Short Story: Missing Moon

The two of you first met at your darkest moments. 

Two different people from two different worlds. Together, your own perfect sanctuary, even though you could only meet for a few brief moments at a time. You cherished each other, and held onto that love during your days apart. 

Your name is Terrence Solet. Hers is Lunomi.

On the way to your monthly meeting place, you think back to when you first met, all those years ago when you were both young and afraid. 

The grief of losing your mother, the last of your family, inspired an escape from the modern world and all suffocating grip it had on your life. Man isn’t meant to live in a filthy metropolitan, you thought to yourself as you drove out to nowhere. You managed to convince yourself a return to nature was the best cure for the pain in your heart. The Solet family you so cherished often brought you on their excursions to snow-capped mountains or thick coniferous forests every other month or so. You would collect leaves and pinecones or search for the signs of woodland creature, fancying yourself some kind of tracker or ranger. 

Each journey there served as a reminder of the beauty of the world, apart from the rabble, bustle and hustle. You should have taken your parents on such a journey during their twilight years, but there was never time after your graduation. It was a new stage of life where one must establish oneself in the adult world or be left in the dust. Not wanting to disappoint your parents or family, you dedicated yourself to your work at the cost of all else. Good parents deserve an even better son, you reasoned, but what has all that effort brought you? 

As your mother’s coffin was lowered into the earth, you could see Terrence Solet as just another empty suit, missing a heart and a purpose. You needed change. At the edge of a newer stage of life, you needed another reminder of nature and what it meant, hopefully finding a better way forward at the end. 

As you entered the forest, you had nothing but the clothes on your back, but that was all you could need. A jacket, denim jeans, hiking shoes, and a backpack filled with nuts, water and supplies. A few days to think and meditate on loss and acceptance. Enough time away from the desk job and absurd responsibilities. As the last Solet, this was your escape. 

Lunomi wanted to escape too, but her circumstances were more different and much more dangerous than Terrence could imagine. 

Since she was born, she held control of some kind of dark fire. From her hands, it ignited, but it never burned her. The fire glowed with a purplish hue and an intense luminous white shined from its center. 

She never knew what this fire was or why she could manipulate it so skillfully. She did know that she was kept in a large white temple because of it, but whether that was caretaking or imprisonment she would find out on her own. 

In that temple, all Lunomi ever knew was black and white. White rooms. Black knights. A great white-rock landscape. A black sky. Men and women in robes of pure white. An endless ebony void with white lights dotted across it. The days spent in endless meditation and practice with her dark fire, at the watch and instruction of figures of white robes. Black knights followed her every step, which kept the robed ones at ease but constantly left Lunomi on edge, feeling as if they’d point their silver blades at her in any moment. 

As a child, she accepted such things as permanent fixtures of her life, but as she grew older, a great curiosity took hold of her heart and mind. The black knights and people in white robes told her to be afraid of it, but Lunomi sought to follow it and know more.

Like her dark fire, her curiosity grew and grew. No one but her could control it, and it felt exhilarating. 

One day she escaped the temple, using her fire to launch herself and fly across the white land she and her people called home. Lunomi travelled a great distance, not knowing where she’d go and what she’d find but still exhilarated by the wildness of freedom within the unknown. 

She spent days outside, avoiding patrols and capture. Her fire turned out to be a wonderful deterrent for black knights instead of something the temple authorities fawned over. Then, on a day unlike anything else, she made her greatest discovery. A sphere of brilliant blue and verdant green. Fluffy white spirals and blankets floating along the surface of it, moving inch by inch. Lunomi fell to her knees in awe of such a glorious world. Closing her eyes and tightly clasping her hands together, she prayed, and then wished she could go there. 

And then she did. 

You were sleeping in your poorly made tent when she made landfall and shook the earth. No one else came with you to the forest. You made sure to situate yourself in an isolated area too. So the obvious conclusion when you woke with such a startle was some kind of beast or explosion or exploding beast. Outside of the tent, you see a moonbeam shining down on a small mountain just a mile away. 

As a Solet, you came out here to find some way to change. What better way to do so then going out to where the ground shakes. The best decision is to run towards it. 

Out of breath, you make it to the top of the hill. You find a girl lying in a crater. Her hair and skin is white as snow, and her body glows with a faint white light. She’s dressed in a shimmering silver coat with patterns that shift and transform with her every movement. Small purple flames sputter out at the crater’s edge.

She lifts her head and your eyes meet. She’s beautiful. 

You introduce yourself as Terrence Solet. She says her name is Lunomi.  

The both of you start talking. You share your life and she shares her. In the span of a night, the two of you fall in love. The sun starts to rise and Lunomi starts to fade away. She explains she must return to the moon, but she wants to see you again. You want the same thing. On this hill in the middle of a forest, a man from earth and a woman from the moon make a promise. From there, a tradition is set. 

Years pass. You present is better than your past. The work you do is more fulfilling, and you have all the time you need to write and paint. Lunomi traverses the moon, flying without a care as the temple authorities chase after her. With love and a little support, your lives are better and more fulfilled. Anything is impossible. 

Every month that love is rekindled as the two of you meet again on full moon days. Life becomes even greater. 

Today, you trek up the hill, and there she is, radiant and full. Like you, she waits for these days, and she’s so relieved when you get another day together. You both smile and take each other’s hand for this brief moment of romance, white morning-glories in full bloom surround you. 

Walking down the hill, you catch one another up of the goings-on in your respective worlds. You tell her stories about the city, where she wishes she could be. While your mundane stories somehow make her envious, her stories about the moon never fail to amaze you. She tells you memories of her new life. The shadow of a coming conflict seems to darken her thoughts, but you let her know their is nothing to fear. With two people so peculiar, a forest walk at night can be the most romantic thing of all. 

You love her. She loves you. 

You looked for clarity in a world gone dark. She searched for meaning cause her world lost its own. 

Instead you found each other. Thankfully, it was more than enough. 

She is so different from you and you are likewise for her, yet somehow that love remains the same, even when time and distance tests its resolve. 

She tells you more stories. You tell a joke. You share a laugh. One of you cries. One shares their fear but the other responds with hope. Both of you, happy in the end. 

However, like all of these days, it must end. The sun starts to peek out. You must leave one another. She rises into the chill dawn sky and you walk all the way home. In such a small time, the two of you know when to share goodbyes. This day however, you share them through a kiss, one that lingers until the next day you meet. 

All that walking wears your hiking shoes out, but you don’t care. The earth and the city beneath seeks to drag you down but the possibility of another moment with her drives you. An inner strength is constantly rediscovered. Damn the weaknesses that the others treated like your shackles. 

Glorious moonbeams reaching across that significant distance. She is carried by the light, in betrayal of the rules she refuses to follow. A devotion to something more feeds her defiance. Her superiors had their own designs for her, but she wanted no part of it. To love is more rewarding than to fight. 

You both go a long way to see each other, and it is worth every pain, every scolding, to get there. One love connected by a shared heaven forever at risk of becoming another battlefield. The two of them pray that a fight will not come to pass. They hope no barrier can be built to keep them apart. 

A new month comes. The next day to meet arrives. 

Now, here you are. Alone, wondering where she is, afraid for where she went. The flowers remain as mere buds. Nothing glows on this hilltop. Smog and ash blanket the heavens. The sky is not clear anymore. 

There’s now an emptiness where your love would be. There’s a darkness where the moon should be.

You were Terrence Solet. She was Lunomi.