Moonlight Chronicles
Chapter 1
"Do you remember me?"
Ebony remained silent, studying the face before her with the intense focus that her Brothers had come to know her for. The woman sitting across from her waited, hopeful, breath held as though the slightest breeze may disperse even the faintest memory before it could condense.
This was her...wife. A bronze ring around the woman's finger was a tenuous testament to that fact; cheaper than gold, but no less precious. It was scratched and nicked and dinged, but burnished bright with worry beneath the fingertips of an anxious hand...as she was doing now.
A scarf hung around her neck, bracing her against the chill of the underground mines. It was hand-knit, as evidenced by a row of missed stitches along the end and the sudden shift from one dyed wool to another. Clumsily made, but made with love. The end tied off into a careful knot; clearly, the maker hadn't known how to keep it from unraveling into simple string. Had Ebony made that for her? Was it a gift?
Ebony's eyes dropped from the woman's face to her own hands. They'd been callused when she'd woken up. They told her she was a farmer. Those calluses had never faded; she wielded a scythe as well now as she did back then. Scars, like unfamiliar strangers, adorned her hands. Where had they come from? A careless slip of a knife while making dinner? A candle, tipped over? An angry dog, snapping at her proffered hand?
Other scars were more immediately familiar. A row of pink, jagged lines from where a lunacite horror had dragged itself against her. A thin, curved line where a canine had punctured her skin. A zig-zag of stitches holding her hand together, from where Martyn's blade had punched right through...
She did remember this woman, in a way. It was the same familiarity that you might have when examining a new work of art from your favorite painter. It was the familiarity of the next chapter of an authors latest book. New, yet with the faint echo of what once was.
She wanted to say "yes". This woman had meant a lot to her, or so she'd been told. They'd been married for years, before an errant insect had carried the disease to her and given her soul to the Lunar abyss. She owed her happiness for that time together, didn't she? Even if Ebony didn't recall a single second of the time before, she could give this woman - this stranger - that much, couldn't she?
Or did she owe her the truth? Did she deserve to know that the wounds healing across her hands were a more familiar companion than the barest echo of recognition? Did she even really recognize her, or did she just see the same ghost of an expression on her face as she saw with every other soul in the Haven? Was Ebony even the same soul she'd fallen in love with? Would she love the soul that had come after?
Did she even recognize Ebony?
"...no," Ebony said. The moment of hopeful suspense was broken. Though Ebony's eyes were still surveying the wreck of her own hands, she could see the tension fade from the woman in her peripheral. Like a flower wilting, or a snowman fading in the sun. Hope, or what was left of it, drained out of the poor soul hoping that something had been left after the moon had been purged from Ebony's system.
"But - " Ebony looked up, eyes once again locking onto this woman with an uncanny determination, " - I would like to."
"And then what?"
"And then we...talked," Ebony said with a shrug. She peeked over the edge of an up-turned cart, but whatever the contents were had long since been either stolen or rotted to nothing. "She told me about my mom, and my sister, and my brother in law."
"Are they - ?"
"Dead."
"Ah." Mace lapsed into silence.
The outskirts of Darremont weren't particularly dangerous, but rot was just as prevalent here as anywhere else. Exploring during the day helped. The few infected they came across were lethargic, often keeping to the dark interiors when the trio passed by.
"And then what happened?" Lord Duffy asked, looking over his shoulder. The tumble of baskets he was poking through were all empty. Presumably, someone had been selling hand-woven baskets here, but now their stock was half-seeped into the mud. It was days of careful, precise work, all utterly wasted.
"And...then we talked some more. She's not happy that I'm back out here, that's for sure."
In a normal conversation, this would have been the point where one of them asked
why she was back out here. It wasn't as if NOCOF had forced them out the door at gun point, and the other Orders had already shown just how dangerous the outside was. Of the few Hunters who'd been brought back from the brink of Lunacy, three had already died. To their credit, neither Mace nor Duffy asked the question - they
got it. They all understood why they were here, and why they risked everything to bring back scraps of flesh and lunacite. It didn't need to be said; not here, at least.
"She gave me back my wedding ring. Says it was my grandma's, and I proposed to her with it. It's supposed to bring luck."
"But you're not wearing it."
"...no," Ebony admitted after a moment, hand going up to touch the ring looped onto a string around her neck. Simple bronze, old and worn. "I told her I'd give it back when I remember her."
"That's sweet," Mace said, no small amount of amusement in his voice.
"It's fucking awkward is what it is. How am I going to remember her? I just said what I thought she wanted to hear. It was so...fuck. It was just so god damn
sad. You should have seen her face, I just didn't know what to say."
"Still, it must have earned you a few brownie points," Lord Duffy said, his boots squelching in the mud. He kicked over an old barrel, and an avalanche of moldy grain tumbled into the street. Tiny crystal insects scurried from the pile. Duffy wrinkled his nose and continued on. "So, then what happened?"
"And then I fucking prepped for the Expedition," Ebony snapped, turning to face Duffy fully. "Why do you keep asking 'and then what'?"
