Salt & Lightning

The morning light did not break; it seeped. It was a pale, watered-down milk that spilled over the windowsill and pooled on the stone floor, lacking the warmth to chase away the night’s chill.

Luna lay still, her body a heavy topographic map of ridges and valleys under the linen sheet. She breathed in, a shallow draft of air that tasted of old stone and dried lavender—the scent of preservation. It was the smell of a room that had not changed in a decade, a museum exhibit of a girlhood that had stretched, thin and translucent, into womanhood without ever snapping the tether.

Today was the day. The thirtieth turn. Thirty summers, thirty winters.

The number felt round and hard in her mind, like a polished river stone lodged in her throat. Thirty years of suns rising and setting over the Acropolis, thirty years of the seasons turning their great wheel, and yet, as she stared at the cracks in the ceiling plaster—cracks she had named and renamed since she was five—she felt no accumulation of time. She felt only a suspension. She was a breath held in, waiting for an exhale that never came.

She sat up, the motion requiring a deliberate, conscious effort of will, as if the air around her had thickened into a clear gelatin. Her feet found the cold floor. The shock should have been bracing, but it was merely a dull information: cold.

She moved to the bronze mirror on her vanity. The metal was polished to a high sheen, kept immaculate by the house slaves, but the reflection it held seemed to waver, as if seen through rising heat. A woman stared back. Dark hair, heavy-lidded eyes that looked as if they had seen too much sleep and not enough waking. Her skin was unblemished, smooth—too smooth. It was the skin of a fruit kept in a cellar, untouched by the bruising handling of the market.

"Thirty," she whispered. The word fell dead into the room, absorbed by the tapestries that depicted heroes slaying beasts—tapestries her mother had woven before Luna was born.

She dressed mechanically. The chiton she chose was a muted saffron, a color that should have been vibrant but seemed to fade the moment it touched her skin. She pinned it at the shoulder with a fibula of silver, a gift from a lover she had not seen in two years.

Men. The thought drifted through her mind like a dead leaf on a stagnant pond. There had been men. She was not a virgin; she had offered that token up years ago, not out of passion, but out of a vague curiosity, a scientific inquiry into what the poets screamed about.

It had been… fine.

That was the word that haunted her. Fine. The friction of skin, the heat, the heavy breathing—it was a biological mechanism, intricate and functional, like the grinding of a millstone. She had watched their faces contort in ecstasy, had felt their bodies shudder, and she had lain beneath them, looking up at the ceiling, wondering if she had forgotten to water the hyacinths. She had felt the weight of them, but she had never felt the spark. The fire the gods were said to have stolen for mankind seemed to have been left out of her clay.

She adjusted the pin. It pricked her finger, a tiny bead of crimson swelling at the tip. She watched it, fascinated. The color was shocking in the gray room. It was the only thing that looked real. She wiped it away, and the gray returned.

"Luna?"

The voice drifted through the heavy oak door. Her mother. The tone was soft, modulated, yet it carried that familiar, subtle vibration of anxiety—a wire pulled just a fraction too tight.

"I am awake, Mother," Luna called back. Her own voice sounded foreign to her ears, hollow, as if she were speaking into a pithos jar.

"Don't be long. Your father has already left for the Agora, but he expects the household to be in order before you leave for your… lessons."

Lessons. The word was a soft pat on the head. At thirty, she was still a student. Still an apprentice. Still "becoming."

Luna opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The house was grand, pillars of sturdy limestone holding up a roof that had sheltered three generations. It was a place of safety. It was a place of law. Everything had its place here. The amphorae were lined up by size. The oil lamps were filled to the exact same level every morning. It was a world of perfect, suffocating order.

She walked past the central courtyard. The Yakin pillar, the massive central column her father had commissioned to support the atrium, stood immovable in the center. It was carved with reliefs of the law-givers, stern faces watching the domestic sphere. It was strong. It held the roof up. If it were to crumble, the sky would fall. But looking at it, Luna felt a phantom pressure on her shoulders, as if she, not the stone, were bearing the weight of the architrave.

