I couldn’t sleep that night.

  It was becoming a habit, this insomnia. I kept playing it over in my head. Upe’s anger, her rough handling of my brothers, Lapas’ pain, and my mother’s suppressed rage. Her kindness. Her understanding.

  It’s something I’ve never learned. That level of understanding. Even as a child I was quick to temper, quick to blame and run from blame. But my mother—she’s who I always hope to someday be. To someday rise to her level. Maybe I’m too old to grow up, but I try anyway.

  I burrowed into her chest. Eyes closed, colors and shapes danced meaninglessly on the inside of my eyelids. And then they folded together, became Upe’s rage or my mother’s placid face. LoPa and HoPa weren’t pressed up beside us. They were cuddled together against the wall. They had stayed up for a long time, muttering and giggling. I heard their soft touches, their kissing, and then HoPa’s gasps and moans. My mother slept through it, her heart beating slow and deliberate. I kept my ear against her chest, skin on skin until it became clammy from the heat of our bodies. She smelled like home. Her skin smooth except where old scars formed ridges on her arms and shoulders.

  I knew them all. Each scar. Its length and width. I could find them with my eyes closed. I traced a large one over her left collarbone. It was as thick as my thumb and as long as my hand. Beneath it the bones bulged as if it had broken and healed. It was a story I longed to know but had never heard. Stories of my own creation filled the gaps.

  My mother protecting my fathers from another warrior. That other warrior would be graceful as my mother but larger. She would be close to HoPa’s size with the ferocity of a wolf, carrying a spear, the way all the other warriors of the clan did. A spear nearly twice the length of her body. She swung it viciously at my mother but my mother parried it away. Her sword spinning and twisting, snapping away the long horn of the spear.

  LoPa would squeal in fear, causing my mother to lose focus for a moment. Long enough for the spear to slip past my mother’s sword and shove into her shoulder, cracking bone. HoPa would clamp a hand over LoPa’s mouth, and my mother would fight through the pain, filled with a new rage. She’d press the other warrior, cutting through her spear and slicing through the woman’s thick neck.

  Covered in the blood of another, she would return to my fathers, who would take her to the river and bathe her. Tend to her wound. And the night would be spent with the three of them in loving embrace.

  Sleep didn’t come and I slipped away from my mother. It was cold outside her touch, so I took a blanket of squirrels with me. Young as I was, sneaking out into the world beyond my family was now a ritual. My brothers weren’t holding hands that night. Instead they were huddled together, like cats. Their bodies sprawled into one heap. It looked uncomfortable, but their faces were serene. I envied them. Sometimes I still do. What the two of them shared—that closeness and level of understanding—I’ve never had with another. Not even Ogma here, pleasure as you are to be with. No, don’t interrupt. We’ll never be as my brothers were. They shared a womb. Shared faces. Shared the same heartbeat and thoughts. Shared a language that only they spoke.

  Outside, autumn’s grip on the night cooled me. I pulled the squirrel blanket tight. The one HoPa had skinned and sewn for me while I was still in the womb. Though years had passed, it still dragged on the ground, and would until a few more seasons had passed. It’s one of the few things I had from him after the dragon came.

  I listened, as I always did. The night spiraled into my ears. Birds, insects, wind, the rustling of leaves. All the sounds that had become familiar on my journeys into the night, seeking the song of the forest. That ancient song of wolves and eternal trees.

  I closed my eyes and traced the sounds of the leaves as they fell from their branches, joining their siblings in the underbrush of the forest. Birds sang and even fought. Their squawking and cawing slapped against the serenity of the night and I opened my eyes.

  I climbed onto the home and leaned against the now barren apple tree. For weeks we had been eating apples. Apples and chicken. Cooked apples. Raw apples. Mashed apples. Every kind of apple. Its bark was quiet, as it always was. I never heard the voice trapped inside it. The voice of life pulsing through its fibers. I lay in the dirt of our garden, half harvested. Above me the stars expanded. At first they appeared like a flowing river of dazzling balls winding between the patterns the four moons formed. The longer I stared, the more the image transformed. There were stars beyond the bright ones, beyond the large ones. Stars and stars and stars. The starry river became a quagmire and then an ocean expanding endlessly out until they were blotted out by the canopy. But even still, there were always more stars in the distance. Deeper and deeper into the sky: stars.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Then the wind brought me new sounds. Sounds I had never heard in the night. The sounds of tears and faint mutterings.

