Dead Moon

Sometimes the myths rise up from the depths of memory and appear real and concrete for moments that will stand to focus time and reset the world once more. Each time the tale is told differently, good becomes bad and bad becomes benevolent and the old magic twists itself around altering endings and shifting meaning but the essence is always the same.

One such time the moon came to be, reborn at a time of conjunction, this time there was no Huntress, no Manipulative Mirrored beauty, nor was she Queen of Death or in love with the animals of the Earth that she could never reach.

No none of that was to occur, not at this time, instead the girl appeared, silver bright hair and large dark eyes that had the heart of the cosmos within them. She was somewhere between the age of five and eight with a fluid quick silver dress with an ice blue patch and ingrained soot upon her bear feet and legs.

Her name was Luna.

She was a wraith-waith, she was scared and she was a ghost to those around her. She had a month to be but no one wanted such a child near them, they thought she would suck the life from them, that she was the Dead Moon who’s false light lived in the waters of the Fenns and Marsh and the Swamps and the Sinking Muds and Quick Sands and the bogs of the lands where the moons light could not shine.

They were of course not wrong but nor where they right, not this time, not in this incarnation. She was just a small child lost and alone. They rejected her and chased her from village to village, as the Moon grew so did her powers, so did her solidity until mid month a woman saw her for what she was and took her in. She fed her broth and stale bread, not out of meaness but because that was all she had.

She tucked the child in her own bed and sung her a lullaby, it was an old song full of longing, the woman knew the child would fade, she sensed the other world about her but that did not stop her loving her in those moments, in the cross over from the real to the dream.

But she drifted to nothing but a mist of memory as the moon dwindled to a slither, she sat on the porch invisible completely that last day, watching the woman look for her. She was a Dead Moon now, a moon that no longer shone in the sky and her time had come.

She left and walked out to the hills where the foggy vales came creeping, searching for her, wrapping themselves around her until she was nothing but dew for the frost.

Sometime she made patterns for the woman on the window panes and sometimes she sat upon the moon combing her long hair and smiling down at the only love she had known in her time.

When a moon of Lovely Death took the woman decades later she took her hand and then together they skipped into the night that killed unwary travellers and faded until the next time that it was their time, which would never quiet be the same again. But for this eternity they had a happy ending.

Posted: Friday, December 12th, 2014 @ 9:24 am
Categories: Flash Fiction.
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2 Responses to “Dead Moon”

  1. Marc Nash Says:

    aw, touching tale

  2. David G Shrock Says:

    Sweet story. Enjoyed it.

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