Dark Moor Mooning

Every dark moon found her wandering these enchanted moors, a practice she had employed for lifetimes as she bore witness to painful rising and falling in the world of men. For far too many centuries now she had held the terrible cost to her aching heart as the moon turned her face to darkness. They wept together, tears turning to crystal in the frozen night air and falling from the sky like diamonds to litter the landscape with hope.

The ritual was always the same. She wore her great grandmother's coat of stars, its deep pockets laden with witch's tools and temerity. Wrapped the scarf her aunt had knitted around her like a warm hug, hearing the clattering of her long nails in the stitches. Pulled on all the family wedding rings, the unbroken circlets of love forging her fingers for the task ahead.

She always made this pilgrimage alone, her familiar rejecting the sharp gusts beyond the banging door for the comfort of fire and a full belly. She knew her spirit accompanied anyways, scrambling over the moors like a youngling. She donned her antlers and felt the mother spirit course through her like warm milk as she departed through the creaking gate.

She followed a well worn path through the heather, asking for sprigs and filling her buttonholes with its sturdy sweetness. As fae slumbered beneath her feet she was guided by muscle memory and her good instinct for the work. At last she stopped by the dragon rock and briefly rested her frame on its reassuring bulk. Fortified and ready, she laid her tools out in the darkness and began to conjure her own smaller circle of luminosity within the clearing.

The wind roared as her arms rose and light shot around her like a snake. The rings glinted as her hands took the forms of her ancestors, shapeshifting her senses to theirs. She called again to the old goddesses and wise women, their names tumbling from her lips like prayer as the circle rose around her to form a column stretching to the stars.

Her body disintegrated as she flew the portal to the heavens. She curled up at the feet of the great mother and felt her sacred embrace, warm and strong and good. She raised bright green eyes to meet the mystery once more.

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This tale of dark moon magics from Morsel, my first collection. Only available as a real book and yours to have and to hold, darklings.

Words c. Kerrie Basha 2021