Does the moon long for morning

The moon and the aftermath

Ulla pulled the blankets up to Varian's chin, tucking him in with a warm smile as he wriggled to get comfortable.

"Ready?" she asked.

Varian nodded eagerly.

"Long ago," she began, "before the seas split the lands, there was a man named Varian."

"No! That's my name!"

She chuckled. "I named you after him silly, now quiet down and let me speak."

She paused to make sure he was quiet, then continued. "This varian loved to study the stars. Every night, he'd lie awake, gazing up at them. And little by little, the starlight filled his eyes, making them shine bright silver.

Varian loved the stars, and the stars loved him.

Like most things on this planet, it couldn't last. One of the people he traveled with became jealous of his eyes and hatred grew inside them. They began to rot on the inside and became filled with vile thoughts. One day, they snapped. They couldn't stand the burning jealousy any longer and they took a knife and stabbed it into one of Varians eyes."

Varian gasped, clutching the blanket.

"The stars' hearts broke as they watched, knowing their favorite human was dying. But they wouldn't let him go. With all their light, they pulled Varian up into the sky, so he could live among them forever."

She lowered her voice to a whisper. "His body became part of the heavens, and his remaining eye became the moon. Now he spends his nights watching over us, just as he once watched the stars."

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. "When you were born, you had the biggest, brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen. The moment I looked at you, I knew exactly what your name should be."

Varian yawned. "Is everyone named after a story?"

"Not everyone."

"Are you?"

"Yes." She stroked his hair.

"Tell me your story?"

"Not tonight. Sleep now, little moon, I'll tell it to you on another day."

Grumbling, Varian closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Varian wakes to small paws patting his face. He blinks blearily and grimaces as the smell of burnt meat hit his nostrils. The hard ground digs into his back, and a searing pain rips through his right arm.

"Ruddiger?" he rasps.

The raccoon chatters anxiously.

Varian forces himself to sit up, wincing as he pushes through the pain. He takes a deep breath as he tries to recall any medical advice he'd read about or had been taught by his mother.

Stumbling into the kitchen, he shakily opens a cupboard. First things first: disinfect. By some stroke of luck, the Quirinium has cauterized the wound, but infection could still be fatal.

With his remaining arm he shakily grabs and uncorks a bottle of vinegar, breathing heavily as he forces himself to look away from his arm, fearing that he'll faint as soon as he lays eyes on whatever remains. He has to stay awake. He has to live.

Gritting his teeth, he pours the vinegar onto the wound.

Pain renews in tenfold nearly driving him to the floor. He holds his breath, trying to steady himself as his vision blurs. When the pain finally dulls to a hot throb, he begins the search for some bandages.

Finding them takes longer then he thought it would, and once he does he knows that applying them will be a nightmare. Frustration burns in his gut as he struggles to wrap his arm without looking at it and with one hand. His attempt is messy, the bandages slipping, but he finally manages to cover the wound.

Only once it's covered does he risk a look at it, checking the damage.

His vision swims as he looks upon what was left— his arm now ending just past his elbow. His right hand was gone. His stomach twists with despair. The reality settles heavily, the realization that he will never use his right hand again. There is no getting it back.

For a long time, he sits frozen, unable to move as dawn creeps into the room. Ruddiger climbs onto his shoulder, pressing close, his warmth a small comfort against the vast, hollow ache inside.

Varian buries his face in his good hand and cries.

———

Afterward, everything is... difficult.

Basic tasks become staggering challenges. Carrying items, cooking, even dressing himself takes twice the effort, with half the success. He stops wearing anything with buttons and lives on foods that don't require opening countless containers.

Sleeping, surprisingly, also proves to be a challenge. He has to send rudinger to drag up some of the blankets from down in his lab because he just can't stand being down there. The amber looms in the lab like a dark monolith, and the air is still thick with the smell of burnt hair and flesh. Just standing at the trap door leading down made him sick.

Not to mention the pain that came whenever he accidentally brushed it against something. Many nights he bolts up in pain from having rolled onto his side.

And the pain. It's relentless, jolting him awake whenever he rolls onto his injured side, sharp enough to make his vision blur. He digs up some old burn cream his mother made for him when he first experimented with explosives—some mixture of pig fat and honey. It soothes the raw ache, but he still can't bear to look at his arm. Every time he applies it, he has to fight back tears and nausea, struggling through the stabbing pain of his fingers brushing over the rough, wet tissue.

But what haunts him most is how little else has changed. His life has been torn apart, yet the black rocks keep spreading, people keep leaving, and his mother is still somewhere out there, unaware of what's happened, and still no help was coming.

Rapunzel has to know, right? And surely the king must have heard about the growing danger in his kingdom. Isn't it his duty to protect his people?

But if the king knew, wouldn't he have acted already? Wouldn't he have sent help?

The question gnaws at him like a swarm of ants, crawling through every corner of his mind. Whenever he isn't sleeping (which is surprisingly rare; apparently exhaustion is a side effect of losing a limb), he's turning the question over and over.

Eventually he can't take it anymore. He has to know, he has to be certain. A characteristic that both him and Ulla seemed to share. That desperate need for answers. It was that same need that caused him to find himself writing a letter to the king.

Draft after draft goes into the bin as he struggles to write legibly with his left hand. His handwriting is messy and crooked, and he's hit by the stark reality that he'll have to write with his non dominant hand for the rest of his life.

Finally, he has a letter that's just good enough. He sits back, feeling a strange sense of mourning as he stares at the scrawled words.

Weeks pass before he feels well enough to trek to the nearest town that still has people who would be able to deliver it.

His arm still oozes and carries a bone deep ache to it, but it's better, he thinks. He hasn't gotten a fever at all so he figures that it hasn't gotten infected.

Sending a letter out is the most he can really do at the moment. All experiments are put to a halt considering that he is down an entire arm and he can't even enter the laboratory. So getting a message out to the king is the best he can do.

The best-case scenario is that the king already knows and Varian's letter means nothing. Worst case: the king is clueless, and Varian's letter is the only warning.

All varian can do know is hope.