Walking through the forest beneath the purple sky when it should have been dark, full of stars and moons, I let myself drift. Drift away from the paths I knew and the trees I could name by touch. I let myself drift and wander through the forest, trailing my hands along the trees.

  I had become frustrated being unable to find the creature. I needed to know if it lived, if my efforts healed it. Every night for ten nights after the storm, I walked the forest, unable to find it.

  So I let myself go, believing—the way only children can—that not knowing where I was going was the real path to get there.

  I was fortunate that it happened to work.

  The fireflies weren’t hovering above in the opening but were all on top of the shell. In the halflight, their glow worked together to become bright. Each little flicker working as one, becoming a moon on the surface.

  The sound of the forest receded, and I stepped to the shell. Crouching beside it, the leaves were still there but there was a gurgling. Low and quiet, the paste I made was frothing and bubbling beneath the leaves.

  Not knowing whether this was good or bad, I waited. I waited and watched. The fireflies didn’t take flight and they didn’t recoil when I put my hand over them. I could’ve smashed a dozen of them at a time had I wanted to, but they were so peaceful. So calm. They seemed connected to the creature in some way. Not a part of its body but bound to its heart. The way I was bound to my family.

  I watched for a long time but there was no change. Eventually, I walked away.

  As I made my way home, I marked my path. My thoughts were full of the image I had watched so long. No care was given to my journey home, but I found myself at the perimeter of the village, near Upe’s home. I ran the rest of the way and crawled in between HoPa and mother.

  For several nights in a row, I watched the shell covered in fireflies, hearing only the frothing of the paste.

  I had few thoughts while I watched it. But it seemed important. Like what I was doing would matter a great deal someday.

  It didn’t, but I was only a girl then. Believing in the old stories, thinking I would someday be a hero of a few.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  But then I came one night, and it was awake, leaning against the tree I took the leaves from to make the paste. I gasped when I saw it standing there, and it turned its face to me. Those blackest eyes boring into me under a sky losing its violet. Then it smiled.

  It smiled, and I fell over as my heart collapsed through Saol’s skin.

  And it laughed. It laughed at me. This strange whistling wheeze that blew from its nose. Its smile large and wide and vaguely monstrous. I wasn’t repulsed by it. No. I was drawn to this creature.

  Standing, I brushed myself off and said, “Not funny.”

  The fireflies swarmed above its head without a pattern or revealing any transient constellations. The creature’s smile broadened, “Was you.”

  I nodded, and it leaped into the air, the fireflies taking the shape of glowing wings stretching from its shoulders for a moment. It clicked its heels and whistled its laughter through its nose.

  I stepped towards it, my body pulsing and my skin crawling, “What are you?”

  It cocked its head to the side, falling past its shoulder, then jolted back up between its shoulders, “Ye would say Whaaloo.”

  “I’m Luna.”

  “What way?”

  I frowned, “No way.”

  Its expression was impossible to discern meaning from, but I think this shocked Whaaloo, and then it barked a laugh with its mouth. “Whaaloo has way hard with human saying.”

  “How do you speak then?”

  Whaaloo jumped towards me, covering our distance in an instant and landing so close I would have wrapped my arms round it if I tried to clap. So close, I fell back but its three hands caught me by the shoulders and it pressed its nose to mine. Then closed its eyes.

  Images flooded me. But not only images. Sensations. Sounds, scents, tastes—it was like I left my own skin and entered its. Its very memories breathed into me, sharp and painful, but so transient and overwhelming that none of it stuck to me.

  I fell back, out of its hands, gasping. Wide eyed and terrified. None of it made sense to me. It was too much, too fast. Dizzy and gasping for breath, my heart screaming now that I was back in my skin. But I also felt wrong. Like something disgusting had happened. My mouth tasted of bile and sweat coated me. I was back in my skin, but it felt like it had been worn by another. I don’t know how to put it. It didn’t fit right. It was loose in places it should be tight and tight in places it should’ve been loose. And my thoughts were jumbled, twisting, unable to reach one another. Like its hands had dipped into my skull and stirred things round, then drank freely from what was within.

  I wanted to cry but my body couldn’t seem to figure it out. I wanted to scream but I could barely breathe. I wanted to kill it. I did. So full of rage, I was burning from within. Burning with the indignity of it. But my limbs wouldn’t follow direction.

  Collapsing, it caught me and set me down slowly, carefully.

  “That is better,” Whaaloo said.

  “What did—what the…Why?”

  Whaaloo cocked its head again, inhumanly. “Now I can speak with you.”

  I kicked its face. My foot screamed, like I had stubbed it on a tree. But Whaaloo shot backwards and I rolled to my feet, running.

  I ran the whole way home. Stumbling. My legs out of sync with my brain and desire. I smashed into trees and tripped over roots.