Moon

Emilia Beam • Fiction

To know the Moon I became Scorpion. With slick obsidian claws, arching tail and armored body, poised to greet her, rising full in the lavender night. Her face was so joyfully round- shining like iridescent opal-and she hovered above me for one held breath, before lifting her skirt of tides that chased up the shore and submerged me in the salted deep.

Her voice cascaded down, “Your body has what you need. Surrender. Feel.” It was a gentle demand, to trust that my book lungs were full of air. Enough to last hours, days. I was not to drown here; but explore, in that pale light of the silver Moon. The inky waters wavered beneath me. Scales of tiny fish glimmered like stars above, as if space were extending in every direction around me. Me and the nothing, me and the light, me and the Moon.

Until, from the encompassing night a hulking shape cut away; a black hole with dark, wet, shining eyes and murky indigo body. Long before Cronus donned his rings, or trees spat up their sprouts from the earth this shark’s blood knew these waters, and to be in such a presence was a cold ripple of fear. “Ask first what frightens, before you flee.” The Moon in her halo of light whispered.

“The teeth!” A shriek of delicate bubbles escaped me,

“Is that all you see of the shark?” And like the tide I was pulled, Turning towards the long body, with its pale red gums jagged grey teeth, and- and something else. The ease with which the beast cut through water. The steady rhythm of the ancient tail, left, right, uninterrupted. Swimming closer until it was overhead- then long past, peacefully on its own path.

The Moons laughter sounded, a wreath of tinkling bells, “What does a shark want with the taste of scorpion little one? You must be rational in the face of what you do not understand.” Embarrassed, then I sank down, down, into the cool and heavy deep, the waters above swallowed the light of the Moon. A lonesome oyster nestled in my landing place. Together and alone, we rested in stillness. It wasn’t until I could be motionless no longer that the oyster gradually opened its mouth presenting a lustrous pearl. Silver on its tongue, offering the glowing body.

“Even in the darkness you fear, there is light.” she hummed from far above. Taking the pearl carefully, I wondered if I had come into the dark out of fear? But the tides were letting out now, the surface pressing upon me fast like a sheet of falling glass, the Moon now set below the horizon, a kiss of sunlight arriving far behind her. I looked at my claw, anxious to see the pearl in the first brushes of day. But there, smooth in my own hand wisened, greying and powerful, lay the tooth of a shark.