waxing crescent

The instant the sun went down, Drysi found us and dragged us to one of the hidden rooftop gardens--it had probably been properly tended once, but now it ran wild. What had once been a pair little elegantly manicured trees now stretched so high they nearly blocked our view of the sky; their roots had torn up the stone of the courtyard and rendered the classrooms underneath the garden unusable. (Well, almost. It was a nice quiet place to hide, and as students of the Academy we had ample reason to spend some time hiding.) It was--and here I use Drysi's words, not my own--a little pocket of the wild in the heart of the empire. I wouldn't fully understand what she meant until many years later.

It was one of those nights where there was a thin veil of clouds, but a thin crescent moon shone through eerily, lending the clouds a soft glow and casting strange shadows in our little hidden garden. It was a beautiful sight--enough that it took me several moments to notice that there was a little glowing wisp dancing among the flowers--and they were flowers, not weeds.

"I wanted to do this right," Drysi said, behind us, as we both knelt to examine this impossible spirit. "Because you're my friends. A waxing crescent, a wild place, a spirit." The wisp settled on my finger as she spoke. "Our strength comes from the promises we make." The moon flashed, and as I turned my head to look, it grew and grew in brightness until the whole world was a blinding white.

When the world returned I was on my back in an ancient forest, lit by a giant crescent moon. As I oriented myself--"We are stronger when we see with eyes unclouded," said Drysi's voice, seeming to come from all around me--the roots I was lying on gently lifted me to my feet. I was barefoot now, dressed in a thin grey robe rather than the white Academy uniform we'd all been wearing moments before. I was also alone, and all around me there was underbrush and deadfall, except before me, where a path of soft-looking leaves was laid out.

Of course I followed it. The giddy excitement of being invited to a secret rendezvous by the girl I loved--and we were still just girls then, young and foolish girls with no idea what the world had in store for us--had faded, but I felt no fear. I trusted her, but more than that, I could sense that this was important. I followed the path until I came upon a spring, the water of which glowed with the same soft light as the wisp.

In my memory, the woman who waited for me there looked like Drysi, but I knew instantly that this was simply a shape she wore. At first I thought she wore it to please me, then I realized--perhaps this was the only human she knew? She smiled at me, and welcomed me, and it's only in recollection that I realize that she never actually spoke any words.

"You're the wisp," I said. It wasn't a question, but she affirmed that she was regardless. But she was more than that: she was the forest and the spring; she was the little wild garden on the rooftop. She was ancient as the oldest trees and as young as a wildflower in the spring.

If I drank from the spring, I understood--or perhaps she really did explain it to me?--it would be sealing a pact between us: she would offer me her protection, and in return I would make a promise, in something deeper than words. (That promise I keep to myself. I understood then, though, that here where the spirit ruled, the act of making a promise changed us both.)

I drank from the spring, and the spirit seemed different somehow, more substantial, less like someone wearing another's face and more like she wore a shape of her own. It was no coincidence, I think, that the new shape reminded me of myself. "Remember me, on your travels," she said--and here she did use words--"as I shall remember you."

The world faded and I found myself back in the little hidden garden. My sister and I were lying against the trunks of the two trees, and Drysi knelt between us, holding each of our hands in hers. And behind her, seeming to dissipate into the moonlight, was a faint wisp of light that seemed to have taken on a human shape.

The moon set early that night, and we withdrew to the abandoned overgrown classroom beneath the garden, feeling both giddy and subdued. The world seemed different, somehow--which is to say, we were different. Neither my sister nor I realized it at the time, though Drysi surely did, that this promise had set us free. And every time that thin sliver of moon emerged from new, I'd always make a little offering to the nameless spirit that granted us that freedom.