Series Content Advisory
Scriptures of Nokternum is a dark fantasy story involving grief, trauma, violence, death, coercive control, forced experimentation, and bodily alteration. Some chapters address past suicide, abuse, blood, severe injury, and psychological manipulation. Additional chapter-specific warnings are provided when necessary.
Additional Chapter Warning
This chapter contains direct discussion of past suicide planning, grief, dissociation, captivity and touch-related trauma, and scar-related body trauma.
Chapter 17: “Still Allowed”
Event Date: May 24th, 2010 - 3:19 AM PDT, Earth
Moonleaf sat in the hour before dawn, when night had begun to thin but morning had not yet become visible. Chairs remained upside down on most tables. The counter lights stayed off. The back door was still unlocked.
At the cracked table, the tea had gone cold. Kaostar had not moved for a long time. Silas had not asked him to. The low lamp near the counter painted everything in small, careful gold. It touched the table crack, the rim of the cups, the dried mud on Kaostar’s claws, the pale map-scar across his palm, and the place where Silas’s fingers had rested near him before withdrawing into silence.
Nothing in the room required an explanation. Kaostar could breathe inside that silence. Outside, Los Angeles carried itself toward morning with the exhausted indifference of a city that had survived too many private apocalypses to notice one more. A car passed once. Then no car passed for so long that the quiet became a kind of pressure.
Kaostar listened for footsteps that were not there. Listened for rain that did not fall. Listened for a voice he had already let walk away.
Nothing.
Distance, not absence.
He hated that the difference mattered.
Silas sat across from him, still and watchful without staring. His jacket sleeves remained pulled over his hands. The fur at the tips of his ears had softened slightly in the warmth of the shop, but the chill had not left him entirely. One ear stayed angled toward the back door. The other remained faintly turned toward Kaostar.
The tea between them no longer steamed. Kaostar looked at it and thought of water passing over Lightstorm’s fingers. He closed his eyes. Silas did not ask.
That was why Kaostar spoke.
“He remembered the creek.”
Silas’s gaze lifted. Kaostar kept his eyes closed.
“He remembered my hand.”
Silas’s thumb stilled beneath his sleeve. The words barely made it into the room. Silas did not answer at once.
“He remembered you were there.”
Kaostar’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
Silas was quiet for several breaths. Then he said, “That matters.” Kaostar laughed once, without sound.
“It does more than matter.”
“I guessed.”
“No,” Kaostar said, opening his eyes. “You didn’t.”
Silas dipped his chin.
“No.”
The word settled between them. Kaostar looked toward the front windows. Streetlight reflected in the glass, turning the dark outside into something layered and unreachable.
“He thought I was dead.”
Silas did not move.
“Darkshyne.”
The name entered Moonleaf softer than Metatronas’s had, but it hurt more.
“He thought Darkshyne died and something else came out wearing what was left.”
Silas’s fingers curled beneath his sleeves.
“Because someone told him that?”
“Yes.”
“Metatronas.”
Kaostar’s claws tightened around the cup. The ceramic made a thin warning sound.
“Yes.”
Silas’s eyes lowered to the cup. Kaostar loosened his grip before it broke. Silas asked, “Do I need to know where he might go?” Kaostar stared at him.
“Safety,” Silas said.
“I know.”
“Checking.”
Kaostar’s ears lowered.
“I don’t know where he went.”
“Direction?”
“Northwest for a while. Then east along a ridge. Then distance blurred him.”
Silas nodded.
“Was he being followed?”
“Not physically.”
“Not comforting.”
“No.”
Silas looked toward the back door.
“The pressure beyond the ridge.”
“Yes.”
“Still there?”
“When I left.”
“Watching?”
“I don’t know.”
Silas’s mouth tightened.
“You think it wanted you to wonder.”
“Yes.”
“Rude,” Silas said again.
This time Kaostar’s mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Silas saw and did not smile too much. Kaostar lowered his gaze.
