A freak collision, they said. The full moon now resembled a half-eaten cake. Something had gouged out its left flank, leaving the celestial giant lopsided and broken.
It didn’t hurt us. A blessing, some argued. When the fallen moon crushed Australia like a custard pie dropped from a plate, the rest of the world got lucky. So they thought.
Wolves hunted. Bats skittered. Vampires bit. The creatures of the night attacked. They were lost, you see. Lost without it. I know, for the moonlight was all that calmed me and now there was none. A werewolf forever, mayhem was mine.
The butterfly moon is not a moon per se, rather, a moment in time. A release of magic upon the sky. Those few minutes where a bejewelled night begs for more and those who watch her weep.
It begins with the moon.
She rises high, like a breaching whale who forgot to turn back at the waves. The gentle, titanium giantess flies, flies, sweeps into the sky to float as effortlessly as a child’s forgotten balloon. There she hangs. There she gathers the energies of the universe, brightens, lightens, burns milk-white. This is seen. She is always seen.
They appear as coloured raindrops falling up, not down. A few at first, the shoal gather pace. Vermillion and emerald, sapphire and citrine, wings flap and feelers feel. The moon gleams all the whiter.
They swim rather than fly. The moths and butterflies, for the two are inseparable on nights such as these, flitter and flap their way towards an obsidian sky the stars have vacated. They have bowed down to their celestial mistress, as have the spinning galaxies themselves. This night is aflame in the vivid colours of nature. Oh, what a joy for the milk-white queen.
The little ones circle her as a tide of fairy lights. They bob up and down as if blown by some unfelt solar wind around their cosmic Christmas tree. So pretty. So exquisite. The moon is, of course, the crowning jewel upon its topmost heights. This is what it has waited for, our moon. One moment in forever to truly enjoy the view.
She weeps silver tears at their passing. She fills the oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, and the liquid souls of those who watch in awe through open curtains. Alas, it does not last, but the best things never do.
They do not fly down, but take one last farewell lap and head off into eternity. The moon waves each one goodbye.
As do we.
Never forget the little ones, they’re just as important as you or I.
“It washes across you like a mother’s first kiss. You don’t remember the sensation, but it’s always been there. That tactile moment of skin on skin, of what was within being without. There’s nothing more magical.” He waved away the horseman and drew his guest further into the fields. Tall and dark, only his flashing, bright eyes proved him there, unlike his guest, who wore scarlet. He assisted her over a small, uneven fence, the poorest of barriers, and led her on by the arm. He renewed his soliloquy as though never having missed a beat, he the actor and she his audience. “No words written or spoken may explain nor surpass it. No other feeling comes close. This is the bliss of a perfect night. Alas, you only truly remember the last.” He turned away as though moved by his own words, a shadow within a shadow within a dream. She spoke for the first time, light and hopeful. “And tonight, my love?” The girl shook out her usually ink-black hair to a deluge of silver, so bright was the moonlight, batted long lashes the same. “More than any.” She took him in all his brooding majesty. And despite his obvious melancholy, an almost perpetual predilection, and how the moonlight shied away from his form, she smiled a smile of utter contentment, of getting just what she wanted and when. “I think I’ve waited long enough.” “Yes, my dear. I believe you have.” The two nestled down in a quicksilver ocean of rippling grasses, disappearing beneath those unusual waves like breaching whales bound for an ultramarine abyss. Neither the hooting owl nor the gathering wind disturbed them. Not a watching ghost disrupted their repose. Time passed. # It was many hours before they resurfaced, one head at a time, eyes rubbed awake and blinking. She of the waist-length hair came first and him second. The moon had barely moved, giving no evidence of time having altered, as though hung there by some invisible cosmic thread. The stars surrounded it still like a celestial shawl. Those ebony spaces between them engulfed the rest. And so it was her amber eyes wandered, whilst his remained on her. Up they rose, higher and higher, defiant against both nebulae and shooting stars alike. Her head cocked to one side like an inquisitive robin, a look her outfit enhanced. She grinned as the moon winked daggers. Secure in his gaze, she reached into her jacket and pulled out a tortoiseshell comb. There, beneath infinity, she brushed out that which marked her beauty, defiant in her belief that to him, at least, she rivalled the eternal night. “Do you bring many women here?” “Not here.” “Then, I am the first?” “Beneath this moon, at this time, and this place, yes.” “I’m honoured. You, so privileged and dashing, might have chosen any woman.” “Just any woman wouldn’t do.” Her cheeks glowed a crimson to rival her dress. “Do you think we might return here every evening? Beneath this same moon? This same space?” “We need never leave.” “Good,” she said. “Though I am a little hungry.” “As am I.” He leant in close, closer, closer still. Her heart beat like a moth’s wings, fast and silent. The night breathed long and deep. His lips met her neck and kept on going. Strong hands pinned her arms as his mouth bit deep. It was soon over. The fields kept rippling as the moon shone brighter, and a man who’d seen more than he ought, wept. Time stalled. # When his anguish seemed inconsolable, he stopped, as though God had suddenly dammed his eyes. He licked stained lips. “I shall bury you, my love, as I have them all.” He used his hands to scoop the soft earth from the ground, powerful arms to drive them. He excavated more soil in a minute than a dozen gravediggers might shift in a week. Once finished, he stepped back. Looked down. Sighed. The hole stood not empty, but full. It brimmed with sloshing moonlight. The man removed his jacket, ancient in its styling, bursting with brocade and lace. Next came his shirt revealing a milk-white torso, then his shoes and britches. He lowered himself into the hole-made-grave and, a second later, was gone. One might have feared for the fellow then, but he had other ideas. Rising from those false, silver waters, he lifted the one whose life he’d taken and lowered her gently into the pit. He spoke as though in a trance. “I shall make right what fate corrupted by sacrificial blood and flesh. For this, I thank you. Truly, yours was a gift. Thanks to you, I endure, not in hate or violence, but nocturnal bliss. Thanks to you, my dear. Yes, thanks to you. And I say this with a sincerity others would claim absent, I loved you. For a time, I have loved you all. But nothing, nothing, my love, rivals the serenity of the moon.” Time pooled.
The End.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
You must be logged in to post a comment.