Shadow Fealty
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Shadow Fealty.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
Low red candles burn the length of a stone hall and throw little heat. An oath circle glows on the floor between them, the line unbroken. A living woman and her shadow kneel in it together, badly matched: her knees rest on the bright line, the shadow's knees fall inside it. At the edge of the hall the oath keeper waits in a cloak seamed like written clauses, cloth that hangs as a contract.
Wax has run down the nearest candles and stopped in small hard tongues on the stone. The glow of the circle does not flicker with the flames. It stays even. The woman breathes. The shadow's chest does not copy the breath in time. Her hands rest on her thighs. The shadow's hands rest a little behind hers, still inside the glow. The keeper does not speak. The cloak's seams hang straight. Minutes pass as candle smoke rising and failing before it reaches the dark above the hall.
The keeper breaks a chain over the circle with both hands. The links part and scatter. They ring once on the stone and lie still, some on the bright line, some off it. A medallion splits down its middle. One half stays in the woman's palm. The other half drops through the shadow, strikes the stone inside the glow, and stays lit. The lit half does not dim when the candles dip. The woman rises to her feet. The shadow does not rise. It kneels on, head bowed, hands empty of any half.
The half in her palm cools. The light in it shrinks to a rim and then to nothing, while the half on the stone inside the circle keeps its glow. She does not kneel again to match the shadow. She does not hold the dark half out toward the lit one. The scattered links do not draw together. A link that landed on the bright line slides off it, a finger's width, and stops in the ordinary stone, dull as the rest of the chain.
The keeper steps back to the edge and stops. The candles dip and then recover their small flames. The broken chain lies where it fell. The circle keeps its glow, and the shadow keeps the kneel, with nothing further offered out of the dark. Wax begins another slow run on the nearest candle and stops at the same height as the old tongue beside it.
The woman's half stays dark in her hand. The shadow's knees remain inside the line. Smoke thins. No new link falls. Her standing shadow on the far wall does not replace the one that kneels. The kneeling dark stays in the circle, separate from the dark she casts by standing.
The lit half of the medallion holds on the stone. The shadow keeps the kneel, and the keeper remains at the edge with the cloak hanging still.