moonlight | ninjago

✧ foreword

Try as I might, I've never been able to take my gaze off the moon.

I've always thought there was something almost magical about it, something mystical that lures my eyes to it like moths toward light. I can't count the number of sleepless nights I've spent at my bedroom window, gazing up at that glowing halo so high above. My life is already peaceful, being a simple girl from an equally-simple village. But when I'm alone with the moon, my soul feels truly at peace, and all my thoughts slip away beneath its silver rays.

I stay up late because of it. I shouldn't, really, but I do. Not because I have school or anything in the morning. As a little girl, I could never bring myself to talk to other kids, and after a while I found social situations weren't exactly my strong suit. I dropped out years ago to help my mother run the family tea shop, although I still study in my spare time. My days are spent in Jamanakai Village, growing, making and selling tea from sun-up to sundown. Even so, I just can't help myself. So at night when the stars light up my room like fireflies, I sit by myself, and...well, I talk to the moon.

I know it sounds crazy. But I promise, there's a reason for it.

Have you ever missed someone so much it hurts? So much that they always linger at the back of your mind, that the mere thought of them makes your chest tight and your eyes wet? For me, that someone is my father. The strange part is that I never even knew him. He went missing before I was even born, if you can believe it, and to this day no one knows what happened to him—not even my own mother. Even after sixteen years, it still puzzles me. How can someone be there one moment, then gone the next? Where did he go? Did he have a choice in the matter? Is he even still alive?

Those questions have kept me up at night since I was a little girl. And so, every night, I stare up at the moon. Maybe wherever my father is now, he sees the same moon I do, and maybe when I speak to it, he hears me. I like to think that's the case. After all, I've never known what his voice sounds like, or the feeling of his arms holding me tight. My only connection to him is the moon, the one thing the two of us share.

Is it far-fetched to think my missing dad can hear me speaking to him late at night? Maybe so. But...what if he really is somewhere on the other side, talking to me too? There's not much in this world that I'm sure about, but the sight of the night sky makes me dream. And what harm is there in dreaming, in believing? I don't have anything to lose.

After all, I'm just the wallflower from Jamanakai Village who sits alone late at night, talking to the moon.