His Moon

XXXIII | Souls

Kaleb was at war. Cruel, relentless, harsh war. He had no choice but to bite down and fight, to battle the darkness around him or else he'd lose himself to it. Everything hurt, a symptom of having his soul shattered in one fell swoop...or, most of it, at least. 

There was one piece he was clinging to, the weapon he swung furiously against the darkness. It was a tiny slice of his soul, sharp and unforgiving as a sliver of broken glass. And it ached. It hurt so badly that it was all he could think about; the pain nearly consumed him. There was no way he could endure it much longer. 

Soon enough, his light would vanish. It wouldn't slowly fade out of existence like the sun giving way to the moon. No, it would extinguish in the blink of an eye like a star's explosive death giving way to a black hole, devoured by the darkness that Jack had forced upon him. He would lose because the dark was cold as ice. It numbed him, and nothing was almost preferable to the pain. 

But then Kaleb would remember that the pain was what he wanted. It was life. It was the heaviness of still having a heart and all the burdens that come with it. It was watching the world as if through a kaleidoscope, all broken images and distorted colors, stories spun but in all the wrong ways, emotions pouring out that didn't belong or have a place to go. 

Kaleb could do nothing. He could only watch and suffer as his head spun and his eyes ached from staring too long and too intensely at his own broken life before him. 

A murderer, she said. Her beautifully dark doe eyes wouldn't even look at him when she said it. Kaleb wanted to see them. More so, he wanted her to see him, to look into him and see that no, he wasn't gone. He was weak and exhausted and running out of time, but he was still here. Her Kaleb, not this version of himself that had seized control. 

Because that weak, shattered piece of his heart and soul still belonged to her. 

"She's human," Kaia said, her eyes burning, "What if I hurt her? ...That's what you said." Kaleb had known that she'd heard his thoughts back then. It was true. Maybe ever since the beginning, when he'd first felt the start of an insatiable hunger for her, he was afraid of it, of losing her, of scaring her, of hurting her. 

What if the moment he gave in, she'd fracture and break into a thousand pieces?

But it was clear now that he'd been blind. Through the shattered pictures and twisted images he got, it was clear to him that Kaia was anything but fragile. She was so much more than just his moon. Kaia was a queen, a goddess, a Luna. No matter how far away she was, he would never lose her. No matter how angry he got, he could never scare her away. No matter how rough he was, she would never break at his touch. 

"...I hate you." 

Kaleb didn't listen. He could see in her eyes that the words weren't real. They carried no bite. All he could do was reach, reach for her as the dark closed in around him, thundering towards him like a hundred black horses, howling like a hurricane. 

This agony, Kaleb knew, was punishment for the cruelty he'd shown Jack; the man deserved it, but Kaleb knew that his parents wouldn't have been proud. 

There was a flash of motion and then...

It was so brief that Kaleb almost didn't believe it had happened. But for a moment, the world was bright again. He could see. He could hear and feel. And all he could think about was how the room smelled like Kaia, that delicate vanilla scent that had led him to her all that time ago. 

For a breath, their souls touched. Kaleb's was a thunderstorm, powerful and loud yet somehow thrilling. Kaia was the only one who could meet his thunder and lightning on a high hill, the world crackling around her, breaking apart, and raise her face to the sky. Fearless. She could whisper his name and bend the heavens to her will.