Luna Fayweather's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Luna rode back to the hollow at dusk, the ledger ink still drying on her name. Smoke rose from her own greenhouse. She slid from the saddle and ran, knife drawn. A figure stood at the old stone table inside, the one with the moss on its legs and the mixing bowl worn smooth by their four hands, years ago. The woman turned. Luna's knife lowered before her mind caught up. The visitor set a small clear orb on the table. Inside it, a healing plant glowed soft and green. "You left this behind the night you ran," she said. "I kept it. I kept the reason too." She told Luna what Luna had never let herself say aloud — that she had not chosen healing out of grief or duty, but because at twelve years old she had healed her own dying mother in secret and been made to swear it never happened. The orb held a cutting from that first plant. Proof. Luna's hands shook. She walked her past the greenhouse to the great oak at the hollow's edge — the one with the healer's mark cut deep into its bark, where she had first laid hands on a stranger and felt the gift answer. "I built all this to forget I had to hide it," Luna said. "And to make sure no other girl ever has to." The woman pressed the orb into her palm and closed her fingers around it. "Then keep building," she said. "But know they are coming faster than you think. The boy at the clerk's hall — he was mine once too. He sold your name an hour ago." She stepped back into the trees and was gone. Luna stood alone with the glowing orb, the carved oak behind her, and the sound of distant hooves rising on the road.