Reborn From The Moon [ON HOLD]

Reborn From The Moon

Prolougue

April 4th, 1968.

This was a very significant day of my life, or should I say death?

That’s right April 4th 1968 was the day I died.

I was young and careless, but I was also careful. You would have to be blind and deaf not to notice the segregation in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, especially for a young black girl like myself.

I was almost a woman, just 16 years old, but I have been told that I could catch the eye of any man, no matter the age or the race.

My grandmamma sure did. She was a gorgeous black woman, with long curly brown hair and dark brown almost black eyes, living in the 30’s when she caught the eye of the man who is supposed to be my granddaddy, but I will never know him. She was 18, just a little older than me. A 35 year old white man saw her and he wanted her.

 He romanced her, getting her to give up the only thing she owned, her virtue. He had her good and convinced that they were going to run away together too, but to him, she was nothing but the daughter of a slave, something to play with and then throw away. To her, he was the love of her life, the one that was finally going to get her out of the life she was living, full of poverty and despair.

Then she fell pregnant.

That’s right. The rich white, business man got the poor, black, daughter of a slave pregnant. He was furious when he found out, he wanted it dead, but he had developed love for Rose, my grandmamma, during their love affair. He couldn’t bear to kill her, so he sent her away and told her never to come back again.

Rose was heartbroken, but she knew this would happen sooner or later. Their worlds were too different; their relationship would never be accepted. Interracial relationships weren’t really approved of back then, not that they are now. She decided to let him go, and keep the only reminder she had of her love affair, my mamma.

My mamma looked a lot like her father, so much so it almost pained my grandmamma to see her, but she never loved her any less. My mamma had her father’s hazel eyes and curly black hair, but she got my grandmamma’s skin coloring, but a little lighter, so people just assumed she was black.  My grandmamma wanted to keep it that way; it was very dangerous for an interracial child to live in those times.

My mom went on to marry my father, a kind black man with warm brown eyes and a charming smile. He was also pretty muscular and incredibly handsome. I was their first child. I got all my traits from my mamma’s side, strangely nothing from my daddy, but he didn’t question it, so neither did I. I got my mamma’s curly black hair and light skin coloring, but I got my grandmamma’s facial features and her dark brown almost black eyes.

Strangely my little brother and sisters all got my mamma’s facial features and my daddy’s eyes and dark skin coloring. I always felt like the odd one out, but my sisters always said they were jealous of my hair and skin, so I guess I am pretty pleased with what I got. My brother, on the other hand, never really liked me because he thought that I was a product of my mamma cheating on my daddy, even though that’s not the case.

But enough talk about my life, we’re here to talk about my death, or what was supposed to be my death.

The day I died, was the day the great Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed.

I was walking home from the grocery store, had to get milk and eggs for breakfast the next morning. I was wearing a long dress and a jacket with a scarf; it was a particularly cold spring day.

It was 8 o’clock, 2 hours after MLK was shot and killed and about 30 minutes after he was pronounced dead. All of a sudden, I heard glass braking behind me. There was a lot of shouting and breaking of things. People were on the street fighting, shouting, breaking into stores, it was complete and utter chaos. It was like just as soon as MLK died the started saying “Forget about peaceful protesting, we need to riot!” And riot they did. In 30 other cities, riots like these were breaking out left and right.

But at that moment, I didn’t know that. I had absolutely no Idea what was going on, why these things were happening. Then I heard a shot come from about 2 feet over. I panicked, dropped my bags and ran.

Now the person who was chasing me, shooting at me, had absolutely no idea why he was singling me out for the kill. He just knew he had an inexplicable urge to kill me, one he couldn’t ignore.

Of course, I didn’t know that either, so I followed my instincts and ran. I ran until I could see the cover of the forest. I thought that if I got lost in the forest, my pursuer wouldn’t be able to find me, and I could live. But somewhere in the bottom of my stomach I knew I was going to die. That I needed to.

That feeling terrified me enough for me to stop running for a split second as soon as I got to the edge of the forest. That feeling, that split second, caused me my life. The moment I stopped, I felt a terrible pain tear through my back and stomach. I had been shot.

I was able to drag myself into the forest long enough to get away from my pursuer, who wasn’t chasing me anymore, but I didn’t know. I had dragged myself to a clearing in the forest before I couldn’t go on anymore. I was lying in a spot where a single moon beam was reflecting on the ground. I thought it strange, but only for a second, I had bigger things to worry about obviously. I was losing blood, and quickly. I knew I was going to die.

I looked up and saw a million stars in the clear night sky. The moon was bright and shining, I had always favored the moon over the sun for some reason, and at that moment, a comet flew across the sky. I remember my last words were: “What a beautiful way to die.”

Little did I know that my life was just starting.

You see that beam of light, that was Luna Dea, or the Moon Goddess for those of you who don’t speak Latin, Luna Dea’s preferred language. Luna Dea had been watching my family since my grandmother was born. She was the one that had Rose and the white man meet and have an affair, even though they both knew it was wrong. My grandmamma wasn’t the type to do those kinds of things.

Luna Dea was also the one who got my mom pregnant with me. Before Luna Dea, I just assumed that I got all of my genes from my mother’s side, when in reality she took my mother’s genes and fertilized it, but she did it the day before my mamma and daddy had sex for the first time, so she wouldn’t arouse suspicion. I was really just a product of my mother and Luna Dea’s power.

Luna Dea also knew when the assassination would take place, and where I would be. As sick as this may sound, she was the one who compelled the man to kill me that day. She also manipulated my instincts into leading me to the forest, where she materialized from the moon beam after I died, revived me and took me back to the Nocte Regnum, or Midnight Kingdom.

You may be asking why she would go through all that trouble for me, what made me so special.

Well, the difference between me and any girl out there that this could have happened to is that, I had a purpose. Something I couldn’t fulfill until I had died.

I don’t know much about this purpose, but what I did know was, something big was coming. It was something so big that Luna Dea had to do something that she hadn’t done for centuries, manipulate my fate. She was convinced that I was the only one who could handle this, and once her mind was made up, there was no changing it.

So, for me to be a hero, she had to take my life so that I could live. So that I could do what I was meant to do.

So that I could be a hero.

Basically, in a way, my death was the first day of my life. A life that was full of promise, full of purpose. I was Renatus A Luna.

Reborn from the moon.

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Pic of Taylour Paige as Renatus A Luna also known by her alias Rena Tusa Luna to be used later in the story. She's the main character, I just didnt give you a name yet.