luna [part one: victoria]
title: luna [part one: victoria]
word count: 1830 words
summary: she hasn't seen her in three years, but she's still the darkest person she's ever known
prologue: pastel
When Luna was seventeen, she came home to three moving trucks parked on the street. Workers were carrying large cardboard boxes and reusable bags and worn out furniture into the house next to theirs. Luna had hurried inside, because it had just been so long since there was anyone new. There was no one on their street her age - the next neighbour closest to her age had just turned eleven and, despite her best intentions, she thought that little girl across the street was a pretentious brat.
(In her excitement, she smiled warmly at the workers. Two of them smiled back and their faces lit up a little bit.)
The new neighbour was a woman appearing to be in her mid-twenties who had more belongings than Luna thought one person should have and who was moving into a house too big and too lonely for just one person. So that might, an hour after the moving trucks had rumbled away down the street, Luna persuaded her brother to give her one of the three packages of cookies he had bought the day before. She moved them from their plastic packaging into a container with a sky blue lid and went over.
(In hindsight, maybe she could have found something fresher, but she hadn't thought it through.)
The woman revealed herself to be Victoria - "call me Vic, though, please" - and was, in fact, twenty-five and did not actually own everything in all of those boxes. Victoria pulled out a framed photo of a boy about Luna's age playing hockey - her brother's belongings were also scattered throughout the boxes. Victoria was interesting, because she was one of the darkest people Luna had ever attempted a friendship with, yet she lit up so much just as she pulled out that picture.
When it was the weekend, Victoria had only managed to get through about a handful of her boxes so on Saturday morning, Luna finished two questions on the worksheet she was supposed to complete that weekend and went over, offering her assistance.
It was two weeks after that they finally managed to get to the last of the boxes, all of Victoria's brother's belongings. Luna discovered that the photos she'd seen we're nearly a decade old and Victoria was actually the youngest of three children.
Luna helped Victoria set up her brother's room, and even though she found the amount of framed photos to be hung and medals to be displayed openly odd, she didn't show it. It was still a bit of a shock when they stepped back and every wall was covered in posters and sports portraits of professionals and the boy himself and medals hung on nails hammered into the wall and awards displayed proudly on a bookshelf without any literature. Three hockey sticks of varying sizes leaned against the wall, next to a worn in baseball bat. It was almost like a memorial, like a commemoration rather than an actual room.
"Thanks, Luna," Victoria smiled at her as she fixed the corner of the bed. "You've helped me so much, actually." Victoria had dimmed slightly as her eyes scanned the photos on the wall, and her fingers tightened around the corner of the duvet. "Thank you, again."
"You're welcome," Luna had said has brightly as she could, putting some colour back into Victoria's complexion. "I was so excited when I found out we were getting a new neighbour."
Victoria had laughed lightly and released the duvet then, brushing over the wrinkles she had created lightly. Her eyes crinkled slightly at the edges, and it didn't make her look so much older as it did wiser, like she knew so much.
Over the next few months, Luna found out that Victoria was bilingual - her first language was Mandarin - and has just graduated from a performing arts university majoring in traditional Chinese dance. Victoria liked being like a mother figure and was distractingly flexible and wished she wasn't really aging at all.
All that time, she left the door to her brother's room wide open and as far as Luna could tell, no one had ever used the room since she had helped Victoria finish it. It was strange, but it was also none of her business.
Two months after Luna became aware of the absence of Victoria's brother, Victoria left on a travelling production in which she was a performer. She would be gone for six weeks, and she asked Luna to watch the house for her while she was gone, to which Luna wholeheartedly agreed.
Two weeks after Victoria left her spare house keys with Luna and left, Luna was headed to school when she noticed two fairly coloured boys not much older than herself standing outside Victoria's door.
"She's not home," she called, cupping her hands around her mouth.
"When will she be back?" one of them yelled back.
Vaguely wary of them, she responded, "I don't know. Maybe she'll be back later." It wouldn't be smart to let them know her neighbour wouldn't be back for another month.
When Luna was arriving home, a car was pulling up to Victoria's driveway and the same two boys stepped out, still coloured only moderately. She went into her own house and watched from the window as the boys rang the doorbell and knocked their knuckles into the door to no reply. She went back outside to hold a conversation with them.
