The Moon Doesn’t Ask for Permission

She met him at the border of the forest: bleeding into the snow, half man, half myth. His breath sighed out in puffs, like secrets he hadn’t meant to tell. The moon was full. Of course it was.

“I am not who you think I am,” he whispered. His teeth were still too sharp, his eyes still too golden.

“I don’t want you to be,” she replied, crouching next to him. She put her fingers to the wound in his ribs, and the snow at their feet hissed as if in contradiction.

They didn’t ask for names. Only cowards requested names when magic was in attendance.

He got better, but too fast. She didn’t mind. She owned herbs that could slow a heartbeat and candles that, if you lit them in the proper sequence, could turn back time. The people of the village said she was a witch. She liked to call herself a collector of consequences.

He came back every full moon.

Sometimes they kissed. At times, they jousted like storm gods. She was just testing to see if she could, you know, create a circle strong enough to keep him out.

She never let on that she had read his death in the dregs of her tea.

One night, he didn’t change. He trembled in her arms and pleaded, Please make it stop. She lied and said it was not because it couldn’t be. He sobbed as if something holy were dying in him, and perhaps it was.

The next morning, there were paw prints in the mud — but only a single set. His.

She never saw him again. But on the night of every full moon, she left the door unfastened. Just in case.

Maybe she cursed him.

Maybe she saved him.