Chapter Ten: The Moon’s Price
858 Words
Noé hadn’t appeared in Eliot’s dreams for three nights.
The first night, Eliot told himself it was nothing — maybe Noé was just tired, wherever he went between dreams. Maybe the moon had simply turned her face away, and Noé had drifted with her.
But the second night was different. Eliot fell asleep early, clutching the threadbare corner of Noé’s fading presence, whispering his name like a prayer.
Still, nothing.
By the third night, Eliot had stopped sleeping altogether. He lay in bed, eyes wide open, waiting for a dream that refused to come.
It was as if the dream itself had forgotten him.
The moonflower had long since withered. He kept its crushed petals in a sealed glass frame, resting it beside his bed like a talisman — like a promise. But each night the silence grew heavier, and each morning he woke with a sharper kind of grief.
That morning, Eliot found himself in the attic.
Old art supplies, unopened boxes, fading paintings — Thaddeus’s world preserved in dust and silence. Eliot hadn’t come up here in years, but something pulled him now. A kind of echo. A trace.
He found it in a stack of yellowed sketchbooks — images of a woman with moon-pale skin and eyes like starlight. She looked nothing like Livia now, but he recognized her instantly. Selene.
The name was scrawled on the margins again and again. Sometimes just her name. Sometimes, “Come back.” Sometimes, “I’d give anything.”
Eliot sat there for hours, reading Thaddeus’s handwriting — watching love grow more desperate on the page.
That afternoon, he brought the sketchbook to Livia.
She was on the porch, watering the roses that never seemed to bloom quite right.
“You knew I’d find it,” Eliot said quietly, placing the sketchbook on the table beside her.
Livia didn’t look surprised. Her eyes stayed on the soil.
“I did,” she said. “But I hoped you wouldn’t.” Eliot sat across from her. “Noé’s fading. I can feel it. I haven’t seen him in days.”
Livia finally met his gaze, and the pain there was old. Deep.
“That’s how it begins,” she said. “They slip away piece by piece. A memory lost here. A night missed there. Then they’re gone.”
Eliot gripped the edge of the table. “But you… you survived. You were Selene. You stayed.”
“I did,” she said. “Because Thaddeus wouldn’t let me go. He searched for years. Refused to forget. He wanted me to be real. Even when it cost him everything.”
“How?” Eliot asked, his voice sharp with desperation. “How did he do it?”
Livia was quiet for a long time. The wind rustled the roses. Somewhere, a gull cried.
“Thaddeus went to someone,” she said at last. “An old friend of his. A professor at the university. Alden.”
Eliot’s heart skipped. “Professor Alden? My photography teacher?”
Livia nodded. “Thaddeus trusted him. Alden told him about the eclipse. The blood moon — when the barrier between dreams and waking thins. If you capture a dream-being in that light, you can bind them here. Make them flesh. But…”
Her voice faltered. She stood abruptly, walking to the edge of the porch, gripping the railing like she needed to hold herself to this world.
“But what?” Eliot asked, standing too.
Livia turned, and in her eyes was something Eliot had never seen in her before — terror.
“The moon doesn’t give without taking. The cost is never predictable. It doesn’t want to let its child go. And this time, Eliot — it might take you.”
The words struck like thunder.
“I won’t let that happen,” she said, suddenly fierce, stepping toward him. “You’re all I have left. I’ve already lost Thaddeus to this. I won’t lose you too.”
Eliot’s hands trembled. “But I can’t just let Noé fade. I love him. I’d trade anything—”
“No!” Livia snapped. “Don’t say that. Not unless you’re prepared to mean it.”
Her voice softened. “Do you understand what you’re risking? It might not be your memories. It might not be your talent or your time. It might be your heart. Or your life.”
Eliot lowered his eyes.
“I know,” he whispered. “And I still want to try.”
Livia looked at him for a long time. “Then promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“If it comes to that moment… if the moon asks for more than you can give—walk away.”
Eliot didn’t answer.
That night, Eliot returned to the darkroom. He developed old negatives, hoping to find Noé’s shadow hidden in the silver grain. But the frames were all empty.
So he wrote instead. Lists. Prayers. Questions.
What would the moon take?
What was love worth?
And at the bottom of the page, in faint pencil:
What if I give everything, and he’s still just a dream?
- Writer
