In the beginning she simply was. She felt life, had breath, experienced the dread and desire in her mortality. Once there was a time when the stoney mountain hurt her feet, but she didn't feel it, wouldn't even look back as the strength of youth swept her through the forests and over the snows and between the crags as careless as the wind. She spent countless nights wandering under the moon, so close she could taste it. She bathed in it, ate it up, learning it's every phase and colour until they were one. I thought those nights were as numberless as the stars for her, but even for her it started to slip away when one early morning she found her paws had hardened. She wasn't bound by her anymore; she could go farther. So she did, dipping bellow the clouds and wandering to distant places. But in her time away from home she brought the phases and coloures with her, and for the unique beauty the small youth held they called her Moon Eyes. Many called her a ghost; the lonely ghost, but she was never really alone; I was with here even then.
The season ended and she returned to kit where she simply was; up on the peak in the realm of moonlight. I watched her suffer with her liter; they withered from five to three to two. It hurt. She was only a cub herself.
And then they came.
The last of her bloodline was scratched out to try and subdue her, but she refused to be captured. They wanted her as a trinket. They though her pelt; as beautiful as it was; would ward off bad luck and even cheat death. She only lost her home that day; they defiled it and spilt her own blood. She could never return in life.
Now she falls. They hunted her until now and chased her until she ran out of room. They. Shoved. Her. Wind tears at her fur and a scream rips from my throat as Moon Eyes plummets towards the hungry white waters, maw parted as if to complain but she doesn't make a sound.
The ocean steals her breath. She kicks out but it's as if claws have tanggled in her fur and drag her everywhere she doesn't want to go. Her pelt, precious as silver once turns heavy as lead and helps with her descent. She's straining, the light's fading. The current drags her across the cliff face, winding her and-
She inhales.
Her body settles to the sandy bottom as heavy as stone, but she feels light. I feel it as if it's me; it's as if her lungs are being crushed. She can't struggle; it's like she's frozen. Yet in her very last moment, it all turns to relief. She sighs the salty water. And then she goes away.
Her being cries, standing before a loved one across the blurry line. I cry too, but no one can see me as I work. No one can ever see me. They whisper to her. I try not to listen but I still know the exact moment she understands; it's when she starts shaking again, and her eyes roll. She tries to stop it but it's too late; I've already finished. Moon Eyes will return; she will live again and again and again for the rest of forever, and I did it.
A soft voice comforts her. "Sweet," they sigh, "Oh sweetheart just breathe! Breathe or else you'll die. My poor sweetheart, poor brave one."
"They all die! All around me they die!"
"You will be a ghost to them. But never to the ones you allow to become dear; remember that and you'll never truly be alone. Listen. You are no ghost; not really. You may be tragic and lost, but never desperate. Look at me, bright one, so I can see it for myself. It's clear as the cloudless night. You're the being with the moon in her eyes; something much greater than any ghost. So I name you Ci-N'Go, The Lonely Angel."
"Go bravely," I whisper in her ear. "I'll be right here the whole time."
Icarus
