Chapter Text
Three moons shine above, all full, clustered together like the eyes of some unseen beast. Bright white and red and green.
Three moons on a cloudless night, and the woods are as clear as under the sun.
No one sleeps on nights like this, when the world is so starkly visible. Odd shadows shatter on the ground and intersect, and the Veil itself shows like a heat haze in the air.
It flows between the tree trunks like even the ground needs to be hidden when seen in this light, and as the little crew walks through the forest, it wraps lovingly around some of them, coils tightly around one.
Luffy laughs, as loud and bright as the moons above, and waves a hand through the eerie fog just to see it cling to his too-long fingers.
All three moons in the same phase is a worrying omen, and no full moon is ever kind, but Luffy is the scariest thing in these woods. He always is. He’s never feared the sky.
The crew is uneasy, but no more than usual. Luffy laughs and washes it all away.
Luffy laughs, and they follow first, think later.
They bicker and talk, loud and carefree and careless, through a kaleidoscope of light and shadow, and as the fractured moonlight tricks the eye, it’s as if the forest moves around them.
The rushing canopy blocks the sky in all but shards and slivers of light.
Three full moons shine above.
Between one shadow and the next, the air they breathe slides along a plane, and scattered moon-cast shadows shatter and reform.
Four full moons hang above, bright white and red and green, and one in silver blue.
The Veil is like heat haze in the air, more visible than it has ever been, and it flows out and out and out, stretching thin until it nearly evaporates.
Luffy stops laughing for a second just to cock his head and listen.
“Is that music?” he asks, and the crew stops to listen too.
The forest shifts around them, turning and changing as they move, and it sings.
It sings with a thousand voices, flowing in the breeze, mingling with the wind in the leaves and laughing with each other. Joyous wolf howls echo from ahead, and through the shattered moonlight they can see a glow of fire, warm and bright and welcoming, flickering with shadow as from people dancing ‘round a hearth.
Luffy laughs even louder then.
“That looks fun!” he says, and follows the firelight through the moonlit woods, and the crew follow too, unthinkingly.
Because it looks like fun.
It draws them in despite all hesitance. The music is beautiful, and the fire looks warm, and it looks like fun. It looks like fun.
The firelight dances. Under the weight of music, the Veil stretches thin.
The sky is shadowed once more, and there is only one moon.
Do you hear the singing in the woods?
The music feels like honey-sweet wind, barely there, but sinking through their skin and to their blood. It’s light, and then it’s heavy, clinging to the inside of their minds and beckoning.
It’s harder to think. Harder to remember why they should.
There is only the fire and the song and their feet, carrying them towards it. There’s shapes in the woods of other travellers, other wanderers, others who celebrate, egging them on, waving them forward. Come join us! Join the party! Dance with us! Sing with us!
They break through the woods to a clearing ringed by massive trees and topped by an open sky, bright blue moon beaming above, and they do.
They dance, forgetting why they shouldn’t.
They sing, they laugh, they let go.
As demons dance in fairy light, the Veil struggles, and snaps.
And darkness streams into the full moon frenzy.
Screams and singing mingle in a single melody, and the air is filled with blood and teeth and loud and raucous laughter, for mindless beasts are not unknown to parties such as these.
And if this one is darker still than even fairies know, well, moonlight madness grips them all regardless.
This is the night when borders blur and magic sings its own. The air itself is melody, the moon is loud and bright and round, and on this night no fear is known to fairy or to fey.
Demons? Hah! This night is theirs. This night is fey, and so are they, their visitors despite.
It’s laughter, wild and bright.
It’s singing, teasing, baiting, binding, bleeding, and they laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
They should be scared, these visitors, as friends and loved ones fall apart to teeth and shade and hunger, but if they are, it’s lost. It’s lost.
It’s lost, along with minds, with sense and names. It’s lost to sound and moonlight.
And demons dance with fairies.
And fairies dance with demons.
And any scar that’s gained tonight will fade before the sunrise. Any door that’s opened should be closed.
Should be….
(The Veil pulses, one last time, clings desperately to this thing that should not be perceived, that would drive them all mad, if not for the full moon’s temporary insanity, and the cracks they slipped through to get here clog up, and do not close.)