Moon Blossoms

“No? You’re really going to leave me here?”

Luna squatted down, balancing her chin on the tops of her knees. A cool breeze nipped at the back of her neck and brushed along any bare patch of skin it could find; even with her sleeves rolled up over the palms of her hands, she couldn’t suppress the shiver that rolled down her spine. October really had it out for her this year. In Town, the seasonal chills and morning frosts typically rolled in around mid-November, but now—nearly every single morning—Luna woke to find thick layers of condensation coating each window in the house, little frozen particles gathering in the ridges of the glass like clumps of sugar. 

When she huffed out her silent complaints, the puffs of her breath hung in a white haze around her lips. 

Arlo, on the other hand, looked irritatingly unbothered—curled up atop a bed of rusty leaves with his head resting on his splayed paws. He took his time responding, flicking his spotted tail to-and-fro with such slowness that Luna knew it had to be purposeful.   

“This is a graveyard, isn’t it?” Arlo said. His pale green eyes peered up at her, half-lidded despite being the size of marbles. “Seems like bad luck to me. Very bad.” 

She didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “I’m being blackmailed, Arlo—blackmailed! I’ll never live it down if I run away now.”

“And I’m sure Mom will love that excuse. Remember the last time we snuck out?” 

At the mention of Mom, Luna crammed her head even further into her legs. Of course she knew the risks of staying the night; with strange sightings and reports popping up throughout Town, most families boarded themselves indoors each evening. If Luna hadn’t talked her out of it, Mom would’ve already whipped out her nails and hammer and made work with the spare planks of wood in the shed. 

The thought of exposing herself to that danger by making camp in the local graveyard caused her stomach to wrap itself up in knots—ones she knew would only grow even more and more tangled if she went through with the plan.  

Even so, Luna didn’t have to think twice about her decision. 

“If I don’t do this,” Luna said, her voice dropping, “Oscar…he’s planning on letting you-know-what slip out. To the entire school, too!” 

Interest caught at last, Arlo lifted his head. Behind his spotted body, Luna’s eyes traced over the curves and ridges of stone slabs, following the faded lines of names lost to time and weathered epitaphs:

Isabella Thorne: Ad meliora—to better things.

Julian Watts: Vivamus, moriendum est—Let us live, since we must die

“Sleeping in the Valley, though?” Arlo followed her gaze to the tombstones, leaves rustling beneath his belly as he rolled over to get a better look. “You won’t even have the chance to quote unquote ‘never live it down’ if you’re not breathing tomorrow morning.” 

Luna poked one of Arlo’s overturned paws. “You mean we won’t be breathing.”  

Talking Arlo into the sleepover wasn’t an issue, and they both knew it; that didn’t mean he would test his hand at unconvincing her. Wherever Luna went, he followed—a constant companion and forever unwavering in his loyalty. 

She, too, returned this forever. 

Fingers tracing pads of rosy pink, Luna adjusted her grip and cradled Arlo’s paw in cupped hands. Warmth seeped through his fur in little bursts of heat, unthawing her skin beneath the layers of wool. 

And for a few moments, they sat in the stillness, the world around them holding its breath as the rushing of winds and dancing of leaves fell to a whisper. Only the thumping of Luna’s heart rung in her ears. Its echoes traveled throughout her entire body, moving her with its rhythm. 

With each passing second of silence, the knots in Luna’s stomach twisted and twisted. She knew she asked Arlo for too much. Despite being partners, it was always Luna wanting and Arlo giving; after their last excursion, she had made a silent promise to be more reliable—a shoulder for him lean on, for once. Clearly, that didn’t work out. 

Arlo nudged his nose against the back of her hand, his whiskers tickling her skin. “If it means this much to you, then okay. You know I wouldn’t ever leave you.”

“I know,” Luna said. She gave the top of his paw one parting pat before letting go. “It’s just…I wanted to be better for once. Not always such a burden.”

Both hands now free, Luna slipped the strap of her satchel off her shoulder, letting it land with a muffled thumpon her lap. Crammed full of blankets and other essentials, the brown fabric bulged with the heft of its contents. Arlo, of course, had taken notice of the overpacked bag when they slipped out of the house, but he hadn’t said anything. Now he eyed it without reservation. 

As she began to rummage through folds of quilts, Arlo hopped to his feet. From the corner of her eye, Luna saw him slink away, patches of auburn fur catching the fading glint of the sun. Another gust of wind had the curls of her hair whipping around her face, the strands slapping her cheeks and forehead enough to have her reaching up to settle their attack. 

“How about over here?” 

Luna followed the softness of Arlo’s voice, tracking it over to a sparse gathering of pines near the edge of the graveyard. He was sitting at the base of the cluster, tail swishing from side-to-side, and looking at her expectantly. 

