Another Story Entirely

She rose waning in her majesty, as pure as silver, before the dawn of passing into early Spring, after Eastertide, the moon to regulate the clock, twentynine, twentynine.

As small the silver pendant about grandmother's collar, above her rich low breasts, darkness through crescent her skin.  Crescent?  Is it the waxing moon that sets, or in waning, rises?

A theory, to her.  Their moons were orderly and dull, about the ecliptic of their planet, no declination; staid and ordered, far.  There was no eclipse at her home, but a brief dimmingnowagain, on the equinoxes - only around the equinoxes, staid as rain, placid.

It was only The! Moon! that rare celestial orb, that ran impudently on the solar plane, the Ancients might have riddled out her secrets, were She tame and docile.  Not!

So northers the Sun, so southers the Moon in ripeness when in full; and the ancient solariums, and lunariums thus, saw their oppositeness in course.  How much of humans' nascent thoughts drew towards natural duality, for so did the Moon in her slightness rival the Sun in his thermonuclear might?

Grandmother's mark was hers only.  The Learned had their ranks, numbers; she did not know how rare was a Solitary Mark - it was like a name, a cognomen of which few had and none the same - that mark was not Grandfather's.

"Tell me Grandmother," came back the distant whisper on the predawn wind and rain, "how came it to be that we are Dark?"

"Of the time, the Awakening, of course you know, several hundred years ago, much is held in secret.  What is your rank, then, three?  Little can I tell you."

She blurted out to Grandmother, "Of course I am Three!  You know that!" a bit impudently; for a young girl her age, she was bold; Grandmother smiled.

"Sometimes the decisions during the Awakening were wise, or sometimes foolish.  Nevermind.  We do not change what was in error; they were often fools to us; but we may be fools to the next generation, and the next and next - so when the die is cast, we let it settle."

She frowned, unsatisfied.  There WAS more.