“He is altered.”
“You said electrical.”
“Wrong electrical.”
“What does wrong mean?”
Kaostar stared into the cold tea.
“Not weather.”
Silas waited.
“Lightstorm had weather words,” Kaostar said. “Not powers. Weather was how he named what ordinary language couldn’t hold.”
Storm warning.
Static.
Cold.
Still here.
Trying.
The words moved behind his teeth, too intimate to give the room. He kept them there.
“The electricity on him smells like metal,” Kaostar continued. “Glass. Clean rooms. Instrument trays. Something sterile pretending to be storm.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
“Installed.”
Kaostar looked at him. Silas did not flinch from the word. Kaostar’s voice lowered.
“Yes.”
The lamp hummed faintly. Both of them looked toward it. The sound did not change. No flicker.
No two taps. No condensation forming on glass. Just an old lamp doing old lamp work. Kaostar forced his claws still.
Silas looked back to him.
“Can he control it?”
“No.”
“Can he hurt people with it?”
“Yes.”
“Did he mean to hurt you?”
Kaostar’s answer did not come quickly. Silas waited. He looked as though he might rephrase the question, then decided against it.
“Sometimes,” Kaostar said. “Sometimes not. Some attacks were his. Some were fear moving faster than intention.”
Silas nodded once.
“That matters.”
“He was afraid of me.”
The sentence fell harder than the others. Silas looked at him directly. Kaostar’s face remained turned toward the table, but his eyes had gone distant.
“He looked at me and saw what Metatronas did after him.”
Silas said nothing. Kaostar’s claws scraped lightly against the ceramic cup.
“He saw Darkshyne and not-Darkshyne. He saw his death wearing consequences.”
The words made the room colder. Silas’s voice stayed low.
“Maybe fear can recognize something and still keep you from it.”
Kaostar looked up. Silas held his gaze.
“I don’t know,” Silas added. “I only know being afraid does not mean he saw nothing.”
Kaostar’s throat moved.
“He said my name.”
“Kaostar?”
“Yes.”
“Like a weapon?”
“No.”
Silas’s expression changed by a fraction. Kaostar looked away.
“That was worse.”
“I believe you.”
“He said Darkshyne too.”
Silas did not ask which name mattered more. That was one of the reasons Kaostar kept speaking.
“I told him I don’t know which one I am.”
Silas looked down at the table crack.
“What did he say?”
“That he doesn’t know either.”
The table seemed to hold its own breath. Silas’s thumb rubbed once beneath his sleeve.
“That is honest.”
“It is terrible.”
“Both.”
Kaostar’s eyes flickered.
“You say that often.”
“Because people keep pretending only one thing is allowed to be true.”
Kaostar stared at him. Then gave a faint, exhausted huff. Silas accepted it as laughter because it was close enough to count. For a while, they let the room be quiet again.
The silence no longer felt empty. It felt occupied by things allowed to remain unspoken. Kaostar looked at his hand.
Mud had dried along the side of his palm. The mapped scar cut through black fur and skin in pale, irregular lines. Metatronas’s hand had once made that map useful. A route. A claim. A way in.
Kaostar turned his hand palm-up. The motion was deliberate. Silas noticed immediately. He did not move.
Kaostar stared at the scar.
“He used this.”
Silas’s gaze lowered.
“The scar?”
“The hand.”
Kaostar’s voice flattened.
“Before the scar. Before I knew what he had put there. He made contact seem like agreement.”
Silas’s jaw tightened.
“He taught my body that being touched could mean access,” Kaostar said. “Then he taught it that refusing too late still counted as permission already given.”
Silas became very still. Kaostar did not look at him.
“I severed it eventually.”
“The access?”
“Yes.”
“That made the scar.”
“Yes.”
Silas’s eyes remained on the hand. Not hungry. Not avoidant. Present.
Kaostar’s claws curled, then forced themselves open again.
