Moonlight

Moonlight Isn’t Real

Andy Pearson © 2023

Moonlight isn’t real. It’s the sun reflected. I know this fact, and yet I move more quietly in moonlight. My feet find soft ground without fail. The brush in the forest around me doesn’t snag as I slice through it in a whisper. It’s not just movement. I see better. My eyes dilate for the evening. Everything becomes sharper. I hear better. The soft light doesn’t interrupt the sound waves like harsh daylight. Everything moves more easily through the grey luminescence. Tonight’s full moon smooths and softens the forest like insubstantial snow. I know there’s no difference between moonlight and sunlight, but when the reflected light fills the night, everything changes. The world changes. I change.

            I systematically examine the forest around me.  Raising my head slightly, I take in scents drifting casually on the cool night breeze. Pine. Dirt. A musk? I try to identify it, but I can’t get enough in my dampened sinus to confirm.  Elk? Deer?

            I get a new smell. Blood. Warm blood. Blood surging. Pulsing. Coursing through veins and arteries. Only in this faded light can I possess it. It’s coppery with a rusty iron back odor that lodges in the olfactory bulb of my brain. My vision blurs red at the edges. I breathe deeply to clear it lest I be overwhelmed. Twisting my head, I find the direction. Those pulsing veins are at least a mile away, to the west. Only on a perfect night like this with an unshrouded moon could I pick up the smell from so far.

            Stretching upright, I roll my head around my shoulders, loosening muscles. With a look upwards to check the position of the large bright disk, I start through the forest. Each step pushes a quiet crushing sound into the pine needle duff. Each footfall sets off new earthy scents, but I don’t dwell on them. The blood awaits and the idea of it pushes simple details away.  Details I might partake in on a different kind of night. The dark trees cast pick-up stick shadows around me as I move. 

A new smell enters my consciousness. Water. I inhale to experience this. The water isn’t moving, but it’s fresh—the pond. With a deep inhale, I confirm it. The clarity of the smell indicates that it isn’t running along the forest floor.

            The water smell explains why the blood scent was moving. Water. We all need water. We all like to be around water. Water has been a meeting place and a hunting ground forever. The scent is moving toward it. 

Altering my direction toward the pond, I trot quietly through the undergrowth. The branches in the pines high above me turn the light into a strobe. The bushes whisper my passing as I move toward the blood. My people have been blood trackers for eons. It is literally in our veins.

            I stop at the pond. I arrive first. I knew I would. I inhale the night. The blood is still moving in my direction and flowing through its host in pulses. It’s much closer now. Closer, means more information on the scent. The blood is female. Young. She is moving without confidence through the forest. I can’t smell movement. Some of my people claim they can, but I think it’s hokum. They don’t smell movement. They hear it at the edge of their abilities and assume it’s part of the scent.  

            We can, however, smell fear. Fear is always present in their blood in a moonlit forest.  They can’t see as well. Each shadow is an imagined threat. Each new sound is a predator stalking after them in the silver light. I smile at this thought. Predators don’t make noise in the darkness. Predators are comfortable in the absence of full light. The fears of the prey make the blood smell easier to detect. Their veins contract and hearts beat faster pushing the scent onto the evening breeze. 

The odor has gotten strong enough to taste. I run my tongue over my lips. I can savor the scent. It’s landing on everything. It’s glorious. My heart beats stronger and my nostrils flare with each inhalation. I realize the female isn’t scared of me. There’s not enough fear in her blood. She doesn’t know I am here. Her fear is smaller. It’s the fear of the dark, yes, but something else. I sense something added to the fear of shadows. This is not just the dark. Something I can’t identify. Now I’m believing in hokum.

            A new scent is appearing. More blood. Different blood. Not as afraid, but still uncertain. Male. I wait checking the unseen swirling currents again. Yes. He is coming this way. With this new addition to the moving tapestry of the evening, I consider the possibilities. How to handle this new addition? 

Do I take them as one? This creates more opportunities for terror, and that is such a thrill.  Watching them clutch at each other in the darkness while trying to understand the shadow that is moving at them, creates delicious chaos in the silver darkness. 

