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The half-moon spills over the horizon, cratered and holy, silent and stalwart.
She wanders the lunar dust, graceful and tiptoed, willowing and lonely.
The world blooms below in a million colors she cannot see. All is black or white in her blurred vision. She grazes the galaxy with the edge of her fingertips, milky way catching under her nails, memories of a long lost parent lingering in her footfall. The atramentous frame of raven wings lies stark against her alabaster skin.
Her tears catch upon the rim of her trail, the only liquid on all the rock. Her garden is barren. Not a noise sounds in all the cosmos.
A raindrop smooths upon the edge of her cheek.
The moonchild glances upward at her cloudless sky. The only sight there to greet her are stars in infinite (dis)array. Between the blinks of her harrowed vision, she traces the lines between them with her frail digits. From those meager scrawls, she finds wayward words.
There are so many like me, but I’m still alone.
I shine, but by the time someone sees it, I may already be gone.
I can’t ever find the way, even though I’m supposed to show others where to go.
I’m lost.
The moonchild reaches up, and whispers something below her breath. Maybe it’s a prayer.
In her grasp she clutches onto the stars, and tears them down to luna firma.
Before her, clothed in spring and sunlight, is the starchild, crying ever so louder than she did. Wings of dawn, full like a swan, encircle her. So warm. So effulgent.
The moonchild takes her hand, and starts dancing.
A waltz in the dark. A swing in the light. The starchild follows along, clumsily, but her asterisms twinkle so beautifully. The moonchild’s face carves a crescent smile brighter than the sun that burns in the corner of their vision. Gas and rock, twirling in harmony. Like the formulation of sterling nebulae.
The moonchild pulls her along. The garden blooms below their feet, flowers long and thin and short and fat, petals flitting high and low and everywhere in-between. A dip into the universe. A lift into the stardust. Every motion creates life, joy, meaning, purpose. Their feet begin to rise off the ground, and they soar with their steps. Jumping around Jupiter. Singing above Saturn. Each planetary mass seems but an echo in their footfall, each asteroid belt a nuptial blessing upon their road. They orbit nothing but each other, a binary star of the real and imagined. All is their purview.
They are as gods.
Twirling and sinking into their long embrace.
Day and night hold no meaning, in the world of equal light and dark. Yin becomes yang, yang becomes yin. The moon yearns to burn like the stars, and the stars to hold firm like the moon. There is no need for a third. This rhythm, this sway, is inertia without rest, until the ground beneath their feet was swallowed by the sun and they had no choice but to drift together in blackness. Eternity is their defiance. All they have to do is hold tight, and believe.
The gravity of a distant black hole pulls at her ankles.
The moonchild lets go of the starchild’s hand.
Is it an accident? Their destiny? A cruel impulse in her mind, unable to be resisted? Whatever the case, she realizes her error imminently. She tries to grasp that hand once more. But the starchild shrinks back. She’s done something wrong.
Come. Let us waltz, and forget it ever happened.
The starchild looks around. In her eyes, the brightest things in and outside of heaven, the moonchild cannot see a reflection. Her constellation gazes upwards, towards the distant world. That lonesome earth.
I want to be human.
Human? The moonchild desired such a thing once – it was a childish wish, born of long-lost innocence. Think nothing of it, and reside here in paradise forever.
But the starchild does not listen. She grips her wings, her white pure wings, clutching so tightly as to mold the bones. She begins to tear the feathers out by the handful, scattering seraphic downs all about their Eden.
Don’t! You can’t!
The moonchild’s words fall on deaf ears. The starchild loses her sheen. Brightness dims. Flesh forms. Wings wither. Skin breathes.
“But still I’m out of step with the world.”
She looks up towards the earth, bright viridian and cobalt in her irises.
“Turning, turning… my feet shuffle across the same street I’ve always known, cars droning by. The flowers are about to bloom, but I can’t see. I’m too busy staring at my feet.”
Stop. Sto—
“Someone asks ‘is something on your mind?’ and I swallow my pains. I don’t know what to say, I still don’t know, so I walk along and pretend not to notice. The red light ticks down and I stand on the curb, throat dry and tight, the day far too cold for how bright it is. Is there any god or buddha who smiles upon this world?”
She had to believe she had to—
“There has to be. Because a world this vivid, filled with gentle smiles and bright petals… must have been shaped by someone.” A hand is taken . “That god must struggle, and cry, and weep with all her might, and no one understands the rain that falls on her garden. But even if I don’t know what to say to her, even if I’m dragged down by doubts and fears and my own lost feet, I’m going to believe in her all the same. No matter how far apart we are.”
Tomori smiles.
“Isn’t that right, Saki-chan?”
Sakiko remembers that she too is flesh and blood. Heart pounding in her skin. Fingers clutching in her hand. Tears streaming down her face.
But as she’s about to reach forward and caress those lips with her own… she catches it.
The unmistakable fragrance of a fresh roast.
Eyes flutter awake, staring at a skylit ceiling. The quiet burble of a coffee maker sounds below. She doesn’t move.
“Good morning!” says Hatsune, coming up the ladder with a mug in hand. “There are donuts downstairs if you want any.”
Sakiko ekes out a smile as Hatsune sets the mug down beside her futon. “Thank you kindly.”
Hatsune’s smile is as kind and gentle as ever. The kind that Sakiko hates how she can’t hate. “Did you sleep well?”
Sakiko exhales. “Too well. I almost wish I had kept dreaming a little longer.”
Hatsune nods. “Take your time. We can go slow today.”
“Hardly.” Sakiko sits up, smoothening her hair. “In order to keep our own beautiful dream intact, I need to start work on our next masquerade.”
Realization strikes Hatsune, and she nods resolutely. “Lyrics worthy of your vision… I promise to write them.”
“I know you will.” Sakiko stands, tying ribbons around her pigtails. “Give me some space for a little while, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Hatsune descends the stairs again.
Sakiko walks past the coffee cup to her piano, the dream she’d had still fresh in her mind. She shouldn’t dwell on it… it was just a reverie, a fancy her mind had concocted out of hidden desire. She could forget all about it.
Those words, crafted in dreams, would never rend her as much as the real girl’s screams.