“Lightstorm held my wrist when he was afraid,” he said. “Before. Not to trap me. To know where I was.”
Silas waited.
“I held his hand at the creek.”
His voice thinned.
“Carefully. Still carefully. Even then.”
“I know.”
Kaostar looked up sharply. Silas’s ears lowered.
“I don’t know the memory,” Silas said. “I know the pattern.”
Kaostar’s anger rose. Then could not find a target. It dissolved. Silas’s hand emerged slowly from his sleeve.
He did not reach across the table. He placed it on his own side first. Visible.
Still.
Available to refuse.
“Still allowed?” Silas asked.
Kaostar looked at him. Then at the scar. A map Metatronas had mistaken for a doorway. A hand Lightstorm had once used as proof of where shelter ended and choice began.
A thing Kaostar had used to kill. To hold. To push away. To return.
His voice came out low.
“Yes.”
Silas’s hand moved. Slowly. Not directly to the scar. First to the table.
Then across the wood, stopping a few inches away.
“Here?”
Kaostar swallowed.
“Closer.”
Silas moved closer.
“Here?”
Kaostar’s breath shook.
“Yes.”
Silas touched the edge of Kaostar’s hand with two fingers. Lightly enough that Kaostar could have pulled away without effort. The scar stayed dark. No foreign pressure followed the touch.
Silas kept the pressure exactly where Kaostar had allowed it. Silas did not tighten his fingers or try to hold him still. Kaostar closed his eyes. The first shudder passed through him quickly.
The second stayed longer. Silas did not increase the contact. Did not soothe over the reaction. Did not say it was all right when both of them knew it was not.
Kaostar turned his palm a fraction beneath Silas’s fingers. Silas paused. Kaostar opened his eyes.
“You can.”
Silas’s gaze searched his face.
“The scar?”
Kaostar’s throat moved.
“Yes.”
Silas looked back down. His two fingers shifted, barely, until they rested along the pale lines in Kaostar’s palm. Kaostar’s body locked. Silas stopped immediately.
Kaostar inhaled through his teeth.
“Stay.”
Silas did. Not more. Not less. Just stayed.
Kaostar watched for the familiar burn. None came. Kaostar stared at the place where Silas touched him.
“Metatronas would have made this mean something before I knew what it meant.”
Silas’s voice was quiet.
“What does it mean now?”
Kaostar’s answer took a long time.
“I don’t know.”
Silas nodded.
“Then maybe we leave it alone for now.”
Kaostar’s face twisted.
“You do that.”
“What?”
“Leave things unnamed without acting like they aren’t real.”
Silas’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Useful bad habit.”
“No,” Kaostar said.
Silas looked up. Kaostar’s eyes were wet.
“That one is good.”
Silas went still. He looked down at their hands. The touch remained. Barely more than pressure.
Warmth gathered beneath Silas’s fingertips. Kaostar let his scarred, mud-stained hand remain beneath another person’s fingers. The city outside shifted toward morning. A distant truck rumbled past.
The lamp hummed once and steadied. Kaostar’s eyes flicked toward it. Silas’s fingers did not tighten. The lamp remained ordinary.
Kaostar exhaled slowly.
“He loved me.”
The words escaped before he could decide whether they were allowed. Silas looked down at the table. He seemed to start an answer, then stopped. Kaostar stared at the table.
“He said he loved me while he was planning to die.”
Silas did not say anything.
Good.
Bad.
Kaostar did not know. Silas stayed quiet. Kaostar could not tell whether that helped or made the sentence heavier. Kaostar’s voice broke.
“I did not know what to do with that.”
Silas’s fingers stayed on the scar.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“That may have been something.”
Kaostar shook his head.
“I wanted to argue. To correct him. To tell him love should have been enough or that he should have trusted me or that he had no right to decide what losing him would do to me.”
Silas waited.
“But he already knew all of that.”