Taking them separate from each other can also be good. The other’s fear rises as the expected arrival doesn’t happen. Their fear scent would continue to flow as the moments pass in the darkness. Eventually, the scent would fill the wind and drive me into ecstasy. 

But I wait.

I have time to make this decision. I wait in the drifting shadows to see how this night arrives to the water.  

The weak darkness hides me as it has hidden my people throughout time. We have always been here, but always in shadows at night—a darker spot in the darkness. Fleeting shadowed movements and mysterious sounds are our calling cards. We’ve existed and thrived in this darkness. Watching and harvesting in the dim. 

I ease to my haunches and close my eyes, leaving just my nose and ears at work. A twig snaps. She is here. I open my eyes slowly. There she is. Just to my right. The smell is so strong. I can’t find the other one, the male. I know he is coming. I wait taking in the smells of her fear and uncertainty. My heart beats faster. I inhale deeply to calm the lust in my chest. The time is near. I watch her.  She is dressed like the other females of her kind. A skirt. A head covering. Simple shoes. Always the simple clothing pulled tight by clutching hands.

The second scent arrives. I watch him approach the female. His feet tread heavily on the brush. The heavy boots send bursts of noise and packets of rich soil scent into the air. He whispers a name with emotion. Katerina. My ear twitches at the sound. Familiar. My memories are stirred—another night in another forest and my clandestine whispering of a name into the darkness.

She relaxes and the scent of her blood changes. No longer the fear of the dark. Different. She is not afraid. She is anxious, excited, anticipatory.

She steps toward him. He wraps her in his arms. His rough jacket rasps against her knitted shrug. They kiss. Now is the time to take them, but I don’t move. My memories compete with my desires. I watch the two-person tableau as they hold each other.

“Raul. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“Katarina, I will always come for you.”

“What are we to do?” she asks. ”Our families and our villages will not allow us to be together.”

They hug and take a quick kiss in the moonlight. Raul tells Katerina of his plan for them to go to a far village where they can live happily ever after.  Those aren’t the exact words he used but isn’t that always the meaning of words in the darkness.  Meanings I once imparted in a similar forest. I think about my time with young love. Impetuous and unstoppable. At least until reality intrudes, but that is always later. Now, here in the forest, it is forever.  

I rise quietly and begin shadowy steps. If they weren’t focused on each other, they might have heard my gentle, slow pace. They might have seen the too-dark shadow disconnect from the forest. Their fear scent would have made my emotions impossible to control, but they continued with their intense gazing into one another’s eyes until it was too late to hear or to see me.  

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            I hear the polite knock at the door and know it is Pierre. 

            “Enter”

            “Sire, breakfast will be served in the main dining room. Madam is coming down the stairs as we speak.” Pierre says in his perfect chief butler tone.  

            “Thank you, Pierre,” I say, sliding my slippered feet off the ottoman in front of the leather-covered chair where I was reading.  The wood popped in the open rock fireplace and I thought for a moment to have Pierre bring the meal in here, but I knew Katherine would want to eat in the dining room away from the windows, even with their heavy curtains.  Rising, I set the morning paper down and strode through the heavy wooden door into the hall.

            “Good morning, dear. How was your night?” Katherine asks while kissing me on the cheek. She always looks lovely after an evening out. Her auburn hair and fair complexion shine. The full rose-colored dress she wears contrasts with the green plaid shoulder throw.  The plaid was her family's ancestral tartan and she rarely failed to display it in some form.

            “The moon was full and the forest had much activity last night,” I reply to her query.

            “And?” she asked with perfect eyebrows arching over her ice-blue eyes.

            “I found two young ones in the forest. It looked like first love. Lots of stolen kisses and grand plans for the future.”

            “And,” she asked again smiling in her eyes at me.

            “I let them be.”

            “You let them be?”

            “It was first love, my dear,” I say taking her hand for the stroll to the dining room.

            “First love. Oh, darling, you are such a hopeless romantic. I simply adore that part of you, but still a whole night in the forest for nothing.”

I smiled at her.  

”I’m a werewolf, my love, not an animal.  There will be others in the forest and tonight is another moon.” And with that, we strolled hand in hand through the hall to the dining room.  The polished serving dishes reflected my visage, but not hers.  Oh how I wished she could see how lovely she is, but alas her people are like that.