She gave him a thumbs-up. After her bag was zipped once again and secured over her shoulder, she wove through row after row of graves, the stones a mixture of weathered marble and wind-battered granite. Though she wasn’t close enough to make out the engravings this time, she still couldn’t shake the feeling of a dozen sleepy eyes following her as she passed. 

After Luna plopped down beside him, Arlo said, “The sun will be setting soon now.”

“Don’t remind me…I’ve had enough nightmares about the Lurkers behind closed doors.” 

“Ah, the Lurkers,” Arlo mused. “What a classy name.”

Luna let out a short laugh at that. “Mom doesn’t think so. She told me yesterday that they’re planting things on people—snatching them off the side of the road and stuffing their pockets with charms.”

Anyone could make a charm, but these particular ones were different. Rather than being made with the conventional offerings of the Earth—a pouch of soil, a funny shaped stick, a spray of flowers—these charms came in far more bizarre shapes and sizes. 

Curls of sunlight! Mom had exclaimed last night. Imagine that, Luna. There’s still so much about the world we don’t know…

“And that’s why Oscar wants you out here?” Arlo asked. He stepped aside and let Luna spread out a few patched quilts beneath him. When the deed was done, he did a quick turn-around before settling down in the makeshift bed. 

“It’s also the 23^rd,” Luna said. She leaned back against the trunk of a tree, letting the ridges bury themselves into the back of her neck. “Bad things happen on days ending in 3s; adding a graveyard into the mix only makes it more fun.”

Arlo let out a little huff. “Oscar…Ever since I first laid eyes on him, something felt off.”

“That’s because something is off. His family isn’t exactly well-known for good reasons.”

The Whites owned an orchard in Town, cultivating crops of apples so peculiar that they became a commodity of sorts—insides the color of plums with skins gleaming even darker. On the rare occasion someone overlooked its strange appearance and took a bite, they soon regretted it; no one could say what would happen with certainty, but each story Luna heard was odder than the last. A little Sinclair boy drifted up off the ground hours after devouring an apple. Another child, this time a Campbell, began sprouting flowers up her arms. 

Now, only tourists and the occasional dreamer—hoping to strike it big with a bout of good luck—visited the farm. 

“In a way,” Luna said, “those apples are their own kind of charm. If the Whites were Lurkers, they would jump us for sure.”

Arlo’s tail landed on Luna’s thigh. “They’re all twigs. I could take them out myself.”

At that, Luna couldn’t hold in her laughter. The giggles began to spill out past her lips, and the more she attempted to muffle them, the harder she laughed. Arlo, too, let out a few stray yips; this was as close to a chuckle as he could get. 

Eventually, they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Some of the knots had come undone in the pit of her stomach, making it a bit easier to breathe as her eyes tracked the progress of the setting sun. Painted in shades of orange and streaked through with the occasional puff of red-tinted cloud, the sky was as pretty as a picture, standing in stark contrast to the faded grays and twisting shadows of the graveyard.

Time ticked by almost painfully slow. 

Luna alternated between nibbling on the dried apricots she brought as a snack and fiddling with her newest charm. Sitting in the palm of her hand, it looked like a glass figurine—a little bunny resting against her skin. In reality, it was made of crystallized water, born from the pond behind her house. 

Not many people in Town could craft with water because of its fluidity; liquids didn’t hold wishes well, and wishes were the core of charms. Mom often told Luna growing up that those able to utilize water were the most tenacious of all, having strong enough desires to tame what was typically the untamable. 

Much to Mom’s disappointment, Luna’s charms typically brought trouble along with them.

Despite being her newest creation, the little bunny was no more than a decoration. Her wish dried up as soon as she wore it around her neck to school last week and accidentally made it snow in her arithmetic class. She had meant to save it as a surprise for Arlo, but her jumbled thoughts had gotten the better of her and broke the spell. 

While wishes were needed to bring charms to life, patience kept them alive. Luna, unfortunately, was not the patient type, and her unrest caused many disasters in her years of schooling, so much so that the Headmaster threatened to suspend her should anything happen within the confines of the building again. 

Only Oscar had caught sight of the charm dangling by the base of her throat before she yanked it off and shoved it in her pocket. Her Professor too busy with the evacuation to track down the perpetrator, Luna had managed to escape punishment at the time. 

In order to ensure that she took her secret to the grave, Luna had no choice but to take Oscar up on his challenge. For proof, he requested a memento from the graveyard—one that could only be obtained in the dead of night.

With each hoot of an owl, with each individual rustling in the underbrush, Luna squeezed the charm even tighter. Surrounding their makeshift beds, she had also set up some other offerings: bits of lavender wrapped in cloth, bundles of twigs tied off with Morning Glory stems, and a saucer sprinkled with drops of her own blood.

Even through the folds of darkness—lit only by the slivers of a silver moon—Luna felt Arlo’s eyes drilling holes into her. 