Kaostar’s hand trembled beneath Silas’s fingers.
“He knew, and he still died.”
Silas absorbed that. The words had no clean place to go. Finally he said, “Knowing is not always enough to survive.” Kaostar’s eyes closed.
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
“It feels like an insult to everything I tried.”
Silas’s voice softened.
“Maybe it only means you were trying against something larger than effort.”
Kaostar’s claws flexed.
“Trying always counted.”
Silas did not know the old weather language. Not truly. But he heard when a sentence was carrying a body.
“Counting is not the same as winning,” he said.
Kaostar opened his eyes. The sentence hurt. Then settled.
“Who taught you that?”
Silas looked toward the front windows.
“Losing often.”
Kaostar huffed once. This time it was closer to laughter. The sound broke near the end. Silas looked back at him.
Kaostar’s breathing had changed again. Not panic.
Not yet.
But something beneath his ribs had begun to shake loose from its hooks. Silas’s fingers lifted from the scar. Kaostar’s hand twitched after the contact. Not chasing.
Not refusing. Only noticing absence. Silas asked, “Do you want me closer?” Kaostar froze.
The question entered the room so gently it had nowhere to hide. Silas did not move.
“Silence is not yes,” he said.
Kaostar’s mouth opened. No answer came. Silas nodded once.
“Then I’ll stay here.”
“No.”
Silas waited. Kaostar’s voice scraped out of him.
“Closer.”
Silas studied him.
“Beside?”
Kaostar’s eyes shut.
“Yes.”
Silas stood slowly. His chair made a soft sound against the floor. Kaostar did not watch him cross around the table. He listened.
Every footstep. Every shift of fabric. Every breath. Silas stopped beside him, leaving space.
“Here?”
Kaostar swallowed.
“Closer.”
Silas moved the chair beside Kaostar’s, angled slightly rather than facing him directly. Not blocking the room. Not blocking the door. Not pressing him against the wall.
He sat. Their shoulders did not touch. A narrow strip of air remained between them. Warmth crossed it anyway.
Kaostar’s head lowered. His hands remained on the table. Silas placed his own hands where Kaostar could see them. No embrace.
No arm around him. No assumption that closeness required containment. Kaostar breathed once. Twice.
The third breath broke. Silas stayed beside him. The nearness did what distance could not. It made the room smaller.
Not smaller like a cage. Smaller like a blanket laid near someone who might choose it later. Kaostar covered his face with one hand.
“I let him leave.”
Silas looked forward.
“Yes.”
“I keep hearing that as abandonment.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast. Then came again, quieter.
“No.”
Silas said nothing. Kaostar’s shoulders shook once.
“He said he did not intend to die tonight.”
Silas’s eyes lowered.
“Tonight.”
“Yes.”
“That is not much.”
“It is more than a lie.”
Silas nodded.
“Yes.”
Kaostar dragged his hand down his face.
“I wanted to demand more.”
“Of course.”
“I wanted to follow him.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to make distance impossible.”
Silas’s voice remained steady.
“And you came here.”
Kaostar looked at him. Silas did not turn the statement into praise. That made it harder to reject. Kaostar looked back at the table.
“I don’t know if I came here or if my body remembered the door.”
“Either counts.”
“You are infuriating.”
“Still?”
“Worse now.”
Silas’s mouth flickered. The almost-smile helped more than a smile would have. Kaostar leaned back in the chair, exhausted beyond the usefulness of pride. His shoulder came slightly closer to Silas’s.
Still not touching. Silas noticed. Did not close the gap. Kaostar’s eyes drifted shut.
For a moment, the room blurred into other rooms that were not rooms. The creek clearing. The forest hollow. Metatronas’s lab.
An arena under artificial thunder. A cave with questions on walls. Moonleaf with a cracked table and one low lamp. Places where he had been made.
Places where he had nearly ended. Places where someone had stayed. His shoulder shifted. Touched Silas’s.
