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Always beware of the Blood Moon and of the beings who stalk the night when she makes her appearance. While illuminating and beautiful, she beckons the worst to allow themselves to fully let go.
Allow the Beast to run free.
There was a story of a Father and his three children. One night when the moon was large and bright, the Father left the house to go hunting to find food for his family, leaving the eldest in charge. For three days they waited. The first day they played games. The second they did chores. The third they laid together huddled on the bed, cold and hungry while they waited for their father to return.
On the fourth day, the moon rose a lovely crimson hue, full and imposing.
It was then that the middle child knew that their Father was dead.
Despite the desperate insistence by the eldest that he was still alive, the middle knew the truth. All three of the children had been told of the story of the Harvest Moon.
It was a sign of death.
Even so, the eldest didn’t wish to believe it. The youngest could only watch from the kitchen, clinging to their doll while their siblings argued to the truth. They went to bed angry with one another. An act that the middle child would soon regret.
The next morning, the eldest was standing at the window. Staring out into the snow with wide, sunken eyes and a twisted smile, they spoke. “A man came to the door. He said that Father was alive. That all I have to do is come to him so I can bring him home.”
That night, the eldest took their black cloak off of the hook and disappeared into the woods.
They never returned.
Soon, the youngest fell to the same honey-laden words as their elder sibling. They had the same blank look on their face, the same smile, the exact same tone. “Father and *** are out there. A man came to me and said so… I just have to go to him… And I can bring them home.”
Despite the middle’s protests, the youngest took their dark blue cloak off of the hook and disappeared into the snow-covered woods.
They never returned.
The middle knew that their time was coming next, to when the Strange Man would come to them and take them as he had their father and siblings. With the Moon full and red once more, they took their cloak matching that same shade of blood and made the same trek as the rest of their family.
“Come to us…”
“Bring us home…”
“We can be a family once more…”
The voices of the Father and siblings echoed through their mind, feeling the pull that the middle knew that their family felt when they left the safety of their home.
The child ended up at the door of their neighbor’s home in the clearing in the middle of the woods, soft candlelight illuminating the darkness in each of the windows. For a brief second, they were sure that they saw the shadows of their siblings watching them from an upstairs window.
Soft knocks followed once they arrived at the front door, swinging open to the sight of the tower of a man dressed all in black with a wide-brimmed hat covering most of his face.
“So you chose to come on your own. Come in child. Your family is waiting for you.” He spoke in a low, husky voice. Taking off his hat and placing it on top of the middle’s head, they looked up to see his sharp smile before allowing themselves to walk inside never to be seen again.
He was no man.
The next night, the Moon once again showed a full and bright red. Even brighter than ever before, soaked in the blood of the family who fell prey to its pull.
~*~
“You truly had to share such a macabre story with me, didn’t you?” Arthur asked, raising a brow with his fingers tapping at the teacup in his hands while he watched Oliver measuring out herbs on what appeared to be a scale.
Oliver paused for a brief moment with the measuring spoon in his hand, sighing before gingerly dumping the lavender onto one side of the scale. “I suppose it was more of my way to share with you as to why I have a general lack of trust for people in general. This was a story that Father told my brothers and I when we were boys, I’m fairly sure now it was his way to scare us into not allowing ourselves to… Get too comfortable. Much of the time, he was looking directly at me as well as my younger brother when he would hear it.”
“Any particular reason as to why?”
“...Father has always compared me to a rabbit, I believe that may very well be why. Since I have been the one who has been ‘far too trusting’ as well as naive. He has said that I am the one who would be the one to ‘fall to the Moon’ so to speak if I keep with my general trust in others other than family.”
Arthur admittedly found this explanation to be rather… Interesting. It did answer a few questions that he had about the Tea Seller. Why before he began to get closer to him and gain his trust that he could be both aloof and manipulative, it was to keep himself from being ‘lost’ to the ‘Wolf’ that he guessed was humanity.
Though, in a way, he could see where his Father was coming from in terms of his son. Oliver likely held misplaced trust in him, given the circumstances and nature of his work as well as the mere fact that he was the lead detective in the cases of the mysterious deaths that had been occurring over the past few years. Arthur held his suspicions, gathering information each time he came to see him while at the same time attempting to do nothing to spook the other. He couldn’t allow him to get suspicious of his intentions.
However… The more he got to know Oliver, he could see how he was like a rabbit. Always alert, not quick to trust in case of the ‘Wolf’ showing to go for his neck. Once he did gain trust in someone though, he seemed to allow his vulnerable underbelly to show. As such, leading to saying things that he knew he shouldn’t have said.
At the very least… Arthur was sure that Oliver didn’t know what his true line of work was.
Best to keep it that way.
“Well, I must say that does explain a few things.” Saying this before taking another short sip of the warm liquid in his hands, watching Oliver carefully tilt the herbs into the royal purple velvet pouch and tie it off with a gold cord.
“What might that be?” Oliver asked as he set down the pouch into a small wooden box with and closed the lid, taping down a small piece of paper with a woman’s name on it. After doing so, scurrying to check the book that he made sure to keep the contents out of Arthur’s sight and making what seemed to be a checkmark. He glossed over it again for a brief moment, pulling down the red ribbon down in the middle of the pages and closing it once again.
“Why you are as you are.”
Oliver paused, glancing toward the Brit sitting at the table before turning back to his work. Pulling down several more jars of herbs and setting them down next to the scale and tiny weights. “I’ve been told these sorts of stories every night before we would go to sleep before I left home to begin my own practice, my shop being the very thing that Father warned us against doing. However…I don’t believe that doing my work in the shadows so to speak was the best way. I believe that doing so would only make myself be like those blackened figures in his stories, that we were ones to be feared.”
Setting down a different weight on the scale and scooping out black nettles from one of the jars onto the scale, humming quietly to himself. “I don’t believe that at all… I merely wish to use my talents to help people. Help them gain solace from those blackened figures that linger in one’s nightmares… You are truly a case and point in that.”
Arthur saw that hint of a genuine smile on the other’s face, seeing that faint glimpse of the gap in between his two front teeth. He gave a small smile in return, shaking his head.
“Yes… I suppose I am, aren’t I?”
A comfortable silence fell between them once more, Oliver pouring both himself and Arthur another cup of tea each before returning to his work while the other watched.
As much as the Briton didn’t want to admit to it to himself, Oliver indeed was the rabbit in this story.
And he was the Wolf… Ready to go straight for the jugular if need be.
He wondered if such a time came that this story was to come true… Would the Moon turn the color of blood?