Sacrifice

"Sing me a lullaby."

The request, command, plea - he hadn't been with her long enough to know her moods - came from below, where she lay under his guard.  He complied, because that's what he had been born to do.  It was dark enough that she, with her brown, human eyes, wouldn't be able to see him but for perhaps a bit of shadow darker than the rest.  He, however, could see her perfectly.  Nestled into a patch of breath-soft grasses.  A blanket woven from sunbeams glowing faintly, pulled up to cover her from chin to toes.  Her face was vulnerable, almost weak, even, but it's soft innocence didn't repulse him.  Quite frankly, it was what had drawn him to choose her over all the others.  The idea that for one night she could sleep knowing that she was perfectly, completely safe.

He licked his lips, drawing in a shallow touch of air, tasting her scent on his tongue.  As the moon rose higher in the sky, he crooned out words in the tongue of the Fae; nothing strictly a lullaby, merely snatches of stories memorized from his own childhood.  Spoken softly, in a lilting cadence.  He spoke of flame-lit gathering, of summoning dragons and spirits from the sea.  He told her the love story of a merkind and a gryphon's human, their tragedy, their loss.  She was asleep quickly, lured into a blank, dreamless rest by the gravity of his voice, and still he talked on.

He told her the history of the Fae, hoping desperately that she would understand.  Of the first Seeker, who chased the sun, running and running endlessly until finally he burst from this world in a lick of flame and surrendered himself completely, until he flew from this heavenly entity to another.  Of the Silverlust, the desire, the need for sacrifice.  How the Sun would not surrender its rays for jealousy of the Moon's followers.  He told her of the first sacrifice - a young child, sleeping in the moorlands against the warmth of an old dog, bathed for six hours in pure moonlight.  His blood was the color of the sunrise that first rebirth of the Sun.

The night spun by, steady as the constant spin of the Earth, and time passed quickly for him.  Hardly a moment of life ticked by between the time his stories ran out and the moon had set completely.  Hardly a nick in her life, just a single night, that determined her destiny.  Her own rebirth.

This was hardly his first time with a sacrifice, but every time held the same feelings of trepidation, anxiety, and utter longing.

He took her into the blackness, unlit by either Moon nor Sun.  She glowed with a faerie luminescence from her long night beneath the Moon's power.  He held her gently in his arms, careful not to bounce and jostle her, and her eyes looked steadily in his own.  Although he knew that the others were using their persuasions to keep her calm, he liked to think that she knew, understood, accepted and forgave.

The sacrifice stone was ancient and craggy, glimmering with a thousand tiny uncut gems and throbbing with a life of its own from all those lost on it.  He lay her onto the cold slab, her now silvery hair flowing out beneath her.  Her lips parted slightly, a faint rosy color, as if she meant to speak but could not find the words.  Ever so gently, he removed her blanket and thin slip, so that every inch of her Moon-soaked body was exposed into the shadow ridden night.  She lay as still and motionless as if she was carved from stone herself, the perfection of her miniature features illuminated by the power within her.

With one quick, practiced, easy move, he slit her throat.

Shining blood bathed the rock in red and the clearing pulsated with the power of those strong enough to hold themselves back from the Moonlust.  The weak never came.  Her eyes fluttered shut as the essence of what fed the Fae, what made them strong, what brought the Sun back to the Earth each morning, flowed freely under the observation of the heavens and its guards.

He didn't know exactly what the Sun did with her.  That part of the ceremony had never been seen by anyone yet living - the Fae only knew that the bodies were always gone by the next morning.

The Sun poured its light onto the world, and a new day began.