Perhaps she expects a Lune to approach.
Perhaps she expects the one she Called, or the one who guarded the Gates of the Moon.
Perhaps she expects nothing at all. And indeed, nothing -- or at least no one -- is what she gets. The moonbridge touches down. It bathes her in the purest, silverest light she has ever known. And no one comes, and no one goes, and no voice booms approval from the heavens.
Just light. Just the soft touch of the Her Mother the Moon; cool on her brow like a mother's touch, a fevered brow.
The moon-rabbit doesn't leave, either. It snuggles a little closer and closes its eyes.
--
Perhaps she falls asleep. Perhaps time simply passes unremarked; for what is the passage of time, when her mind has so recently touched eternity?
Eventually the light dims and fades.
Eventually the night passes.
Eventually the sun begins to rise, golden through the trees and the brush, and now, softly, footsteps approach her from afar. They are steady and they are patient and they are quiet, and when they are quite close indeed Veiled-Heart crouches lithely before her. Tilts her head, her black hair falling over her shoulder like sand through an hourglass.
"Tell me," she invites, simply.
Black Sheep"Uhm." Is it morning? Has she returned?
No, Veiled-Heart has found her and she is still here, close to the shores of the river she called to follow her into darkness. The ground is still damp, but the water has receded as if it never rose at all. As if this were merely the effect of the spirits of the morning-mist, or perhaps a passing storm.
Charlotte kind of pushes herself upright, both hands planted on the ground, careful with the little lune, yes but still - utterly - spent.
"Well that's the little lune. He wasn't scared away by the eclipse though, see when the eclipse was happening everyone was watching it but he was watching a different shadow bound into a heavy rock it's that one over there - " and indeed it is still close by. She had intended to bind the fallen-star spirit back into its prison once she sent it in to slumber - " - and it escaped when no one was watching.
"It was a shadow too, a little fallen-star, hungry, and that's why she-he said it was gonna eat everything, because it was. So I followed the little brothersister into the Aetherial realm to call herhim back but shehe said no, meat-wolf, you're being stupid I'm not scared of the eclipse and told me all about the shadow, so I went too to the Gates of the Moon to offer to help and we came back down here and found its prison so I used that for a rite to follow it and called up the river after I found it so it could help cleanse or heal and then I threw some bane arrows at it and fought it 'til it went to sleep but while we were fighting it ate the little brothersister so I went in after.
"And it was everything in there, all light, moving so fast and not moving at all, and it made me think of a sleeping star and a star's just another kind of sun so I honored the sun in the star and then I started cleansing in hopes that it would maybe spit me and the little brothersister out but instead it felt like it was remembering what it was so I put the lune out and kept going and going and then I was out here.
"There was a moonbright but I didn't follow it.
"Maybe I should've but I was too tired."
-ascendance-Silently, Charlotte's tribe- and auspice-sister listens, her expression smooth, her eyes as veiled as her heart. She is kneeling in the dirt, kneeling so neatly, her palms over her knees. Now and again her eyes flicker, but never once does she interrupt, or gasp, or move.
When Charlotte is finished, Veiled-Heart's smile is faint, and like so many other expressions of hers, tinged with a faraway sort of sadness.
"Even if you should've, I suspect Luna forgave so small a transgression."
Her eyes rest on the little lune for a moment, and then return to Charlotte. "And what of the little fallen-star?" she asks. "Destroyed? Bound? ... Cleansed?"
Black Sheep"I don't know." Charlotte says, her voice remarkably quiet, her expression still and absolutely accepting her lack-of-knowledge.
There is so little they know, or can know, of all the mysteries that surround them.
"I was trying to cleanse it, and then it shattered and it felt like it shattered me. Like it was destroyed, but maybe also in its destruction it was reborn.
"It wasn't here, though. When I came to."
-ascendance-Veiled-Heart lifts her eyes to the sky. Here in the penumbral, the moon shines by day or by night. The stars sing. The sun, though distant, is impossibly glorious; a sovereign king on his throne.
"One day," says Veiled-Heart, soft but sure, "when you find out the fate of that star you saved, you will come back and tell me. Won't you?"
A beat.
"What would you name yourself, Charlotte Gray, Fostern of the Silver Fangs?"
Black Sheep"I don't know that, either." Charlotte says, with a ghostly sort-of-smile drifting across her mouth. Tired, that expression. "Alice," a glimpse at the moonrabbit, "maybe."
A joke. This quiet little brimming of her mouth that blooms and fades.
"I never thought I'd get another name. But I guess I have, though I'll figure that out later, too.
"Thank you, Veiled-Heart. Shall we take our little sisterbrother home?"
ascendance
"You have earned another." The distinction is small, but important. "It shall be one you are proud to wear."
And then, smiling:
"Yes, Yuf. Let's take your friend home."
--
Their little sisterbrother, it turns out, is in fact a semi-permanent guest of the Caern. Their path back to its home is a short one, taken under the rays of the day's new sun. A little ways into it, the moon-rabbit hops down from Charlotte's arms, recognizing the terrain, leading the way.
As they go, Veiled-Heart converses a little more. She admits that she was never wholly convinced that fear of a simple eclipse was what drove the little lune away. She confesses that she never thought, however, that the danger would run so deep; stretch so far.
She hopes, she says, that the little fallen-star was cleansed and reborn. She believes, she says, that even were it not reborn, it is at peace; severed from the darkness of its patron, given another chance in the great wheel of Gaia's love.
She is proud of Charlotte, her sister of moon and tribe. Charlotte, she hopes, is proud of herself as well.
--
The little lune lives in a little shrine near the heart of the Caern. It has built for itself a shining, diaphanous little home, like a mirror in miniature of the grand palace of Its Mother the Moon. It breaks into an all-out dash at the sight of it, heart-glad, streaking over the earth like light over water.
At the door of its home it turns. One quick glance back at Charlotte, and then
it relinquishes its borrowed form. Becomes a being of pure light and lightness: its true self, returning to roost like a flame within a lantern.
--
There is, of course, the business of the formal declaration before the Caern. There is the Challenge Circle redrawn, the onlookers gathered. There is Charlotte's new rank shouted for all and sundry, so that all wolves, all men, all spirits knew the truth:
that she was worthy,
that she was strong and wise and clever and brave,
that she is Fostern.
When Veiled-Heart breaks the circle and declares the challenge ended, Erich is there, laughing, sweeping her up in a hug. Her friends are there; those who know her and love her. Others are there as well, those who know her not, or not very well: they, too, look upon her with interest, with consideration, with recognition.
Fostern, they call her. Yuf, and sometimes even Rhya. She is congratulated, her hand is shaken, she is hugged, she is nudged and bounded-upon and eventually they manage to escape the well-wishers, Charlotte and her pack-brother; they manage to make it back to the car where they call Melantha, and then of course they will all go out to dinner, they will all celebrate, they will all be happy for her.
--
It is quite late at night when they return to the tinyhouses. Two, now, because Melantha's is so very nearly finished. They bid each other goodnight, they wash for bed, and Charlotte lets herself into her tinyroom in the tinyhouse
where
curled and dreaming upon her pillow
she finds her little friend, the little lune, the moon-rabbit with its little mortar-and-pestle, come to visit, and perhaps to stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment