Prologue
The forest was grey in the early morning light, a wolf howled off to the left, but no one heard the girl as she slipped through the cracks in the world, she jumped from branch to branch more silent then a ghost leopard. He had almost missed her one moment she was there and the next she was gone. The girl moved like mist over water she did not blink as she did so and then she stopped. The girl sighed heavily while looking up at the sky the last stars winking out, she took a deep breath before she threw herself into the cracks of the world and reappeared on the other side of the clearing. She was fast but he had been gifted too, so he slipped into the crack she left and followed the girl he sworn glowed like a full moon.
She looked so young he thought watching her move, they reached another clearing but instead of jumping through a crack she stood there ahead of him, she slowly turned around. With eyes as blue as a frozen lake she looked at him, she looked straight into him. She slowly spread her arms out, and without taking her eyes off of his face she bowed down, a crooked half smile spreading across her snow white skin. He looked back a scowl on his face but before he could open his mouth she gently pushed off the branch in a perfect arch and landed in the snow. She had known he was following her the entire time and now she wanted to play.
She waited in the frosted long grass and as he appeared where she was min ago she smiled up at him, oh he did not like that smile. She looked like a cat playing with a mouse, like he was some dimwitted fool. She crooked an eyebrow and slightly tilted her head before she sprinted off towards a mountain range at the end of the large clearing. Within seconds he was following her racing through the long grass, he liked this, he might not like her smile but he loved the challenge. He hadn’t been challenged like this before, hadn’t met another gifted to keep up.
His lungs began the soft burn as he chased her, the girl turned around her face flushed as she smiled openly, and he stumbled a little at the sight of it. He felt a shift in the atmosphere, one moment he was looking at her smiling breathlessly, it was beautiful and then in the blink of an eye her face had gone blank as a lightning bolt hit her.
***
The world held its breath as the beautiful moon girl fell to the ground. He stumbled and rolled not being able to slow down fast enough; he scrambled to the girl, his target, with nothing but worry written over every inch of him. As he held the little moon girl with a now blackened slab of meat for a back he felt nothing but fear race though him, and then he felt it, the pulse, slow and steady as if she had just fallen asleep.
And so the boy with coal black hair picked up the moon girl and carried her off into the woods, a single tear sliding down to meet the frozen earth.
