Luna Celestis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Luna Celestis knelt in the dark garden and could not hear the seeds. She was born from blue moon light, and her whole life bent toward one task: waking the sleeping magic in every soul the moon had touched. To do that, she first had to sense it. The moonlight sat inside people like a hum only she could catch. Tonight the hum was gone. She pressed her hand to the soil where her flowers slept. Nothing. A lost feeling had settled on her, heavy and without a name. It clouded everything. She could not find the light in the seeds, in the animals, in herself. She stood and walked to clear her head. Her legs took her past a house grown from a giant moon flower, its petals folded shut for the night. A creature waited on the doorstep. It looked like a fox made of blue smoke, a ring of light turning slow around its paws. A blue moon wisp. Luna reached toward it and felt nothing. The blank feeling swallowed even that glow. "You can't feel it either." The voice came from above. Wings lowered a small figure to the ground. Luna knew the wings before the face. She had searched years for others born from blue moon light and found no record of any. Now one stood before her, breathing hard, hands shaking. "I'm Lunara Moonshadow," the winged one said. "Someone stole from the moon. It's going dim. When it dies, I die." She pressed a fist to her chest. "Cold. Right here. Growing." Luna understood then. The feeling was not hers. It had come off the moon and settled on her, the way lost feelings always did. She named it out loud. "It's grief. The moon's grief. It's dimming, and you're carrying it, and it collected on me." Lunara stared. "Name it and it lets go?" "Sometimes." Luna closed her eyes and held the feeling in her mind. Not hers. The moon's. She let it move through her instead of sitting on her. The heavy fog thinned. Warmth spread up her arms, the way it always did when the magic returned. The hum came back all at once. She felt the seeds under the soil. She felt the wisp's glow flare bright beside her. She felt something inside Lunara too, faint and shivering, like a candle in wind. "There," Luna said. "I can sense you now. Your light. It's still there." She opened her eyes. "But it's fading. Fast." Lunara gripped her arm. "Then help me find the thief. Before the moon goes dark." Luna looked at the folded petals, the seeds she had waited years to wake. If the blue moon died, they would never open again. None of them would. Her whole task would end before it began. "Show me where it started," Luna said.