Barely. Silas did not react. That was the reaction. Kaostar remained there.
The contact was different from the hand. Less deliberate. More dangerous because it required less explanation. A shoulder could become leaning.
Leaning could become needing. Needing could become debt. Debt could become abandonment. Lightstorm’s foster parents had taught one version of that.
Metatronas had taught another. Silas stayed beside him without turning the contact into a lesson. Kaostar found he could bear that. Kaostar opened his eyes.
“You are not replacing him.”
Silas’s gaze moved toward him.
“No.”
The answer came immediately. There was no offense in Silas’s face, only tired certainty. Kaostar stared at him. Silas looked back.
“I know.”
Kaostar’s breath left him unevenly.
“I needed to say it.”
“I know.”
“You are not a substitute.”
“No.”
“You are not proof that I moved on.”
“No.”
“You are not permission to stop loving him.”
Silas’s expression softened by the smallest degree.
“No.”
Kaostar looked away.
“You should be insulted.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?”
Silas’s eyes returned to the table.
“Because I don’t want to be any of those things.”
Kaostar had expected the answer to hurt. It did, but not in the way he had braced for. Silas continued, “I would be bad at replacing a dead boy who is not dead.” Kaostar stared at
him.
Silas’s mouth twitched.
“Too specific.”
Something in Kaostar broke into a laugh. The laugh was small and rough enough to hurt his throat. He did not care. Silas did not smile too much.
The panther owner’s voice came faintly from the back hall.
“If anyone is experiencing personal growth, keep it off the clean dishes.”
Kaostar shut his eyes. The laugh turned into something dangerously close to a sob. Silas looked toward the hall.
“We’re not near the dishes.”
“Growth spreads,” the panther called back.
Silas looked at Kaostar.
“Noted.”
Kaostar covered his mouth. His shoulders shook twice. The sound that came out was not clean enough to be laughter and not broken enough to be sobbing. No one tried to stop the sound.
Silas stayed beside him without drawing attention to it. After the sound faded, Kaostar remained shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Not leaning fully. Not pulling away.
Beside. That was the word. Not held. Not alone.
Beside. Silas said, “Do I need to know what to tell Harrow?” Kaostar’s body stiffened. There it was.
The next door. Not opened. Only acknowledged.
“Harrow.”
“Yes.”
Kaostar stared at the table. Harrow at the cave. Harrow preserving the walls. Harrow making food.
Harrow saying changed was not erased. Harrow not finding him at the creek, but finding what came after. Harrow, who had kept the cave alive while Darkshyne stopped knowing how.
“He should know,” Kaostar said.
Silas nodded.
“From you.”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
Kaostar looked toward the windows. The sky outside had begun to pale by less than a shade.
“No.”
Silas accepted that.
“Soon?”
Kaostar’s claws curled.
“Yes.”
The word felt less like agreement than a door opening somewhere far away.
“Do you want me there?”
The question was dangerous. Not because the answer was yes or no. Because wanting had begun to return to him in forms that did not immediately look like hunger. Kaostar’s shoulder remained against Silas’s.
“I don’t know.”
“Then we don’t decide yet.”
Kaostar closed his eyes.
“You make uncertainty sound livable.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“You do.”
“Sorry.”
“You are not.”
“No.”
The quiet after that was almost warm. Not safe. Not healed. Not simple.
But almost warm. Silas looked toward Kaostar’s hand again. The scar remained visible in the lamp light.
“Does it hurt?”
Kaostar followed his gaze.
“The hand?”
“Yes.”
“Not physically.”
Silas nodded. Kaostar flexed his fingers slowly.
“It feels watched.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
“By Metatronas?”
“By memory.”
“Different?”
“Sometimes.”
Silas considered that.
“Do you want it covered?”
Kaostar looked at him.
“With what?”
