Sliced Trees and Dead Words

2 - Carefully woven layers of little white lies and bullshit.

- DALEN -

In a bizarre twist of irony, or perhaps fate, it was under a full moon in which I first met Luna Martone.

I remember it, not only because of the perfection that was her name and the super moon rising at the time I first learned it, but because the forces presiding over the weather made sure the heavens were cloudless that night. Clear and bright, the reflection of the lunar glow over the water reaching for the horizon in front of me, illuminating the silhouette of the first woman I would ever come to love in this life.

Apart from my baby Medusa, of course.

It was Medusa, not me, that Luna saw first, and it was probably that four-legged, furry ball of barking energy that my precious Luney first bestowed her heart of the two of us. I can't even be jealous, because Medusa is so worthy and deserving of Luna's love, and it was just so mesmerising watching my two best girls playing together.

Medusa had left me by the fire and went racing over to the unknown goddess that had fallen straight from the sky and into my waiting arms. Arms that had been bearing the weight of a disease I had been fighting for as long as I could remember. Arms that bore twenty years' worth of scars, the unintentional and intentional both. Scars that told a darker story than I ever wanted to belong to me.

Dalen Noah Rivers.

Thirty year old nomadic fuck up, occasional bricklayer, friend.

Never the romantic partner to Luna Martone, no matter how much I wished and hoped and dreamed and sometimes even prayed that I would be. My imagination is a wild thing, as you will come to know soon enough, and I've spent almost a decade imagining how perfectly complete my life could have been if Luna loved me in the same way I did her.

But Luna's phenomenal, generous, kind and spirited heart is destined for someone else; someone a fuck tonne more worthy and evenly matched to hers than the black hole in my miserable chest ever could be. One who will listen to her heart beat, and feel his own instantly falling into rhythm with hers. Who will breathe through her irate stubbornness and find joy in her misguided resolve to never be wrong. Who will understand why she has walls the height of Everest surrounding her, and chip away at them both carefully and with complete confidence, not being afraid to help her stumble a little along the way.

Hidden underneath many carefully woven layers of little white lies and bullshit, Luna Martone is already all of these things.

I knew this from the very first time I laid eyes on her. When she kneeled down to meet Medusa, giggling sweetly as she was slathered in dog drool from head to toe. When she walked Medusa over to me and I saw her skin glistening in the firelight with evidence of Medusa's immediate affection for her matching my very own, not that I was about to lick her face or anything.

When she sat beside me and rubbed her hands over the flames, my own body igniting from her mere presence and the enormity of her blazing spirit. When she smiled hesitantly and said, "She's absolutely gorgeous. What's her name? I'm Luna, by the way," and her namesake was shining above and surrounding her with an other-worldly glow that I've never witnessed in another human before, and she was so gorgeous.

You were and are, and forever will be, absolutely gorgeous, Luna Martone.

And I have been, and will ever remain, eternally grateful to you, Luney Tune, for the great gift you have given me in this lifetime: the ability and confidence to stand on my own two feet, head high and proud, and know that I, Dalen Noah Rivers, perfectly imperfect, was truly loved.