Marked by The Moon

They say the moon turned red the night I was born. Not the soft red of sunset… but the deep, haunting crimson of something wounded. Something ancient. The forest went silent first — as if the world itself stopped breathing. Then the howling began. Not one wolf, but an entire pack, voices raised to the sky in a sound that was neither warning nor celebration… but grief. My grandmother told me once — when I was young enough for fairy tales but old enough to recognize fear in her eyes — that the storm came without wind. Clouds rolled in like bruises across the sky, lightning crackled, but the trees did not sway. As if the storm wasn’t touching the world… only watching it. Inside that small, shuttered house at the edge of the valley, my mother labored by candlelight. She screamed once — a sound so sharp it split the dark — and then the candle went out. Only moonlight remained. Bleeding through the windows. Bleeding across the floorboards. Bleeding onto her hands as she held me for the first and last time. They say she whispered a name, but no one remembers what it was. They say the room smelled of earth and blood and something sweet, like crushed flowers after rain. They say the shadows moved… even though nothing else did. My birth wasn’t a blessing. It was a sign. And somewhere deep in the forest, two beings felt it at the same time. One with golden, burning eyes. One with silver, cold ones. Both marked by fate. Both tied to me. Both awakened by my first breath. My grandparents left that town before I could speak, before I could walk, before I could understand why people avoided our door and whispered behind their hands. But they couldn’t leave the past behind. Not really. Not when the night sky still keeps secrets. Not when the moon still turns heavy and red every year on the anniversary of my birth. Not when sometimes… just sometimes… I wake with mud on my feet and the scent of pine in my hair. As if the forest I don’t remember… remembers me.