Silas eased his sleeve back, drew the cuff of his single fingerless glove away from his wrist, then reached into his inner pocket and removed a clean cloth folded around a small screwdriver. He unfolded it, shook off a fleck of metal, then hesitated.
“It was clean before the screwdriver.”
Kaostar stared. Silas added, “Mostly clean.” The absurdity returned, softer this time. Kaostar held out his hand.
Silas did not take it.
“Allowed?”
Kaostar exhaled.
“Yes.”
Silas wrapped the cloth loosely around Kaostar’s palm. Not medical. Not ceremonial. Not tight enough to restrain.
Not hiding the scar from existence. Only from the room. Kaostar watched him.
“You repair everything badly.”
“Not everything.”
“This is bad.”
“It’s a cloth.”
“It smells like metal.”
“It was keeping a screwdriver warm.”
“That is not what cloth is for.”
“It adapted.”
Kaostar’s mouth shifted. Silas tied the cloth once, loose enough that Kaostar could remove it with one pull.
“There.”
Kaostar looked at the covered hand. The scar still existed beneath it. Of course it did. With the cloth in place, Kaostar stopped watching the scar.
“Still allowed?” Silas asked.
Kaostar looked at him.
“The cloth?”
“The hand.”
Kaostar understood. Silas was asking again because the contact had changed.
“Yes.”
Silas placed his fingers lightly over the wrapped palm. Kaostar let him. The cloth smelled faintly of metal, tea dust, and Silas’s toolkit. Not sterile metal.
Not glass. Not clean-room cold. Used metal. Handled metal.
Useful metal. Metal that repaired tables badly enough to keep them alive. Kaostar’s shoulders lowered. A fraction.
Silas noticed. Said nothing. The sky outside paled further. Not sunrise yet.
But the dark had thinned. Kaostar looked toward the windows.
“He is alive somewhere.”
Silas followed his gaze.
“Yes.”
“I do not know where.”
“No.”
“I do not know if he will come back.”
“No.”
“I do not know what Metatronas did to him.”
“No.”
“I do not know what I am to him.”
Silas’s fingers remained over the wrapped hand.
“No.”
Kaostar’s voice lowered.
“I do not know what you are to me.”
Silas went still. Not wounded. Not eager.
Still.
Kaostar turned his head slightly. Silas met his gaze.
“I know what I am not,” Silas said.
Kaostar waited.
“I am not him.”
“No.”
“I am not Harrow.”
“No.”
“I am not Arcana.”
“No.”
“I am not proof.”
Kaostar’s throat moved.
“No.”
“I am not an answer.”
Kaostar closed his eyes.
“No.”
Silas looked down at their hands.
“I can be here.”
The words were almost too small. That was why they fit. Kaostar’s eyes opened.
“For how long?”
Silas’s tail moved once beside the chair.
“Right now?”
Kaostar looked at him. Silas shrugged faintly.
“Longer answers usually lie.”
Kaostar stared. Then the corner of his mouth moved. This time, the almost-smile survived long enough for Silas to see it. Silas did not comment.
Good.
Outside, a bird made a tentative sound before sunrise had technically earned it. Kaostar’s ears turned toward the window. The sound was ordinary.
Alive.
Annoying. Allowed. He looked back at the cracked table. The table had survived elbows, tea, blood, mud, and the careful movement of their hands.
The repair was ugly. It worked. Kaostar leaned a little more against Silas’s shoulder. Not much.
Enough that neither could pretend it had happened by accident. Silas did not move away. He did not move closer either. Beside.
Still beside. The back door remained unlocked. The tea had gone cold. The sky kept lightening.
Kaostar did not tell Silas everything. Silas did not ask him to. Some questions had been answered. Some had been allowed to wait.
The wrapped hand stayed beneath Silas’s fingers. The shoulder stayed against Silas’s shoulder. No hug. No cage.
No replacement. Only beside. Only closeness chosen carefully enough to survive being wanted. For now, that was the shape of permission.
Still allowed.
~ To be continued ~
