The Secret of Moon Gems

Will following the path solve the mystery?

The girl pushed her long dark hair behind her ear with an impatient swipe of her thin wrist. Her hair was braided but damp from the gauze of mist hanging frozen in the night air.

The girl had been wakened by a dark shadow moving across the light of the full moon framed in her window. She’d tiptoed to the outside world so she could investigate what creature or thing cast such an ugly shadow on her precious moon.

She wore a thin night shirt and little else, but she didn’t feel the cold that pierced gooseflesh on her bare legs. She’d walked around her cottage and found a line of stones that gleamed in the moon lit night. The line began at her window and curved into the distance.

She recognized the stones in the path as moon gems. Moon gems were the remains of giant boulders that once lined the shores of the sea that embraced her island home. An ancient monsoon had rendered the boulders to rocks long ago, and the waters had licked them mercilessly until they were smooth and round. The locals called them moon gems for their color and the eerie way they seemed to shine from within in the moon light.

She followed the path with no thought given to the sharp gravel that pierced her bare feet. The path led her through a grove of trees, whose branches grabbed and prodded her, but she was too engrossed in the mystery to pay them any mind.

The path disappeared into a hole dug in the side of a hill. The girl had to lie flat to fit into the tight quarters. She ignored the weight of the dirt on top of her, staring instead at the light at the end of the tunnel and the stones that stretched out from there. When she finally wormed her way through the hill, she was dirty and drenched in sweat.

With some difficulty, she found her bearing and her breath. She was limping then and very tired. Still determined, she pushed herself forward.

Finally the path lead her to a beach. The sand was smooth and white, glowing almost as brightly as the moon gems. The girl wasn’t looking forward now. Instead she watched her bare feet sink into the wet sand on either side of the path. Before long, her toes were splashing the foamy lip of the ocean.

She could see the line of stones still stretching forward beneath the sea. She followed them until the water was at her chest and her nightshirt billowed around her in the water like a jelly fish.

Suddenly, a huge wave crashed against the girl, knocking her back into the water. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breath. She flailed her arms as a second wave pulled away her night shirt then pushed her, naked, onto the shore.

She lie there for a moment, catching her breath. Without the moon gems to think about, the girl began to feel again. She shivered from the cold. It hurt.

Panicked, she looked for the path. The moon gems were gone.

The girl tried to sit up, but her stomach heaved. Waves of pain coursed their way up her legs to her innermost places. She swallowed a sob, and closed her eyes.

When she opened her eyes, the girl was back in her bedroom. She heard footsteps move quietly down the hall, away from her room. Then echoed a quiet creak and click of a carefully closed door.

The girl waited for a while in the dark then stood slowly. She wrapped herself in a sheet and made her way to the bathroom.

She locked the door. Without bothering to turn on the light, she felt around for toilet paper. When she found it, she yanked it from the wall and unrolled huge wads of tissue. Navigating the folds of her make-shift toga, the girl wiped between her thighs until they were dry.

She had to flush twice. When she finished, she made her way back to her bedroom. She found her nightshirt on the bed and pulled it on. Her pajama bottoms were crumpled on the floor. She put them back on, too.

She climbed into bed and pulled the blanket to the bridge of her nose. The moon looked in on her again through the window. No shadows.

The girl went back to sleep.

Note from the Author

The story above reads like fiction, but though it is a fantasy, it is also very real. What I'm describing in the story is the act of disassociation. As a survivor of child sex abuse, creating fantasy worlds like the one above helped me survive the horrors of abuse. You can read more about this in How My Disorder Is Actually An Amazing Super Power.

I didn't live in a cottage on an island, and if moon gems exist in the real world, I've yet to find them here. However, my little worlds were as real to me, and sometimes more real than the world we live in.

If you look back through the story, you will see some of the ways my mind and imagination adapted my experiences to fit into my fantasy. The branches grabbed at my night shirt, the heavy dirt pressed on me, the waves knocked me backward... All of these instances helped me survive my body’s physical attacks by attributing them to sources that existed in my fantasy world.

This is how I survive. I create beauty from ugliness. It's the reason that I create art. It's the reason I write.

Thank you for reading.