The Forgotten Moon Princess

Selene woke up on the Monday before her 18th birthday with a sense of foreboding. She did not sleep well, mainly because she spent the night before rehashing an argument she has had with her adoptive parents ever since her seventh birthday. Selene wishes to meet her birth parents. While her adoptive parents Joe and Samira are always who Selene will think of as her real parents,  ever since she turned seven, she has felt a sense of incompleteness, like she does not really belong. She always thought part of that was because she was adopted. She needed to find out for sure. Selene has been plotting since then to leave after her 18th birthday to find her birth parents and get the answers she seeks. She doesn't want to leave home, in fact, she loves the life she has. But her need for answers far outweigh those comforts, and her parents just won't tell her who they adopted her from, so she has to take matters into her own hands.  Until then, Selene is going through the motions. She is in her final week of her senior year of high school. Her and her two best friends, Thea and Blake, are almost done with finals. They plan to spend her birthday night actually going to the end of the year party, which they never have attended before. They aren't exactly popular, but the three of them have been friends since elementary school, ever since Thea demanded that Selene and Blake play tag with her.  Selene was looking forward to celebrating their graduation with them. Ever since prom, things have felt a little off between Thea and Blake. Selene has always known that Thea had a huge crush on Blake, but it has never been weird between the three of them. It has always been easy going and light hearted.  After prom, something has been off between them.  Sighing thinking about the state of affairs that is her life, Selene gathered her almost-white blonde hair into a messy bun and headed to the bathroom to start her morning routine and get ready for her last week of her senior year. She showered using her favorite orange and mint body wash and blow dried out her waves with a diffuser. Then she carefully put on her makeup, using her favorite bronze eyeshadow that always accentuated her midnight blue eyes. When she was excited, the gleam in her eye shine like stars.  After finishing her makeup routine, she heads to her desk where her planner sits. She notes that the next full moon is on her birthday--May 21. For whatever reason, Selene's planners always kept track of the lunar cycles, and she always noticed that she felt fullest and her strongest on or around the full moon. It was almost like the moonlight energized her and gave her strength. She was excited that the party on Friday was going to be a bonfire, because she know she would look and feel her most radiant self. Selene only had to get through the next few days.  Packing up her planner and textbooks, she headed to the door and downstairs. She overslept this morning, so no time for an actual breakfast. Instead, she grabs one of her favorite breakfast bars and sprints out the door to catch the bus at the bus stop. Unlike other students, Selene's parents didn't buy her a car. While Selene does have a job after school, she's been saving all the money she earns for her secret plans to discover her birth parents. Besides, she never really felt like she needed to have a car. She always got to school taking the bus, and that way she could read or listen to podcasts or music on the way there, and for anywhere else she was going, she could always get a ride from either Thea or Blake.  Blake works with Selene together after school and they have the same schedule. It makes rides easy.  They both are servers at the only 24 hour diner in town--the Scramble. Selene remembers that she has a shift tomorrow at the Scramble. She makes a mental note to make sure her uniform is clean tonight. With that, she sits down on the bus, pulls out her iPhone, and turns to her favorite playlist--just a random compilation of all of her favorite songs. Thea and Blake always make fun of her because it always jumps from Top 40 songs to throwbacks from her childhood and then back to random bands that most people have never heard of. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but it always makes her happy.  The school day goes by in a blur, and in fact, most of her finals are finished, so a lot of her classes are just structured free time. Selene uses that time to do more research in the books she checked out of the library about where she wants to go first to find her birth parents. No one, not even Thea or Blake, know about it. All Selene knows is one thing that she overheard her parents talking about--the Moonrise territory. Ever since then, Selene has been scouring books in the region to try to figure out where that is. She hasn't been successful yet, but for whatever reason, every time she reads about the forests just north of town--the Oakwood Forest, she gets a sense of familiarity. So far, that's where she plans to head on Saturday morning.