One By Night and Other Collected Tales

Blood Moon

Content Warning: Stealthing (when a partner secretly removes a condom during sex without the other person's consent); unwanted pregnancy; herbal abortion tea.

Author's Note: The story is set in modern times, though I used somewhat-archaic language to convey the main character's mood and perspective as a pagan in ritual space, and also to reflect the barbaric and backwards nature of the threatened erosion of reproductive rights. 

"May the blood on the moon call to the blood of my womb. May Luna purge me of unwanted pregnancy, by the ruddy light of this Flower Moon. Lo, though I like you am belly-full, I, too, must wane upon the morrow, to stave off great and terrible sorrow. Thus, I trace Bane's sigil rune."

As Maribel spoke the words, she drew a large X over her belly, with a circle between its upper two arms. Cold tears dripped from her bloodshot eyes. She'd weathered many a sleepless night worrying herself into knots, over her fate and the fate of the babe-to-be that had taken root inside of her.

The father wanted nothing more to do with her; his heart ossified against her before she even knew she was pregnant. Sometime after the lurching stop of her menstrual cycle, she learned he had a family of his own already, a wife and three young children. Their affair had been a careless lark for him, not the beginning of any great endeavor of love.

Maribel had taken precautions with Reeve during their intimacy. She bought the prophylactics herself and even supplemented their protection with what looked like a tiny egg, made of solid spermicidal cream, that melted when inserted into the body.

He'd apparently slipped out of the condom unbeknownst to Maribel, preferring the sensation of skin on skin— as she learned when he thrust one last time and his seed jetted inside her. The spermicide alone hadn't been enough, and recent changes in abortion laws in her area left her nowhere to turn but to the Goddess. Even the after-pill was no longer available; these were dark times, indeed.

She didn't blame the babe. No, it wasn't the fault of their unborn child that his, or her, father could be so carelessly cruel with his affections; no, she could love the child regardless.

Her problem was that she had a child already, of less than a year, whom she'd recently weaned off the breast. Fatigue and fierce melancholy dogged her day and night, even on a "good" day. There was no earthly way she could raise two children on her own.

Even the act of carrying a second babe to term while caring for another, waking three or four times a night to her cries, seemed impossible.

It wasn't an easy decision or one lightly made, but she drank the purging tea, traced the sigil, spoke the words, and hoped beyond hope that the Lady listened to her plea.

The moon loomed impossibly large in the velvet sky overhead, round and smoky-rose hued, a portent, to be sure, but of what, she didn't know.