MAYARI

THE MOON LETS GO AT LAST

I wake up to the moonlight, a silent symphony of bright white light, blanketing the landscape in an ethereal soft-glowing sheen, quite a contrast to what it was a few moments ago.

An uncomfortable pressure builds behind my eyes, like someone decided to pour liquid silver straight into my skull. My body jerks forward, muscles locking and claws scrapping against the rock.

A sound so foreign and instinctively animal slices through the silence startling me at how raw and unrefined it sounds, even in my own ears.

“Could that be me?" I think to myself even as the sound comes from my throat yet again.

“This must be death, the moon goddess has finally come to me," I thought to myself, curling in deeper in a desperate attempt to block out the heat radiating in my skull.

My eyes open slowly and an overwhelming sense of confusion overtakes me. I look around me, unable to fully grasp what is going on around me. “How am I awake?" "Am I supposed to be awake? I wonder to myself.

The execution circle is gone and so is the voice of those chanting and clamouring for my death. The smell of incense, fear and blood that threatened to suffocate me is no longer there as well.

Underneath me, I feel the cold and hardness of solid rock and damp earth pressed against my cheeks and my sides where I am laying on the ground. The evening air claws desperately at my lungs, thin, wild and uncontained.

There are no trees as far as my eyes can see, instead I am surrounded by rocks and some silhouette that I cannot make out what form they are, poorly illuminated by the glow of the moon.

“I'm alive…I'm alive…I'm alive.” The thought rolls over in my mind over and over, the realization hitting me harder than the ache I felt in my body, thick and dull, like a heavy fog pressing against my nerves.

“I'm alive…but I shouldn't be.” What exactly happened after the moon lost control? My last memory was me being in the execution circle after being falsely accused for a crime I did not commit…what happened after that?

Summoned by my thoughts, memories began to flood into my mind, in such strong waves, it felt like it was going to drive me to insanity.

The chains around my wrist, biting into my skin as the Moon Council looked at me with disdain on their faces. A council that claimed to be merciful and full of justice, yet there was no justice in their gazes as they looked on at me in the circle. It was almost like they were…relieved. Remembering how they looked at me like my death was the only solution to fix whatever had been broken in our world was enough for my gut to churn with terror.

Memories of my first shift overtook me then.

“Shifting for the first time…for the first time since my first shift at 13, I had finally experienced my first full shift. Nothing held me back this time,” I thought, a delighted smile playing at the edges of my lips.

Nothing about my previous shifts was enough to prepare me for what my full shift would be like. My claws had extended out of my fingers, fully formed…not the ones that tire through my fingers roughly…curved with a beautiful obsidian hue. They gleamed under the moonlight like mini knives. My hands were larger and stronger too, strong enough to bear the weight of my claws.

My wolf took her full form, no longer fighting against herself and my body, bone fighting bone and magic at war with my flesh. Instead, it was a coordinated dance where everything came easily to me.

My shift, beautiful as it was, did not stand out in my memory the way the moon did. The Moon had hung over the whole proceeding, pulsating with a strange tension, her glow like an eye refusing to blink for the fear of missing any details.

For the first time, she did not feel like she was trying desperately to crush me. She was just there, quietly pulsating in a way that was devastatingly frightening. The memory of it causes a shiver to travel down my spine.

A jabbing sensation forced its way through my chest, stopping my breath and forcing me to curl even deeper into myself.

“What's happening?" I wheeze, the air knocked out of me with the force of the pain.

My skin burns from where the silver made contact…my ankles, shoulders…almost everywhere on my skin feels like a burning furnace. An uncomfortable sensation behind my eyes like the prickling of many needles causes me to keep them tightly shut until the sensation dulls to a mild ache.

The visions attacked me then. Images from a distant past flash behind my eyes, the screams of women in distress push against my skull. Behind my eyes shut tightly, I see circles…similar to the execution circle that held me earlier… carved into stones and the blood from the screaming women soaking into the ritual lines.

The women are bound by silver, just like I had been bound in the execution circle. I know these are not my memories but I am unable to tear myself out of them.

“The silver must have triggered them," I think to myself in resignation. Silver has always triggered visions and memories that do not belong to me. But never has it felt this heavy. The realization washes over me, cold and heavy in my chest.

Something strange that I could not put in words or properly name happened to me in that execution circle. An ancient magic, one the council has been trying very hard to erase…and failed to, seeing I was still alive…awakened in me in that circle and it's only a matter of time before it consumes me completely.