Selune Depthsong's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Selune stood among the new blooms and felt wrong. The silver crown on her brow, set with ghostly soul-jewels, began to dim. One pale stone went gray. Then another. Her garden was alive, but the jewels that tracked her souls were fading. Something here still hungered. She knelt at the waterline and tried to think. She pulled a handful of dark notes from her throat and laid them at the garden's edge like an offering. The notes drifted, curled, and sank into the mud. Nothing answered. She did not know what her garden wanted now. In despair she opened her mouth and sang. Not a lure. Not a trick. Just the raw, embarrassed sound of her own grief. The song poured low across the soil. A small green stem pushed up beside her knee. A blue moonpetal seedling unfurled, tight and waiting. She stared. The garden did not want a soul. It wanted her voice. Her singing was the tending. One dimmed jewel on her crown flickered back to pale light. She laughed once, sharp and surprised, then pressed a paw to her mouth. If her voice was the water now, she needed more of it. Louder. Farther. She remembered a small microphone she had pulled from a drowned traveler's pack. She climbed the bank and went walking through the trees to think, the crown heavy on her head. Deep in the thicket she found a dark signpost nailed between two trunks. Painted notes curled across it. Band recruitment, it read, in a hand she half knew. Whisper Thornpaw's hand. Selune touched the wood. She would apply as lead singer. She turned back toward the lake with a plan, and the seedling at the shore waited for her return.