her the best. She is smiling when Adora looks at her, when she leans her forehead against hers and breathes deeply against the faint veil. Adora can feel the shape of her heart lips against hers, so far away still from one another.

"I missed you," her beloved murmurs and she smells like sandalwood and her hands are rough with candle wax when they hold each other.

"I missed you too," Adora's voice is harsh and low, hurtful after weeks of screaming orders to legions, like mountain stone against the smooth surface of river pebbles. She takes her beloved's hand between hers, resting her palm over scarred cheek, soaking in her presence for the first time after so long torn apart. "You're cold."

"It's been a harsh winter," for the first time, Adora notices how low and tired her beloved's voice is, always melodic and unique as a lavender bloom in a snowstorm. Adora frowns, pressing a kiss over her open palm.

"Do you want me to…?"

"No"

"Catra," Adora exhales the name of her lover and it sounds like a choir and like begging, the only word she ever wishes to speak for the rest of her life. "Of what use is it to be able to heal, to do miracles, then?"

"I know it hurts you, I know what it takes from you, Adora," Catra cuts her off and her tone is suddenly high and sharp, shaking in the end with passion. "If you are to carry that pain it won't be from me."

The Saint carries all the weight of the world. She heals the broken and fights among butchery on kings and queens' names. She tears herself apart to fill in the cracks of the kingdom and martyres herself in their name. She is tall and strong, sturdy as the minerals of the statue on the altar, quiet as an abnegation and magnificent as a newborn star. She is untouchable, unreachable, unbreakable. Merciful. Holy.

Adora is smaller. She is the same, tall and strong, but she is soft. Soft as moth's cocoons and the velvet of their wings. Soft as morning moss covered in dew. Soft as a bruise in tender skin. Soft as a kiss on torn lips. She is soft and she is imperfect, loud as an explosion in the sky, messy as a hurricane. A cracking fire. She is full of anger and full of happiness, full of mirth and joy,  full of chaos. She hurts. She hates. She bleeds. She loves. She is Human.

Pale and battered cheeks turned red under the touch of lips. Open wounds closed by needle and thread, unable to heal by themselves, wrapped in herbs by even softer hands. Blood whased out of armor and clothes replaced by something gentler, poorer, more honest. Stripped of all the fire and the responsibility placed over her chest, undone as the knot that keeps in place the tight binds around her breasts. A bloom without thorns. Instead of wrath she exhales. Instead of healing she laughs. Instead of breaking she loves.

The world has a Saint but Catra has Adora.

"I adore you," Catra says, cradling Adora's scarred chin between her palms, gentle but unyielding. The beads of her rosaries are cold at the touch, twinkling with each other, but her body is warm. "Do you hear me? I adore you. There are just so many wounds you can take for others. I'd never wish you harm and I'll help you carry you if you insist on taking the pain upon your back. But do not, do not, ask me to take that from you too. Not me."

Catra exhales, in and out of her chest, an intake of breath leaving in clouds of thin mist, shaken and frail against the cold of the chapel. There is a tremble on her shoulders below the soft layers of her clothes, hidden away below fabric and shadows. Adora rests her own palm against her cheek, pushing back the shimmering veil just so their skins can brush together finally. It's sweet and hesitating as if it were the first time they were touching each other. As if they were their younger selves, sharing hidden kisses under the aflamed embers behind the altar; or older, sneaking touches in necks and waists in quiet rooms bathed in copal; and softer, worshiping over silk embedded in blessed oiled below stained glass windows. They've made of each other their temples, devoted to each other above the holiness of the world around them. And the sacrificial blood never dries and the candle wax that has gazed upon their sins never melts but they've given their lives to each other in every devastating way possible. In ways where, even if the world tears them apart and away into pieces, it'll never truly have them.

"We protect each other. Not one to the other. Both" Catra says and it sounds like a vow, ancient as all the ages of the world and as strong as the pull of the sun, "That's who we are"

"I'm yours."

"You're beautiful."

"I'm everywhere around you," a kiss, pressed on the sweet corner of a golden eye, eyelashes as butterfly wings beating against each other, caresses below a veil of secrecy, "I'm in the breeze that tangles your hair," a kiss, placed over the bridge of a nose scattered in constellations of freckles, "I'm in the willow tree where you lay to rest," a kiss against curve of a cheek and the depths of a jaw, teeth brushing skin, "I'm in the earth that cradles your feet," a kiss, on the secret angle of parted lips, barely a strand of light away, "I'm here, in you. You've never been alone."

A kiss, on shared lips. Lingering with cold tea brew and ashes from embers. Lips parted and pressed together, embroidered in a kind of tapestry only they know, each thread and knot soaked in wetness from blessed waters. Soft velvet and warm tongues against roofs of mouths. Fingertips over waist clothed in golden armor and neck cradled in soft fabric. Cold noses touching below the secrecy of a veil.

Under the frail light of the temple's dome, two women kiss. Saint and Priestess. Temples of the other. Prayer and miracle. Only loves. Dearest of each other's hearts. Halves of souls.

Lovers.

🏵️

’ … but her beloved died young when the Saint was away, fighting in one more king’s foolish war, and it broke her heart.

And the temples burned down to the ground and the empire filled with unholy blood and the Saint became a shadow, a serpent; a void, a banshee, an onryō; a bringer of death, a harbinger of devastation. A demon.

She slayed and cut down, ripped flesh and bone and tore apart in bloodcurdling wrath. She was neither human nor holy blood anymore, posioned by rage against the world, cursed by the sorrow inside her bones. Until there was nothing else anymore and the world fell silent.

It is said the beloved rests in a tomb without name at the feet of a willow. And her body never grew old and never rotted away, surrounded by moss and petrichor. It is said that the saint lays to rest on the ground next to her, still breathing fire and smoke, immortal or mortal or nothing at all, only awaiting for the time to join her to come.

And thus, she wanders across the empty fields, weeping, and her tears would cure every sickness in the world but the one that had taken her lover … ‘

Author’s Note: Hi! ✨ So you’ll see, I found this amazing cover of Take me to Church, then I went to a magic town and visited tons of old churches because I love doing photography of old towns, then I saw Blue Eye Samurai and then this bad boy was born >:3 Gotta say, to be something this small I’m actually so very proud of it. I truly missed writing poetry. I got inspired in doing a small tale like story and trying to convey all of it into a very short writing. I’m not sure to do more elaborated writing for it, short pieces probably and concept art totally, but I really wanted to write something truly heart wrenching and, for once, not give it a happy ending [please forgive me, it just has a lot of potential]

Questions about the story building? Please leave them in the comments ✨