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Libris Sanguinus:
Moon Children
Preface
Moon Children came to me as a dream, no doubt brought on by hours spent trying to learn the melody and lyrics to "Hijo de la Luna."
It's hard to describe the power of dreams. After dreaming this bizarre sequence of events, I felt as if I truly were myself a Moon Child. I felt that exhileration at the thought of sinking my fangs into the neck of prey. I felt the rush, the deep yearning that wasn't quite sexual, for a man who does not really exist.
I tried my best to translate raw dream emotion into prose, to give it plot. I am as yet unfinished (as so many of my stories are), but I plan to continue this one to its end. I want to know what happens.
I will warn you, though, that this story contains very graphic and explicit content. It's actually quite uncharacteristic of my usual work... I hope you don't judge me as a person based on this story. I'm actually quite sane. I wear color, I go out in daylight, I don't really think of drinking human blood, and I do not encourage the taking of drugs (nor cannibalism). Some stories just force themselves to be told.
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The story of my people is told often as a legend, a campfire story. A gypsy woman begged the Moon to send her a husband, one whose skin was tanned and taut over sinuous muscle. The Moon replied to her request, assuring her that she would find her perfect man. In return for this miracle she asked for another. She wanted only her firstborn of this perfect man. The woman agreed hastily, as the moon had expected.
From a cinnamon-skinned father a son was born, “white like an ermine's belly,” with gray eyes in lieu of brown. Truly the Moon's albino son.
The father damned the babe’s appearance. Surely his new wife had dishonored him. He confronted her, demanding she tell him who her side lover was. He did not heed her protestation, nor her pleas. He stabbed her to death.
The babe, he abandoned high in the mountains, for he could not bring himself to harm the child.
It is said that the Moon saved the infant, taking him to her pale breast. When the moon is full, she is feeding her child. When the child cries, the Moon wanes to a crescent so as to make the babe a cradle.
As charming as this little bedtime story is, it is not entirely true. The woman was of the Cattraighe: an early Celtic tribe. The Moon is actually the Cat Goddess Reanddemal. The son was actually a daughter, born to pale parents… But her skin was completely devoid of pigment… and her eyes bore vertical slits in the center of large, orange irises.
The father believed the woman had lain with an incubus, and killed her in superstitious fright. He deposited both mother and daughter on the alter to Raenddemal, at the summit of a mountain. The child, he was unable to harm. The knife quaked in his hand, and fell uselessly to the ground. He fled, living to tell the tale that would evolve into the popular folk song.
The truth, though, is known only to that infant’s descendants.
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