Black Moon Rising

Chapter Five: Prophet

Chapter Five: Prophet

Thou silver deity of secret night,

Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade;

Thou conscious witness of unknown delight,

The Lover's guardian, and the Muse's aid!

By thy pale beams I solitary rove,

To thee my tender grief confide;

Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove,

My friend, my goddess, and my guide...

-Hymn to the Moon, by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

My childhood was a quiet and lonely one. During my days growing up in the lunar city of Lunopolis, I spent most of my time hidden in my chambers. I read lots of books, but the ones that fascinated me the most were the books about Earth. Encyclopedias and journals through the ages were collected by Lunarian explorers that would occasionally visit the planet, to check on its people and secretly guide their evolution. We drew many inspirations from Earth cultures and incorporated them into our own. Unfortunately, when the Lunarian population plummeted, those trips became less and less frequent, until they eventually stopped altogether.

When I wasn't reading, or daydreaming in my own imaginary worlds, I would sleep. I often slept for days at a time, and yet I never seemed to have enough energy. When I slept, I was no longer sad or bored, because I could venture off into the realms within my dreams. It was all I could do most days. As a Tsukihime, I had hours of studying and training in a wide array of different activities, but even then, it always felt like I had too much time on my hands.

But above all that...I was lonely. I was a timid child, and I rarely interacted with others, outside of my tutoring sessions, that is. Despite my shyness, I craved friendship. Unfortunately, Lunarian children were becoming increasingly rare, and even if that weren't the case, Tsukihime were not allowed to leave the Royal District, to walk among and interact with the commoners.

Our society was so rigid and compartmentalized, physical interaction was a difficult undertaking. As the immaculate sacrificial brides, the Tsukihime had to remain pure, isolated from each other, and even our own parents.

Though we were all sisters on some level, the Tsukihime despised each other and could not tolerate being in one another's presence for long. It was not uncommon for sisters to start fighting for no apparent reason at all, having to be forcibly separated. We all came from the same father, but each of us had a different mother, and that discrepancy only drove our division further. Parental love and attention was an alien concept to most of us, and I was no exception. My mother, Diana, only appeared on rare occasions to spend time with me, and my father, Lord Tsukiyomi, was an even more exotic occurrence. I barely saw him or spoke to him, let alone get to know him. He was the king of our people, but I hardly recognized him as a father. To me, he felt more like an obscure, mystical being than any kind of paternal figure.

As to be expected, I was largely raised by the servants, the Marionettes. They were female Lunarians who wore butterfly-shaped masks over their eyes to obscure much of their faces. I didn't understand it as a child, but when I grew up, I came to realize that the rigid division was done by design. They didn't want the Tsukihime to develop emotional bonds with anyone, or vice versa.

At the end of it all, our purpose in life was to be sacrificed to the dark Angel Sariel, to protect our people from his infernal hunger. The mothers had to be separated from their children, because it would be far harder to say goodbye when the time came. It angered me. Mothers were supposed to protect their children no matter what. I swore to myself that if I was ever fortunate enough to have a child, I would protect them with my life, until my dying breath.