"Maybe you should call her," she offered. If they called Victoria, then she would trust them a bit more. She wanted to be sure it wasn't someone unwanted who was coming to visit.
One of the boys hit the other one on the arm, "Why didn't you think of that?"
"Shut up," the other hissed. "I'm calling."
It turned out the boys were Victoria's cousins come for a surprise visit. With permission, Luna let the boys into Victoria's home.
Luna noticed both of them dim to black and white momentarily when they passed by the open door to Victoria's brother's room, so she retreated to the front room and recorded the occurrence on her phone. She tucked her phone away and looked up at the family photos along the wall. More than anyone else, there was Victoria's brother again, old photos from eight to twenty-five years ago.
When the boys emerged from the depths of the house, Luna had concluded that Victoria's brother was her twin, just a few minutes older. She suppressed a gasp when she turned to face Victoria's cousins because they were definitely much, much darker than they had been earlier.
"Thank you," one of them told her politely as she locked the front door behind them. His tone was friendly, but his eyes were dark. Both boys had heavy shoulders and heavy feet and a darkening air around them so Luna excused herself carefully and left.
A week before Victoria was set to return, her cousins came to visit again, but they knocked on Luna's door instead.
"You're Luna, aren't you?"
Luna watched in fascination as the boys grew progressively darker the longer they stood outside her front door, and nodded.
"You're the Luna that helped Vic move in?"
"Yes."
"Did you know...?"
"Know what?"
It turned out that she hadn't known and hadn't even had an inkling about it. But when she thought about it, it should have been obvious.
Three weeks passed, and two weeks after Victoria came back, Luna stopped in front of the brother's room on the way to the backyard.
"Is he your twin?" she inquired. "Because the pictures in the front room-"
"Oh," Victoria recovered from her surprise at the sudden question and her face brightened. "Oh, oh, yes. He is. He's three minutes older than me, why?" Victoria's eyes had shifted into a richer brown and her lipstick a bolder red.
"I just - I've never met him, is all, and it's been so long since you moved in. Has he been here?"
Victoria sighed, and she dropped down to that darkness Luna had initially noticed when they had first met. "My cousins - they... they weren't supposed to - I don't - he's just..." Victoria trailed off, collecting her thoughts as she gazed longingly into the room. "He's gone. You know that now, don't you?"
Yes, she knew. She knew why Victoria's cousins had dimmed so much when they saw the room. Because their hearts had splintered a bit at the sight, because they missed their cousin - of course they did - but Victoria clearly hadn't moved on.
("A car accident," they told her, their voices immediately hushing when it came to the topic. "Eight years ago now. He was hit by a drunk driver." Luna hated herself for thinking how horribly cliché that was. "It hit Vic the hardest, but we didn't think - she still keeps a room for him. All his pictures and everything in there - oh god, it's bad." It was horrible, horrible, horrible; horribly cliché. "Maybe you can help?" Blind hopefulness in their voices. "Help us out, please."
Luna took their phone numbers and made no promises.)
"Eight years, though. Vic, don't you think-"
"I can't, I can't, I can't," Victoria chanted. "And I won't. It's not any of your business anyways, Luna." Victoria reached over and closed the door forcefully and Luna winced as the door rattled in its frame. For the first time ever, the door was closed. "Come on," Victoria sounded light but she was the darkest Luna had ever seen her. "To the backyard."
Victoria started avoiding Luna and didn't invite her over anymore. On Victoria's twenty-sixth birthday, Luna left a gift by her front doorstep, and by the time Luna's eighteenth birthday came around, Victoria had moved out and taken everything with her, even every last item that belonged to her dead brother.
(Victoria's cousins told her it wasn't her fault when she called them. They told her it wasn't the first time Victoria had run from them and they told her not to worry. Luna worried anyways.)
Three years later and Luna wishes she could meet Victoria again - the older would be twenty-nine now - and it's the story she keeps in her notebook, faded from being flipped through and held and read, and it's the story she'll never share, because that's hers. And it's not her business to share it anyways.
(She doesn't have Victoria's phone number anymore - that had long since been disconnected, but the cousins remained the same and even few months she'd call and be disappointed over and over again because Victoria is still running, even after eleven years.
