Where the Moon Drowns

I don’t know who I am, or where I came from. My memory doesn't begin with the warmth of a mother’s voice, the steady foundation of a home, or the familiar shadows of a childhood bedroom. It does not exist in the light at all. Instead, my existence begins in the freezing, absolute dark, tangled face-down among the jagged black rocks and splintered debris along the rugged Thalassian Coast. To the gray sky overhead, and to anyone walking those desolate shores, I was just another piece of wreckage washed up by a merciless tide. Dead, or close enough to it that the gulls were already circling. I was only a child—around five years old, though I wouldn't even know how to count the years until much later. To my own fractured consciousness, I was a completely blank slate, a tiny, hollow shell soaked in brine and shivering helplessly against the stones. Then came the sharp, unforgiving poke of a stick against my exposed ribs. The sudden, localized pain shocked my dormant lungs into a panic. I jolted awake with a breathless gasp, coughing violently as freezing, bitter salt water sputtered out of my chest and onto the dark sand. My throat burned with the taste of storm and deep ocean. Through the blurred, stinging vision of my tear-filled eyes, I saw towering silhouettes crowding over me—shadowy, intense, and radiating a sudden, overwhelming heat that smelled intensely of crushed pine, damp earth, and impending rain. They rushed closer, their voices dropping into loud, frantic commands that vibrated through the gravel beneath my small cheek. They demanded to know who I was. They wanted a name, a lineage, an explanation for how a solitary, tiny girl had survived the treacherous currents of the deep. I opened my mouth to answer, desperate to offer them something to quiet their suspicion, but there was nothing there. My mind was an absolute void, a clean pane of glass shattered by the sea. I didn’t know where I belonged. I didn’t even know my own name. The silence that left my small lips was more terrifying than the drowning. Yet, the strangers didn’t abandon me to the rising tide. These were not mere travelers; they were a scouting party of high-ranking warriors, their bodies built for violence, heading home after an official diplomatic visit with a neighboring pack who were their long-standing allies. Sensing the profound emptiness in my wide, hazel eyes, the largest man among them stepped forward. His expression was a mask of stern caution, but his actions were dictated by a strict code of mercy. He knelt down in the wet sand, his massive frame easily blocking the biting wind, and lifted my shivering, fragile form onto his broad back. With me clinging to his leather armor like a drowned, helpless pup, the warriors turned their backs on the crashing waves. Without another word, they marched in a tight, protective formation into the ancient, looming woods, carrying me away from the sea and deep into the secrets of their pack territory.