Lies Beneath the Moonlight Chapter 12
Three months later, Mary stood under the old oak tree.
The leaves had turned gold and red. They fell around her like rain, drifting down from the branches and settling on
her shoulders.
Kane stood a few feet away, his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky.
“You should go back to the North,” Mary said.
He shook his head. “This is my home.”
“There’s nothing for you here.”
“She’s here.” He looked at the old oak tree, at the grass beneath it, at the path that led to the Moon Spring. “Her memory is here. That’s enough.”
Mary was silent for a long time. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out the moonstone.
“She wanted you to have this,” she said.
Kane looked at the stone. It glowed faintly in the autumn light – soft and warm, like a small heartbeat.
“Keep it for me,” he said. “Until I see her again.”
Mary’s eyes filled with tears. She nodded.
Kane turned and walked toward the forest. The path was overgrown now – no one came here anymore. But he knew the way. He had walked it a thousand times when he was young.
He reached the Moon Spring.
The water was clear and cold. The same rocks sat by the edge, worn smooth by years of use. The same stars reflected on the surface, bright and distant.
He sat down on the grass. He lay back and looked up at the sky.
He remembered a girl with dark hair and bright eyes. He remembered her laugh. Her hand in his. Her voice, soft and sure, saying, “Moonstones are the moon’s tears. If I hold onto it, the moon will help you find me.”
He didn’t need the moon to find her.
She was already there. In every star. In every breeze. In the quiet space behind his ribs where his heart used to be before it broke.
The moon hung full and silent in the sky.
A soft silver light spilled over the water, wrapping around him like a gentle hand. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he could smell her lavender perfume, could feel the ghost of her fingers brushing against his cheek. A breeze stirred the grass around him, carrying the faint echo of her laugh, bright and warm as it had been all those years ago when they were just kids, running through these same woods without a care in the world. He breathed in deeply, holding the sound close, holding the memory close, just as he’d promised her he would. One breath at a time. One day at a time. He would live. Not for himself, not anymore. He would live for the girl who’d loved him when he had nothing left to give, who’d given up her own breath just to ask him to keep going. The moon hung steady above,its silver glow falling soft and quiet over the spring, over the grass, over the boy who kept his promise, and who would wait, right here, for as long as it took. Until the day they could walk this path together again, hand in hand, under the same moon that had watched them fall in love, and that would watch them find
each other once more, in this life or the next.
