PROMPT : MOON
Luna turned the locks on her bedroom door, having already stuck her head out to smile at the guards keeping watch at their posts.
She had put a finger to her lips and smiled. “Remember, do not open the door—no matter what,” she admonished.
The awestruck guards had nodded in agreement. They would never go against their darling princess.
With that assurance to her fluttering fears, Luna had shut the door and swiftly locked it with every single fastening on the door and a pinch of sealing powder from the golden pot at the corner of the mantle.
This room would be sealed, so help her. She did not want the guards blamed for something they would never be able to prevent. Nor the maids. Or any other innocent, unsuspecting individual.
No, this burden was hers to bear and hers alone. She would bear it, no matter the cost. Even if it was all father’s fault anyway.
Throwing the curtains open from the window, Luna whispered the words to unlock the spells that held the metal grating behind the pretty glass panels.
It had taken weeks to unravel that spell and the court magician was firmly her father’s friend and advisor—he hadn’t even ventured to offer any assistance, but rather, had reinforced the spells weekly.
She was a prisoner—to her mother’s memory and her father’s wishes. The people were suffering for it and there had been nothing she could at all—until the dreams had started.
Dreams about the Moon prince. The Moon kingdom. The way of life for the lunar people and their strange, silvery culture.
He had been pledged her hand from the day she was born. He had assumed his crown but thirteen years before and it was that day that her father had decided he couldn’t bear to lose her too.
Instead of breaking of the engagement like a sane monarch—he had endeavored to cheat, scheme and lie to the most powerful royal within their celestial system.
Luna stifled a shudder. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d been able to feel the prince since they’d both turned ten. That she’d somehow accidentally bonded with him when she’d turned sixteen—and that the reason the golden tattoos of constellations and star systems scripted themselves across her body was because she’d given herself to him—in mind, at the age of eighteen.
Now, on her twenty-first birthday—well, one week past it, as her father had been adamant on keeping her locked in the dungeons until the moon’s light cycle had passed over their kingdom—she was free.
Or would be free.
The metal disintegrated and she pushed open the glass window panels. Strong, steady moonlight came streaming in to spill over the windowsill and into her room.
She bit her lip, daring to stretch a hand out to the silvery light.
A pale, thin hand materialized in hers almost at once.
Luna gasped. She stared up, wonderingly into the beautiful, shining face of the Moon Prince, who kissed the palm of her hand and bowed low over it.
“My princess,” he said, softly. “You have waited so long.”
“You’ve waited longer,” Luna corrected, drinking in the sight of him and his royal finery. The moon people couldn’t possibly be barbaric if this was how their royalty appeared. “Father is—I mean—I’m sorry.”
“You need not apologize for that which is not your fault,” he said, simply. “Will you come with me, of your own free will?”
She beamed up at him. “Always.”
(c) S. Harricharan