  My heart stilled for a moment, believing it was LoPa. But it couldn’t be. He was snoring away inside and had nothing to cry about after the night he shared with HoPa. They had been in a mood all evening. Disappearing and coming back flushed and sweaty. The need caught them at times. The need to be together without my mother. The need to touch and find love in each other in ways my mother couldn’t provide.

  It was adorable, in its own way. They were like boys then.

  I crawled from where I was to the edge of the hill but saw no one. Only heard them. I crept down our home and followed the tears to the forest.

  A man—Lapas. He sat in the grass, tearing it out and ripping it to pieces in his hands. His skin caught the moonlight like glass. It shined against him and turned him almost greenish in color. He was beautiful like that. But in so much pain.

  His shoulder slumped forward, his head between his knees, his breath coming in heaves. I was maybe thirty paces to his right. If he had heard me moving, he could have turned and seen me gawking at him. I crouched low in the grass and then lay on my stomach and watched him.

  I don’t know why exactly. Lapas had never interested me before. Maybe it was because he was crying. Something I had never seen an adult do. Something that seemed both wrong and exciting. Like I was seeing something secret. Some kind of forbidden knowledge.

  All those tears I had shed during my life—everyone did that. Not just as a young girl but even as an adult.

  I watched him cry. His grief filled the air and consumed the night. A shuddering sigh and he dropped his knees to the side, put his elbows on them, and held his face with his hands. He shook his head and muttered, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Fucking bitch whore.” Then he broke into more sobs. Heavy painful sobs, like his lungs longed to leave his body.

  Tears were in my own eyes but I swallowed the sobs rising in my throat. His sadness enveloped me and I felt loveless. The night became cold. My mother far away. The image of my fathers faded, and I was alone in the darkness beneath countless stars and the four sister moons. I thought of the three not glowing above us and felt lonely for them. Then lonely for the four who had to glow without them. I felt lonely for myself. For the twin I didn’t have. The other half I’d never get to feel.

  I gripped the grass as hard as I could, and when that did nothing to stop the pain in my chest, I chewed on my fingers. I ripped the dead skin from them until too many layers were gone and the cool air stung them. Even touching them stung, but it kept the tears at bay.

  Lapas leaned back and stared at the moons for a moment.

  I held my breath. The tracks of tears glistened on his cheeks. His face appeared like a skeleton. His eyes. So white they seemed to glow like the moons. His chest was calm. His sobs unburdened. He kept sighing. Every once and a while a heavier sigh would expel from his lungs, shuddering through the air.

  And then he rolled away from me and stood. I pressed myself as low as I could in the grass. The wind ripped over us and I pulled my squirrel blanket tight to warm and hide me.

  He walked away and I followed him.

  Again, I don’t know why.

  My heart raced, feeling like he knew I watched him. Knew I followed so close behind, but far enough away to keep him from hearing me. The sounds of the night were like drops of water in a still pond against the dense calm of the deepest hours of darkness. That quietness and calmness, that stillness that becomes almost loud.

  It’s difficult to explain. Either you know what I mean or you don’t, but there’s a time of night when life seems so remote, when the audible world becomes so quiet, like everyone and everything, from stone to tree to the human heart, holds its breath. That silence becomes like a mountain. So quiet and still that it overpowers your ability to hear anything else.

  I followed him to his home. It seemed such a long journey at night and the way was unfamiliar, like I had never walked away from my own home. But he didn’t go straight to his own door. He stopped outside Upe’s for a long time. His face so sad, his eyes barely open. My throat was raw and tight, my eyes itched. He raised his hand and slowly pressed his palm against her door. He left it there as he closed his eyes. After a time, he sighed, and walked away. Walked to his door and disappeared within.

  I ran home, crying openmouthed the whole way.

  It broke my heart in ways I didn’t understand back then. Or, I did understand, but not intellectually. Not in any way I could have expressed to my brothers or fathers or even my mother. It was a sorrow so deep and profound that it rattled through my bones.

  When I had calmed myself and wiped my face clean of tears, I entered our home again and climbed into my mother’s embrace.

  Her eyes opened and she smacked her lips. Her breath sour and her eyes unfocused, she said, “Luna.” Wrapping her arms round me, she pulled me tight and I finally slept.

  my patreon for more.