"Well," Duffy hedged, planting the end of his scythe in the mud and leaning on it. "You had this woman sitting across from you, huge emotional investment. She's your wife, supposedly. She missed you, thought you'd died...the two of you were alone..."
" - and you're asking if I split her open like a log, is that it? Fucking hell, no, you god damn creep. I didn't
know her."
"You don't have to
know someone to have a good time."
"Don't be gross, Duff." Mace looked up from where he'd been picking through a knocked-over market stall.
"I'm just saying, I went to that place on level nine, you know - the '
Velvet Diamond'? I couldn't tell you a single one of those ladies names, and I still enjoyed myself."
"How the hell did you afford a stay at the
Velvet Diamond?" Mace asked.
"They put it on No-Cough's tab."
"Our employers are paying for you to get laid?"
"It helps if they don't know about it."
"Oh, and I'm sure they won't find out when the bill shows up."
"Look, I already died once, alright? If the two of you wanna take cold showers for the rest of your second life, be my guest. I'd much prefer to drink deep the cup of life; take it's dark wine into my soul. For it passes round the table but only once."
A moment of silence passed by, interrupted only by the squish of mud beneath boots as the three continued deeper into Darremont's.
"That's surprisingly...poignant," Mace said after a moment. "Did you come up with that, just now?"
"I...think?" Duffy's face wrinkled as he concentrated on what was little more than the after-image of a memory long gone. "Or did...I might have said it before? Or...or, hey, maybe I wrote it down at some point? Maybe I was a writer! You know, before."
"World-famous writer, probably," Ebony nodded sagely. "Though that doesn't explain why no one came to claim you after you showed up at the asylum."
"Maybe I write under a pseudonym," Duffy countered. "I could have valued my privacy and I've got a bank account stuffed with sovereigns somewhere from all my book deals."
"Strange, because you don't seem like the type who values his privacy at all. I'm pretty sure you would tell us all about the
Velvet Diamond if we asked," Mace said.
"Are you asking? Because - "
"No, he's not," Ebony said quickly. "And I'm not going to fuck some stranger just because she used to be my wife."
"Used to be?"
"Is, I mean. Hell, I don't even know if we were happy together. Or if
I actually loved her. I don't even know if...you know, if that's what I'm into. I guess I'm gay? Kind of a weird fucking way to find out."
"Maybe you should find yourself a lady at the
Velvet Diamond and make sure."
"Maybe you should blow Mace and find out a few things about yourself, ever think of that?"
Mace cocked an eyebrow at Ebony, then looked expectantly at Duffy. Duffy, however, was already shaking his head. "Nah, nah - I tested that at the
Diamond, too. They've got all kinds there, and I gotta say, it's not for me. And you're being a bit unfair, don't you think? Mace and me never had noone come claim us. As far as we know, there's no wife or husband or any other family waiting for us back at Haven."
"No, I've got a brother."
Ebony and Duffy stopped bickering for a moment to look at Mace. Mace paused, aware now that he was suddenly the focus of attention.
"What?"
"What do you mean
what, you got claimed? Why didn't you tell us?" Ebony frowned. It hurt a little, knowing that Mace had kept that secret.
"It didn't seem important, I guess."
"Not important?" Duffy's eyebrows went up. "You know what I'd give to have someone recognize me?"
"Well, I'd give far less," Mace said firmly. "I've got a brother, I guess. Henry Wilkens. I used to be Jasper Wilkens. He checked me into the asylum when I got infected, apparently."
"No shit. What's he like?" Ebony cocked her head, the crimson beads in her hair clacking against one another with the simple movement.
"No clue. Haven't met him."
"Oh. Is he...?"
"No, he's alive."
"Then why the
fuck haven't you met him?" Duffy, counter to his seemingly perpetual good mood, seemed genuinely angry. "You've
got someone, asshole. Someone who can tell you who you were before, someone who can help you piece it all back together. Why haven't you done shit about it?"
"Because it
doesn't fucking matter, alright?" Mace turned on him, raising his voice to a shout. "It doesn't matter. He's not my brother. He
was, but now he's not. I used to be
Jasper, but now
I'm not. The guy who used to have this body before me isn't me. He's done - he died, went into the Lunacy, and now I'm me. I don't
care who he was, I don't
care who his brother was. It doesn't matter, none of it does. The only thing that
does matter is that this is who I am now, and I have no interest in what came before. You just got done talking about the cup of life, right? Well, let me drink at my own god damn pace and stop trying to bring up the dregs from the last cup."
Mace's words echoed against the distant walls, reverberating in the silent air before fading into nothing. A few rotten infected, shambling and weak individually, stumbled from the decayed buildings to investigate the noise. Mace sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I'm sorry, alright? It's just...whatever I was before, whoever
that person was, I have no interest in meeting him. I don't deserve whatever he had, for good or for ill. How can I claim any of that when I don't even remember it?"
Ebony and Duffy said nothing, silently letting Mace work through his thoughts.
"Look, let's just...you guys can talk about that stuff, if you want. Just leave me out of it. Jasper died a long time ago. If I'm still him, well...I don't want to know what it was about his life that sent him for a stroll in the moonlight."
