OMG this took me like half a month I’m so sorry!! But it’s such a wonderful fairy tale- (here, if anyone’s interested) that I really wanted to do something for it. Hope you like 😉 Thanks, anon!
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For seven long nights, the moon hadn’t risen, and Black Star could feel its absence in his aching bones. The vacant sky put rage in his blood and muted fear into his skin, until by the seventh night, all he could do was pace the creaking floorboards of his rented room at the inn, panting and grinding his teeth. The night sky had always been his peace, wonderfully infinite, lacey with constellations that he named as old friends, but the shrieking void where the moon no longer hung turned it all to something horrible and dark.
It wasn’t until that seventh night that the awful thing pricking the back of his mind bloomed to full understanding. He was staring out the opened window, breathing the cool night air in a vain attempt to calm himself as he sharpened his sword for the tenth time, ignoring the riots in the streets below him- foolish, fearful, ignorant men, who would rather scream and cry at the empty sky than do anything useful- when it hit him.
It was that strange light, one week ago, purest white coming from nowhere and everywhere to illuminate his path through the murky devouring swamps to the south. He’d felt so comforted, then, even through his exhaustion, watching the vaguely familiar highlights that the pale glow slicked against his armor, and at the time it had seemed the whim of some benevolent fairy or spirit, come to aid him in his darkest hour, when a wet drowning death in dark waters seemed certain. He hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t had the energy to think on it, beyond thanking the spirits for his luck.
He’d only barely made it out of those cursed, twisted, stinking bogs, thanks to that mysterious light, and when he’d limped into the first inn he’d seen upon reaching town, the drunken, clamoring crowd in the common room had fallen deathly silent, which had told him quite enough about how poorly he must appear. He’d stumbled up to his room and slept for what felt like days, though it had in truth been only been one, and then the fearful panic of the crowds missing their moon had woken him the next night.
But now, as he glared out his window at the hollow gash in the dark sky, he recognized that white glow from the bogs. He knew where the moon had gone to. It seemed so obvious now, and the burn of battle rose in his chest as he strapped on his armor. He buckled his arm guards, and the warmth turned to flames; he shrugged into his battered breastplate, and the flames scoured his veins, eager and familiar.
“Let’s go save the fallen moon,” he muttered to his sword, kissing the hilt gently, and now the bloodlust burn was an inferno inside him.
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After it was all over, after he’d sated his ravenous blade and smeared his armor with demon blood, the moon wasn’t as he’d expected. She wasn’t wispy and bone-pale, gently alight with holy illumination. Instead she was tall, sturdy like an old oak, with eyes the color of the twilight sky and long hair that danced unbound around her, colorless as the spaces between his beloved constellations. She was strong, and fierce, and gracious as she rose from her swampy prison, spattered with the wicked lifeblood of her captor.
“Thank you,” she whispered, one slender hand clutching the fallen hood of her cloak, and the fearsome way she bared her teeth at the steaming body of her will-o-the-wisp captor made him sheathe his sword and drop to his knees; perhaps he was only the last, desperate heir of a long-dead kingdom, but he still had his manners, and she was a regal lady through and through.
“Well,” the fallen moon said after a moment, smiling and making his heart stop all at once, “Well. I’ve come to earth, haven’t I, willing or not? I suppose I could stay, for a while.”
He bit his tongue to keep from leaping with joy. “The sky is a desert without you, and the people are afraid,” he said, fallen to his knees before her. It wasn’t at all what he wanted to say, but for once in his life, his swift wit had failed him utterly.
She looked at him for a long moment with her gleaming starlight eyes. “A new moon will come,” she said at last. “Soon. They’ll appoint a new one, and the sky will be full again. But I’ve been alone and cold long enough. I want life and warmth and the good earth between my toes.” She dug delicate bare feet into the rich black loam of the swamp to illustrate her point.
He smiled back, finally, wiping his gory blade on a nearby tendril of hanging moss that reminded him suspiciously of an evil wizard’s beard. Every single dark wizard he’d ever met had sported the same wispy, stringy beard. “Lately, I find myself thinking that a traveling companion could be good,” he admitted, one hand on the hilt of his sword out of habit, and for assurance.
She glowed at him, until he had to throw up a hand and shield his eyes. “I’ll fight beside you,” she told him eagerly, young and ancient all at once in her enthusiasm. “I’ll earn my way, if you help me- it’s been so long, and so much here has changed, I’ll need to learn-“
“Of course, my lady,” he murmured, and when he lifted her hand to kiss it, she blushed like the borealis.
part-time recluse 