Luna Brightwood's Arc

Chapter 9 of 22

Luna waited in the tree until the pink unicorn returned. It landed on the platform with a soft click of gold hooves and knelt so she could climb onto its back. The rainbow mane smelled like wet grass. It carried her down in one gliding drop and set her in the middle of the white courtyard, where cherry petals lay thick on the cracked stones and green vines dripped from the arches. The aurora still glowed faint above the towers. The air was warmer than it had been all night. Lumina Dewsparkle hovered at her shoulder. "You have your permission now," the fairy said. "Photograph what you can. The frost blooms opened at first light." Luna lifted her camera. The ornate lens caught the aurora and held it. She turned toward the arches and saw them: small white flowers along the base of every column, each petal edged in a thin line of frost. They were the shot she had traded a night of sleep for. She stepped closer and her boot sank into soft mud. The ground was thawing under the stones. A petal at her feet drooped as she watched, the frost line already melting into a bead of water. She worked fast. She knelt at the first column and framed three blooms against the vines. Click. The gemmed lens hummed under her fingers. She moved to the next arch. Two more blooms had wilted since she crossed the courtyard. The frost was sliding off the petals in wet threads. She could hear water running under the flagstones now, somewhere below. "Luna." Lumina's voice was tight. "The row along the far wall." Luna looked. Half the blooms on that side had already folded flat. She ran. Petals stuck to her wet boots. She reached the archway draped in cherry blossoms and dropped to her knees. Four blooms were still upright. She shot them in a burst, shifted angle, shot again. The fourth bloom collapsed while she was framing it. The third collapsed before she could turn the lens. She got two clean frames of the first two and then there was nothing left on that wall to photograph. A small white cat with silver and pink horns stepped out from behind the column. It sniffed a fallen petal and looked at her with steady blue eyes. Luna raised the camera slowly. The cat did not move. She took one frame. Then a second. The cat flicked its pink tail and walked back into the vines. Luna sat down on the wet stones. The frost blooms were gone from the courtyard, all of them, in the time it had taken to cross from one arch to the next. She had six frames. Two arches worth, and the horned cat she had chased across a melting meadow days ago, come to her now on its own. She lowered the camera into her lap. The thaw had won the courtyard. She had taken what she could before it did.