A Girl & the Moon ~ A Fairytale

Chapter 9

This felt too familiar. 

The choking back of  tears. Falling. Darkness. Feeling betrayed. 

The images flashed in her mind: a broken bridge of stars, the beam of her flashlight in a dark cavern, mists and icy hands around her throat. 

How long would it be like this? The tests kept coming, and she kept failing.

And then came the last picture. Her moon. Shining with a blue-ish white glow. The lady in the silken gown, kneeling down, and putting a jacket around her shoulders. 

It was a circle - a circle of falling and rising. Losing hope, and finding it again. Having confidence, and having it broken. Forgetting what was important, and remembering again. 

How many times would she have to learn this lesson? 

As many times as it took, she supposed. 

The tears had stopped, and she felt strangely at peace. Whatever happened next, this wrong step, this fall, had reminded her to remember. 

She remembered her moon. She remembered her love for it and for the people it watched over. That was important. She had failed yes, and that was nothing new. But failure doesn't matter when you have such a good friend like she had in her moon. 

So she waited. She felt the air whip past her, wiping her tears away forever. She rested in the rushing wind and waited for whatever came next. 

The next moment she crashed. She felt the breath sucked out of her by the impact. A searing pain went up her leg, and tears welled up in her eyes, but she couldn't cry with the wind knocked from her lungs. 

Of course, we know it was a wonder she was alive at all. You can't fall for that long or that far and survive. Usually. So something was different here, and it was more like making a particularly unfortunate fall off the top bunk bed. But Astrea wasn't thinking that just now. She was in pain and she felt suffocated and she was scared. She began regaining her breath, and a few choked sobs came out. Calming down was her priority right now. It's okay, it's okay, you'll be fine. She was pretty sure her hands and arms were scraped up. They stung something awful. Her ankle was under her - she had probably twisted it or something. What if she couldn't walk? What would she do then? How would she get out of here? There was no one around. That thought made her cry more, and her heart thump a little faster. You're okay, you'll figure it out, you'll figure it out, don't worry. She started sitting up, and a twinge of pain met her as she did so. She had definitely done something to that foot. The tears of pain and fear were running their course in earnest. She was definitely on a hard, rocky surface, she realized. Feeling around her as best she could (without moving the leg too much), she found a boulder and scooted over to it and leaned against it. She breathed. She didn't know how she was going to do this. 

Then came the sound of a small bell in the distance. It was coming closer. Should she be afraid? Should she hide? The bell stopped. 

She waited. 

Something brushed up against her leg. She froze. 

Then, she heard a mew. 

It was a cat?

She reached out her hand, and a moment later felt the cold, wet nose on her fingertips. She reached down and stroked the cat - a kitten, she realized. 

"Hello, little one, what are you doing here?" she asked it, reaching behind its ears and giving them a little scratch.

It mewed again, and jumped up in her lap, its bell jingling when it did.