The Tale Of A Luna

Chapter Two

Dinner was unusually quiet. Andrew looked at his unusually quiet eighteen years old daughter sitting across him. Aside from being unusually quiet, she had been playing with her meal since the beginning of dinner.

“Are you alright, May?”

She jerked out of her reverie at his voice, nodding almost lifelessly. “Hm.”

“How was your day today? Did you see anything new?”

She shrugged. “Same old. Nothing new.”

He dropped his fork, reaching out to cover her palms before she could evade it. “You know you can talk to me about it, right?”

She swallowed, nodding her head with a wry smile on her lips. However, the silence still lingered, like dark clouds over a bright sky. It took another minute before her almost quiet voice broke the tense atmosphere.

“When will I start school like the other children?”

The question wasn’t entirely unexpected. Andrew sighed. “I thought we already talked about this, May. You are a special child. You cannot go past the four walls of this house or even go to school.”

She scoffed. “Then, I am meant to be stuck in here till I die? You can just save yourself the stress and kill me instead.”

“I forbid you from saying those words!” His voice was harsh, a few pitches higher. It quietened the anger in her as she started at him in shock.

“I don’t want to live like this. I want to go to school and see the world from just behind my window.” Her voice broke down with tears. “I don’t care any longer why I am being kept here but I demand to be set free.”

She pulled away her chair and walked out of the dining room, her dinner untouched.

May laid on her bed, her ears picking up the sounds in the nearly quiet house. Her father had since retired to his room and hadn’t stepped a foot outside after. It seemed like her hope of using the outburst at dinner to get him to change his mind was about to be dashed. With a loud sigh, she gazed up at her ceiling. A view she had seen more than a million times. Outside, the skies were growing dark and the street, empty. All these years, nothing had changed. Not even a single bit. Perhaps, the only thing that ever changed was the toys she outgrew and stuffed into a box beneath her wardrobe, plus some dresses she had to let go of and that she grew a few inches taller each year.

Everything else remained the same.

The same room, the same bed, the same routine of looking outside the window every morning just before she washomeschooled by her father.

Ever since she was little, she had never stepped feet outside the house. Her father never permitted her to. Sometimes, she wondered if things would have been different if her mother didn’t die. Perhaps, she would have the freedom she longed for. Perhaps, she wouldn’t have to look outside the window every morning with envy at the boys and girls in beautiful school uniforms.

Thoughts flooded her head as she laid still on the bed. Soon, she slept off. In her dreams, she saw her mother. She had never set eyes on her before; however, from the way she played hide-and-seek with her, May could tell she was her mother.

“Mom?” Her voice was sad. She wanted to tell her that she was lonely; that her father wouldn’t let her out of the house. That she wanted to have a normal life like the other kids and go to school like them too. However, as she rushed into her arms, the figure faded slowly in the wind, leaving her alone.

“Mom!”