Misa Moon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Misa Moon had walked three days to reach the glass shrine, and now the raven on her shoulder was gone. She felt it first as a wrongness on her skin, a tug at her wrist where no ink should be. She pushed up her sleeve. The raven sat there, wings tucked, watching her with the same small painted eye it always used when she was wrong. She stopped on the path. She did not move again for a long time. She had come here to claim the shrine for her sanctuary. The plan was simple. The shrine stood empty at the edge of a frozen valley, its glass walls veined with frost, a small flame still burning inside. She had pictured it for months. She would clear the snow, mend the frame, and open the doors to travelers carrying stories too heavy to keep alone. She had lost friends to silence. She had sat awake with other people's grief pressing on her chest. She wanted a place where none of that had to be carried in private. The shrine was the first building she had found that fit the picture in her head. But the tattoo had moved. The tattoo only moved when she was wrong. Misa sat down on a weathered bench ringed by black stones. A carved raven crowned the bench's back, beak parted as if mid-warning. She had passed the bench coming in and barely looked at it. Now she read the words cut into the wood under her hand. They spoke about truth and doubt. She set her palm flat against the carving and made herself think. The shrine was beautiful. The shrine was empty. The shrine was small. She counted the panels in her head. Four walls. One door. Room for maybe six people to stand. No kitchen. No beds. No second floor for the ones who needed to stay a season. She had been planning a monument, not a home. A small shape stepped out of the snow beside her boot. A fox, no bigger than a cat, its fur the color of deep water lit from inside. Faint marks drifted from its tail and faded in the air. It sat and looked at her. She did not reach for the dagger in her boot. She had carried that blade for years without knowing who it was for, and this creature was not the answer either. The fox tilted its head toward the path behind her, away from the shrine, toward the timber line where she had not yet looked. Misa stood. She turned her back on the glass shrine. Past the trees, half-buried in snow, she saw the long roof of a timber lodge she had walked right past. Wide doors. A stone chimney. Windows enough for many lamps. Her wrist went still. The raven was already fading from the skin there, settling back toward her shoulder. She started walking toward the lodge.