She tells them good luck and to stay safe and to keep her updated, like she always does. And they tell her that they will, like they always do, but she can hear it in their voices how dark they're getting and she has nothing to say to them to help.
word count: 1830 words
summary: she hasn't seen her in three years, but she's still the darkest person she's ever known
prologue: pastel
When Luna was seventeen, she came home to three moving trucks parked on the street. Workers were carrying large cardboard boxes and reusable bags and worn out furniture into the house next to theirs. Luna had hurried inside, because it had just been so long since there was anyone new. There was no one on their street her age - the next neighbour closest to her age had just turned eleven and, despite her best intentions, she thought that little girl across the street was a pretentious brat.
(In her excitement, she smiled warmly at the workers. Two of them smiled back and their faces lit up a little bit.)
The new neighbour was a woman appearing to be in her mid-twenties who had more belongings than Luna thought one person should have and who was moving into a house too big and too lonely for just one person. So that might, an hour after the moving trucks had rumbled away down the street, Luna persuaded her brother to give her one of the three packages of cookies he had bought the day before. She moved them from their plastic packaging into a container with a sky blue lid and went over.
(In hindsight, maybe she could have found something fresher, but she hadn't thought it through.)
The woman revealed herself to be Victoria - "call me Vic, though, please" - and was, in fact, twenty-five and did not actually own everything in all of those boxes. Victoria pulled out a framed photo of a boy about Luna's age playing hockey - her brother's belongings were also scattered throughout the boxes. Victoria was interesting, because she was one of the darkest people Luna had ever attempted a friendship with, yet she lit up so much just as she pulled out that picture.
When it was the weekend, Victoria had only managed to get through about a handful of her boxes so on Saturday morning, Luna finished two questions on the worksheet she was supposed to complete that weekend and went over, offering her assistance.
It was two weeks after that they finally managed to get to the last of the boxes, all of Victoria's brother's belongings. Luna discovered that the photos she'd seen we're nearly a decade old and Victoria was actually the youngest of three children.
Luna helped Victoria set up her brother's room, and even though she found the amount of framed photos to be hung and medals to be displayed openly odd, she didn't show it. It was still a bit of a shock when they stepped back and every wall was covered in posters and sports portraits of professionals and the boy himself and medals hung on nails hammered into the wall and awards displayed proudly on a bookshelf without any literature. Three hockey sticks of varying sizes leaned against the wall, next to a worn in baseball bat. It was almost like a memorial, like a commemoration rather than an actual room.
"Thanks, Luna," Victoria smiled at her as she fixed the corner of the bed. "You've helped me so much, actually." Victoria had dimmed slightly as her eyes scanned the photos on the wall, and her fingers tightened around the corner of the duvet. "Thank you, again."
"You're welcome," Luna had said has brightly as she could, putting some colour back into Victoria's complexion. "I was so excited when I found out we were getting a new neighbour."
Victoria had laughed lightly and released the duvet then, brushing over the wrinkles she had created lightly. Her eyes crinkled slightly at the edges, and it didn't make her look so much older as it did wiser, like she knew so much.
Over the next few months, Luna found out that Victoria was bilingual - her first language was Mandarin - and has just graduated from a performing arts university majoring in traditional Chinese dance. Victoria liked being like a mother figure and was distractingly flexible and wished she wasn't really aging at all.
All that time, she left the door to her brother's room wide open and as far as Luna could tell, no one had ever used the room since she had helped Victoria finish it. It was strange, but it was also none of her business.
Two months after Luna became aware of the absence of Victoria's brother, Victoria left on a travelling production in which she was a performer. She would be gone for six weeks, and she asked Luna to watch the house for her while she was gone, to which Luna wholeheartedly agreed.
Two weeks after Victoria left her spare house keys with Luna and left, Luna was headed to school when she noticed two fairly coloured boys not much older than herself standing outside Victoria's door.
"She's not home," she called, cupping her hands around her mouth.
"When will she be back?" one of them yelled back.
Vaguely wary of them, she responded, "I don't know. Maybe she'll be back later." It wouldn't be smart to let them know her neighbour wouldn't be back for another month.
When Luna was arriving home, a car was pulling up to Victoria's driveway and the same two boys stepped out, still coloured only moderately. She went into her own house and watched from the window as the boys rang the doorbell and knocked their knuckles into the door to no reply. She went back outside to hold a conversation with them.
"Maybe you should call her," she offered. If they called Victoria, then she would trust them a bit more. She wanted to be sure it wasn't someone unwanted who was coming to visit.
One of the boys hit the other one on the arm, "Why didn't you think of that?"
"Shut up," the other hissed. "I'm calling."
It turned out the boys were Victoria's cousins come for a surprise visit. With permission, Luna let the boys into Victoria's home.
Luna noticed both of them dim to black and white momentarily when they passed by the open door to Victoria's brother's room, so she retreated to the front room and recorded the occurrence on her phone. She tucked her phone away and looked up at the family photos along the wall. More than anyone else, there was Victoria's brother again, old photos from eight to twenty-five years ago.
When the boys emerged from the depths of the house, Luna had concluded that Victoria's brother was her twin, just a few minutes older. She suppressed a gasp when she turned to face Victoria's cousins because they were definitely much, much darker than they had been earlier.
"Thank you," one of them told her politely as she locked the front door behind them. His tone was friendly, but his eyes were dark. Both boys had heavy shoulders and heavy feet and a darkening air around them so Luna excused herself carefully and left.
A week before Victoria was set to return, her cousins came to visit again, but they knocked on Luna's door instead.
"You're Luna, aren't you?"
Luna watched in fascination as the boys grew progressively darker the longer they stood outside her front door, and nodded.
"You're the Luna that helped Vic move in?"
"Yes."
"Did you know...?"
"Know what?"
It turned out that she hadn't known and hadn't even had an inkling about it. But when she thought about it, it should have been obvious.
Three weeks passed, and two weeks after Victoria came back, Luna stopped in front of the brother's room on the way to the backyard.
"Is he your twin?" she inquired. "Because the pictures in the front room-"
"Oh," Victoria recovered from her surprise at the sudden question and her face brightened. "Oh, oh, yes. He is. He's three minutes older than me, why?" Victoria's eyes had shifted into a richer brown and her lipstick a bolder red.
"I just - I've never met him, is all, and it's been so long since you moved in. Has he been here?"
Victoria sighed, and she dropped down to that darkness Luna had initially noticed when they had first met. "My cousins - they... they weren't supposed to - I don't - he's just..." Victoria trailed off, collecting her thoughts as she gazed longingly into the room. "He's gone. You know that now, don't you?"
Yes, she knew. She knew why Victoria's cousins had dimmed so much when they saw the room. Because their hearts had splintered a bit at the sight, because they missed their cousin - of course they did - but Victoria clearly hadn't moved on.
("A car accident," they told her, their voices immediately hushing when it came to the topic. "Eight years ago now. He was hit by a drunk driver." Luna hated herself for thinking how horribly cliché that was. "It hit Vic the hardest, but we didn't think - she still keeps a room for him. All his pictures and everything in there - oh god, it's bad." It was horrible, horrible, horrible; horribly cliché. "Maybe you can help?" Blind hopefulness in their voices. "Help us out, please."
Luna took their phone numbers and made no promises.)
"Eight years, though. Vic, don't you think-"
"I can't, I can't, I can't," Victoria chanted. "And I won't. It's not any of your business anyways, Luna." Victoria reached over and closed the door forcefully and Luna winced as the door rattled in its frame. For the first time ever, the door was closed. "Come on," Victoria sounded light but she was the darkest Luna had ever seen her. "To the backyard."
Victoria started avoiding Luna and didn't invite her over anymore. On Victoria's twenty-sixth birthday, Luna left a gift by her front doorstep, and by the time Luna's eighteenth birthday came around, Victoria had moved out and taken everything with her, even every last item that belonged to her dead brother.
(Victoria's cousins told her it wasn't her fault when she called them. They told her it wasn't the first time Victoria had run from them and they told her not to worry. Luna worried anyways.)
Three years later and Luna wishes she could meet Victoria again - the older would be twenty-nine now - and it's the story she keeps in her notebook, faded from being flipped through and held and read, and it's the story she'll never share, because that's hers. And it's not her business to share it anyways.
(She doesn't have Victoria's phone number anymore - that had long since been disconnected, but the cousins remained the same and even few months she'd call and be disappointed over and over again because Victoria is still running, even after eleven years.
She tells them good luck and to stay safe and to keep her updated, like she always does. And they tell her that they will, like they always do, but she can hear it in their voices how dark they're getting and she has nothing to say to them to help.