ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time there was a young girl, lets call her Selune, who lived in a quaint little fishing village by the sea. Although Selune had a loving family and good friends she had known all her life, she often felt suffocated by the monotony of her day to day routine, and the inevitability of her destiny. She would look around at everything she loved so dearly, and ask herself why she resented the fact that she knew exactly what the next day would bring. Although the small cottages that speckled the coastal village were devoid of luxury, Selune's community wanted for nothing. Selune's constant relection foretold a life of honest work, frequent communal gatherings where the themes were uproarious dancing and over-indulgence in dark ale, and at some point in the near future, a suitable marriage. She would pass each of the handful of strong, quiet boys her own age around the village each day and be suitably polite and charming at each meeting, leaving them with a hopeful glimmer in their eye. However, the knowledge that she would one day marry one brought with it a heavy blanket of despondency, quickly followed by guilt for her lack of appreciation for everything she possessed.

One night, at a celebration for a particularly bountiful catch, Selune could bear it no longer and she stole away from the merriment to find the ocean. Selune loved the vast, unexplored, unpredicatable sea and spent the small amount of spare time she had swimming, or in the colder months simply gazing out across the horizon looking for something she did not comprehend. Tonight, Selune felt her mood buoy as the laughter and music subsided behind her. As her bare feet found the silken sand, Selune felt she had stepped into an open-air temple, such was the reverence inspired by this still night in early Autumn. On the altar hung a ripe fiery moon, that burnished the shore with enough light for Selune to clearly see the waves lapping in constant supplication. And as the entranced Selune gazed out at the oily black sea she was astounded to see stretching directly before her an amber path of illumination, flickering in the water. The path caressed the shore and extended ray-like out to the horizon, where it became a dense shadowy web that seemed to ascend to the moon itself.

Selune was spellbound, and her heart melted as she felt the moon itself calling to her. She felt herself drawn by some gravitational force towards the water, but her reverie was broken when she disturbed the slumber of a family of Oystercatchers. Laughing inwardly at her fancy, she ambled further down the beach. When she stopped some distance along she looked back out to sea and gasped. The path of moonlight, pulsating its rich amber light, stretched out directly in front of her. Selune looked back up the beach from whence she had come. The path had followed her. Again, Selune began walking towards the water, this time her gaze fluttering up to the huge glowing orb above her, and her heartbeat quickened and she clutched her stomach, so deep was the emotion the moon was evoking within her. She shut her eyes and suddenly saw her friends and family laughing and gamboling around a large bonfire. She pulled away, lifting her feet and ran down the beach. But again, when she halted, the path was there before her and the light resonated with a silver, sweet hum. Selune took one last look towards the direction of her home, and then stepped through the ocean's foam, and kept walking out to sea, the path of moonlight carrying her over the water throughout the night. At the end of the path Selune found a stairwell that ascended to the moon, and climbed it until she was met by the one that had been calling to her her whole life. And ofcourse...they lived happily ever after.