Where should she look for her child-to-be. Csialeide wondered, now back in the comfort of her woods, filling them again with her whispers. Tall mushrooms and flowers leaned towards her as she glided through, crystals pulsed with the power of her hum. The canopy overhead concealed her from Noctua’s moonlight. Privacy was something she cherished, but now she found herself interested in creating a new life to share hers with. Somebeing to bear the weight of her adoration. As her woods lacked any animal life, she resolved to stroll through the mainland forests surrounding her island when the tide took the salt away, leaving her a peninsula of sand bar to traverse. Salt wasn’t poison to her like it once had been, back before she became a god, but it was uncomfortable, an itching allergic rash that crawled up her ventral foot.
She reflected that Zsa Zsa and Veris may not have been the most judicious of choices for her inquiries into motherhood. Noctua’s perspective might be a more comparable selection for a consultation. Or Nevah, oldest of the known gods. But that was likely impossible, Nevah had not been sighted for a millenia, perhaps even in deep eversleep as many of the ancients were prone to. Calling upon Noctua would take a little effort. She could simply seek him out in her dream, but she was resistant to the idea of giving him such power over her. Instead she would sing to his reflection, calling him to travel to her instead.
She willed it, and the entangled branches over her clear pool of silvery water drew back, revealing the moons above, moonbeams stretching down over her waters. The larger moon, ice white, drew the eye, but it was Noctua’s smaller dazzling blue moon she would be calling, hazy behind the planet’s rings. She began to sing, a song of longing and loneliness.
The still reflection of the moon on the water’s surface began to ripple, when if finally reached the banks, a shimmer fell over the air, and with a graceful step into solidity, a tall man emerged, a flutter of luna moths flurrying behind him. His many acolyte daughters. He was a man with many children, Csialeide admired, his followers, whether they knew it or not, were all that dreamed. She wondered, with such power, if he knew where the ancient gods rested, deep asleep, perhaps wrapped in a cocoon of dreaming. His one blue and one gold eye, presumably the one he had taken from Novem, with its cat slit, peered at her in surprise. ‘Csia! What a pleasant surprise!’ She surmised he was eager to delve into her psyche, she had never opened her forest pool to the heavens before, and as he looked around, curious, she did her best to keep her doubts low in her mind, so as not to alert him with her thoughts, magnified as they were by her shell and the dark forest surrounding them.
‘Noctua,’ she rumbled, the entire glade shaking with the weight of her voice. ‘What is it to be a mother?’ He looked at her with a slight smile on his lips, his cat-eyes half-lidded. ‘Parenthood, ah? It depends on the child, of course.’ He turned, taking a walk around the pool as he thought, slight ripples under his feet as he strolled the water’s surface. ‘My full son Novem is a difficult one, full of himself and his own passions. Selfish, fickle, self-defeating. And I love him very very much.’ He finished, wheeling back to look at Csialeide. ‘My daughters on the other hand,’ he said, raising a hand for one such daughter to alight upon it. ‘Are lovely creatures.’ He brought the moth to his mouth, eating her in one bite. ‘They take their discipline quite seriously. Obedient. I love them as well, but they are less entertaining.’ Csialeide averted her eyes in disgust.
When she looked back Noctua was smirking at her, clearly amused by her reaction. ‘You will love your children, but they may not always love you. It is a risk that is worth taking, in my opinion.’ And with that he was gone, not a ripple on the pond to show he had been there. The branches wove back over the glade, blocking out the light from above once again, sealing in the glow from the fluorescent algae floating in the pond like a sea of stars.
Csialeide found herself drowsy after his return, but resisted sleep, she wasn’t sure of Noctua’s involvement in her fatigue and was unwilling to be manipulated by his machinations. He had bragged before, about the methods he employed to collect dreams for his dream-wine. His daughters entering through the reflection of your eye, singing in the dreaming and unraveling fine dream fibers, leaving a silk worm covered landscape behind them. She was unwilling to become another of his victims, despite how sweet a dreaming it could be.
