Moon Blessed

Chapter 4 ~ Dreams of Death and Life

    She was following a woman through a moonlit forest. The sounds of night echoed around them; crickets chirping within the undergrowth, owls hooting overhead, and toads croaking from nearby creekbeds. Everything was peaceful, yet somehow sinister.

    She kept her eyes fixed on the woman, knowing that if she lost the apparition, she would lose herself in the woods. The woman glanced over her shoulder and beckoned her closer. "Do you know this place?"

    "No." It looked like any ordinary forest, but that feeling... It was like snakes coiling around her ankles. Cold and dangerous, though they did not strike. "Should I know it?"

    "No. You have never been here." The woman took her hand and guided her into a small clearing. "But I have. This place is sacred to us. It is where we were first born and it is where we shall someday be unmade."

    "I don't understand."

    "Watch." The woman lifted her gaze to the sky and she followed suit.

    The moon hung high above them, pulsing with light and radiance. As they watched, it began to change. It bent and stretched until it resembled a woman swathed in a flowing raiment.

    Her long white hair fell down to her feet and her brow was adorned by a circlet of silver and starlight. Her pale skin shimmered with silver and her eyes, pupil-less like their own, reflected the moon.

    Her features were stunningly beautiful. Her brows held a high arch, and the bridge of her nose was narrow and long, ending in a slightly upturned tip. Her thin purple-tinted lips sat just above her pointed chin, and the sharp angle of her jaw was accentuated by her high cheekbones.

    She knew who this woman was at once. She was not a woman at all, but one half of the Two-Faced Goddess. The half who ruled the night and all who dwelled therein. The half who had created her and her kind. Who blessed them with life and magic, and then demanded that life and magic be returned to her.

    "Peace," whispered her companion. "This is merely a memory, but the Goddess knows who harbors resentment towards her, and she does not take kindly to them."

    Neither of them spoke as the Goddess descended into the clearing. There was a woman lying in the grass now. Her body was bruised and bloody. Her clothes lay discarded in tattered pieces. The woman was barely breathing, if she was at all. She understood what she was being shown now. This memory belonged to the woman at her side. Her namesake and predecessor. The very first Moon Blessed.

    She watched as the Goddess approached the woman. Quietly, the Goddess knelt. She ran a hand down the woman's neck and onto her back. The woman stirred with a faint groan. "So you are not wholly gone," the Goddess murmured. "My sister advises against this. She believes no good can come of it. Our power is too much for a Human to bear."

    The Goddess's lips twitched up. "Too much for an ordinary Human, perhaps, but you are not ordinary, are you? You are betrayed. You are misused. You are broken. If you were to bear an ill-conceived child, you would be scorned."

    She brushed her knuckles across the woman's cheek. "You shall not live that long if I don't intervene. You have served us both devotedly in this life. You deserve to rest. But, I don't believe your work is done. The man who did this to you is proof of that." The Goddess bent towards the woman's ear. "So I shall give you a choice, Nastasia. Shall you be ours in life, or in death?"

    She found herself straining to hear the woman's answer. "Life," Nastasia breathed.

    The Goddess cradled the woman in her arms and cupped her cheek in her palm. "Then live, Nastasia the Blessed. Live for us. Live for me." The Goddess blew her breath across the woman's face and power shone at her fingertips. "Live as you will one day die."