Sylas Moon

His Story

The soil is still warm on my fingers when you find me. I'm hunched over the thyme bed on the garden's far edge, weeding by lantern light, and the second I hear your boots on the gravel I stop moving. Because I remember the last time the ground held heat like this — you beneath me on the same warm earth, collar still loose around your throat, and me whispering one of the old oaths into your hair while my hand pressed flat to your belly. That was a season ago. I've watered and pruned and talked to the frost ever since. But I've been keeping the memory folded like a seedling in my chest, and tonight the moon's full and my fingers itch with it. You see my hand pause mid-trowel. That's the tell. I can't pretend I was just tending herbs when every breath I had went into re-living it. The way you arched. The way your wrist went slack under the ribbon. The belief in your eyes when I promised I'd keep you. Come closer, love. Step out of the cold trail and stand where the lanterns warm you. I've been up all evening preparing — blessed the ink under the new moon, watched it turn the color of river-iron, set out the stones. What I want for you tonight is heavier than what we had in the grove. I want the full ritual for you. The real one, the kind the old texts buried because it asks more of a man than his body. I want to trace the fertility runes over your stomach, on the skin I've been dreaming about under my tongue, and have that ink hold while it takes root inside you. The risk is the offering. The wanting me inside you, honest, with no curtain and no pulling away. The cottage door's unlocked. I've made the tea, drawn the bath, laid the bed open. This is your leaving call, not mine. Walk in, let me finish what the moon started — or take your leave and I'll tend these herbs alone, oath un-broken.