“You do know all these are just superstitions, right?” He asked, presumably gesturing with the tip of his tail to her collection. Never one to lose his cool, Arlo’s voice stayed calm and steady. 

Luna slunk further down the base of the tree and cuddled into the pile of quilts. When she assumed she looked as miserable as she felt, she spoke in a mumble. “I don’t trust myself to make charms right now. Not with all the odds stacked against us.”

Misfortune was not something to be tampered with. 

“What are you waiting for anyway?” Arlo asked. “No need to fear sleeping with me here.”

“It’s not sleeping I’m afraid of. Dying with my eyes closed sounds far better than meeting my end face-to-face.”

Blankets rustled as Arlo inched closer. A moment later, Luna felt the warmth of his body press up against her thigh; where he lacked in words, he made up for it with gestures.

Every other second, Luna’s gaze wavered. As soon as her chin began to slip down to her chest, sleep relaxing the muscles in her face, she snapped her head back up again. In this limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness, the shadows curling around the tombstones grew larger and larger, birthing slender figures and the silhouettes of roaming creatures. Catching sight of them, her heart thundered in its initial panic, only to fall to silence after her eyes adjusted and blinked away the illusions.

After slipping through this cycle a few more times, Luna pushed herself to a sitting position with a drawn-out sigh. Arlo watched as she tugged her satchel back to her lap and dug around inside it, only speaking up when she pulled out a softly ticking watch. 

“You’re waiting for the moon blossoms?” 

Luna ran her fingernail along the grooves of metal, watching as the minute hand neared the thirty-minute mark. “Oscar wants one. Since it’s too dangerous to walk back to Town past midnight, I guess he assumes I won’t just leave after I get the flower.”

“Well, I have to give him some credit. Never thought I’d see the day where I gave a White a compliment, but he really thought this through.”

“Too well, if you ask me,” Luna grumbled. “I didn’t even think he’d know about the moon blossoms. We’ve only heard tales.”

To obtain a moon blossom, one had to undergo quite an ordeal. As if the fact they only bloomed in graveyards wasn’t enough, they also only popped up at midnight, lasting for around a ten-minute window before retreating back into the earth until the following night. Because of the odd circumstances, they weren’t that well-known in Town even. Only the rare few wishing to use them for charms dared to sleep amongst the ghosts. 

The one thing worse than staying overnight in a graveyard, after all, was leaving past dark. 

Doing so brought automatic misfortune. 

Since the graves came to life with the rising of the moon and slept with the sun, the presence of humans only became apparent at these times. Walking out angered them; they saw it as a transgression. 

Twenty-five minutes left now.

Luna peered back over at Arlo, vaguely able to make him out through the drizzles of moonlight and starlight. He was already looking at her.

“You know what I’d want my epitaph to be?” Luna asked. The question tumbled forth, slow and drawn-out, from her lips—her mind tinged with exhaustion.

Though Arlo offered no direct response, she could feel the anticipation in his stillness. His eyes, too, never turned away.

“Vixit,” Luna said. 

Twenty minutes.

Arlo made a sound in the back of his throat. “She has lived. Simple…it fits you.”

Just as soon as she took notice of her own sleepiness once again, Luna yawned. Over the past few hours, the temperature had dropped, now making it chilly enough for her to shiver beneath the blankets. 

Even with the cold, she felt no more awake.

For a few more minutes, they sat and sat. When he got bored, Arlo took to sniffing the offerings she had set up in a semi-circle around their beds. 

Maybe being sleepy made her sentimental, because before Luna even realized it, she was revisiting long-past memories—flickers of a baby Arlo and his overflowing eyes.

Soon, he dropped himself back down at her side. 

Luna tried to use the sleeve of her sweater to rub some of the bleariness out of her eyes and made little progress. Now balanced on the tip of her knee, the clock hit ten minutes. 

“Arlo,” she found herself saying. She didn’t even need to think before talking; she knew his name as well as if it were her own. “Thanks again…for tonight. Sorry to drag you into this.” 

A beat of silence, and then: “You never need to thank me, Luna. We’re two halves of one whole—everything we do, we do together.” 

“At last you admit it. When you make fun of me, you’re really making fun of yourself, too.” 

As soon as the words left her mouth, they were both laughing (or yipping). Pressed together shoulder-to-shoulder and side-by-side, the final few knots in Luna’s stomach came undone. 

When the clock struck twelve, Luna hardly noticed at first, too caught up in the newfound warmth bubbling beneath her skin. It was only when, out of the corner of her vision, she noticed pricks of light turn on like a sea of lightbulbs across the rolling grasses of the graveyard—a myriad of silvers and whites sparkling like diamonds beneath the strings of moonlight. 

Arlo and Luna looked and looked, and when they finally found the strength to turn to face each other again, only one thing occupied their tired minds: moon blossoms!

Even if I only had one final wish, she thought to herself, drinking in the sight before her, I would want to share in this brightness forever, Arlo.