Luna's Secret (A DWU Short Story)

Chapter Seven

After that conversation with Alex, he was soon well enough to leave again. It was a number of years before her returned again; I did not bother to keep count them anymore.

Having shared so much of myself with him, receiving condolences and comfort in return, I felt much more at peace in my soul. In all honesty, after venting out all the things I had missed and had regretted for so long, I no longer felt responsible to them, and I was no longer inclined to grieve over them.

Deep down, I did feel bothered by the fact that I could not resolve the issues that I had caused, and was still responsible for. However, at the time, I had reasoned that I was quite literally so far away from the problem that there was no reason to allow it to have a hold on me anymore.

If my sister still had hard feelings against me for those unresolved occurrences, then that was her problem to deal with, and furthermore, her fault, since she was the one who had outcasted me to banishment on the moon.

This mentality would later prove to be the instrument of my downfall.

However, for the time, I felt absolutely free. I lost my desire to return. I lost my desire to become a princess again. I lost my sense of responsibility. I chose to stop feeling at fault for my past actions.

My attitude grew increasingly uncaring- apathetic towards my situation and the events that had led up to it.

It was an easy way out of my depressive attitude, and a dangerous path as well.

As years passed, something else occurred that is also noteworthy to the narrative: my magic slowly began to return to me more fully.

By this, I mean that the limited telekinetic magic that I had began to increase in power, expanding beyond that. Of course, this took place ever so slowly, but with the more time that passed, the changes gradually became increasingly significant.

I began to practice my skills, relearning and reshaping them. This took even more time. I had gone such a long time only using the weak telekinetic magic I'd managed to keep for lifting and moving food and boulders. I was incredibly out of practice.

However, while out of practice, I hadn't forgotten how to perform the spells I'd learned long ago.

More and more time passed, and those long since performed magic spells gradually became familiar to me once again.

The moon- this rock that had been my prison of solitude eternal, and had become my home, was now my training ground/playground.

Here, the conditions were too severe to create organic life, so I turned my attention to transformation spells. I converted myself into different faces and different states of matter, becoming one with the shadows.

Next, I focused my efforts on creating creatures. Rather than become another face or a creature myself, I attempted to create an artificial copy of it in front of me.

Alex was the first mental picture that I tried to replicate. His features were all forever etched in my memory, so clear and precise that I was confident that I'd be able to replicate an exact copy of his physical form, down to the tiniest detail.

However, no matter how many times I tried and tried again, my magic was never quite strong enough to maintain it.

One day, after so much more time passed, and it had again slipped my mind to keep count, I sat down with the basket of food that Alex had given me all those years ago. The food and drink inside increased in variety, but it never ran out of supply.

I took a drink and a bag of salty corn chips out of the cooler, and ate in silence.

I began to wonder about Alex, which I hadn't done in quite sometime. It had felt like a small eternity since the last time he had come to visit me.