She ate her breakfast—barley cake and figs—in the small triclinium. The figs were sweet, the barley nutty, but the flavors registered only as data points. Sweet. Grainy. There was no pleasure in the chewing.

"You are visiting the Temple of the Father today?" her mother asked, entering the room. She was a small woman, but she occupied space with the density of a collapsed star. Her hands were always busy, straightening, folding, correcting.

"Zeus," Luna corrected gently. "For my birthday sacrifice."

"Yes, yes. The King." Her mother smoothed a wrinkle in the tablecloth that Luna hadn't seen. "Do not linger there, Luna. The streets are not what they were. And don't let that… woman… keep you late. Soteira has no sense of household time."

"She is teaching me the High Arts, Mother."

"She is teaching you to stir pots," her mother sniffed, though the criticism was delivered with a smile. "But it keeps you busy. Keeps you out of trouble."

Keeps you out of trouble.

The phrase echoed. Safety. That was the currency of this house. Risk was the enemy. Passion was the enemy, for passion was messy and unpredictable. Here, under the gaze of the Law-Givers, under the shadow of the great Pillar, life was safe. Life was predictable. Life was… gray.

Luna stood up, brushing crumbs from her lap. "I have to go. The lesson starts at the third hour."

"Wear your shawl," her mother called after her. "The wind is sharp."

Luna took the shawl—heavy wool, scratchy and warm—and wrapped it around herself. It felt like a bandage.

She stepped out into the street. The city was awake. The noise of the market, the braying of donkeys, the shouting of merchants—it washed over her, a chaotic tide. Usually, she would shrink from it, pulling the shawl tighter, walking with her eyes on the cobblestones to avoid the gaze of strangers.

But today, on the thirtieth turn, the noise felt distant. Muffled. As if she were walking underwater.

She moved through the crowds like a ghost. People stepped around her, unconsciously giving space to the woman who seemed not entirely present. She walked toward the outskirts, toward the garden of Soteira, where the high walls kept the wildness of the world at bay.

She thought of the sacrifice in her pouch—a small jar of honey and a wreath of oak leaves for Zeus. It felt inadequate. What did the King of Gods want with leaves? What did the Lord of the Sky, the hurler of lightning, want from a woman whose soul felt like a cellar?

She wanted to ask him for something, but she didn't know what. Not love—that seemed too exhausting. Not wealth—she had comfort.

I want to feel, she thought, the realization surfacing slowly. I want to feel something sharp. Even if it cuts.

She stopped.

She was passing a public fountain, a lion’s head spewing water into a basin. The water was clear, catching the weak sunlight.

And then, the light changed.

It didn't dim. It heavy-ed.

The ambient noise of the street—the shouting, the carts, the wind—dropped away instantly, severed as if by a knife. Absolute, ringing silence slammed into place.

Luna couldn't breathe. The air had turned solid. It pressed against her chest, against her eyes, against her eardrums. It was the pressure of deep ocean water, the pressure of earth piled high on a coffin.

She tried to turn her head, but her muscles wouldn't obey. She was locked in amber.

In the reflection of the water basin, something moved.

It wasn't her reflection.

The face looking back from the water was ancient. The skin was like cracked river mud, the eyes deep pits of starving darkness. It was a face of absolute, terrifying hunger. A mouth that could swallow worlds.

It wasn't looking at her. It was looking through her, as if she were a window, or a meal that had not yet been plated.

A voice, not heard but felt—a vibration in her bone marrow, deep and resonant like the grinding of tectonic plates—spoke a single word.

Mine.

The gravity of the earth seemed to double. Luna’s knees buckled.

And then, as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished.

The sound of the street roared back in—a donkey braying, a merchant shouting the price of olives. The water in the fountain splashed merrily, reflecting only her own pale, terrified face.

Luna gasped, sucking in air that suddenly felt too thin, too light. She gripped the stone rim of the basin, her knuckles white.

"Are you well, mistress?" a passing boy asked, pausing with a basket of bread.

Luna looked at him. He was bright, colorful, real. He hadn't felt it. He hadn't felt the world stop.

"I..." Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat, forcing the mask of composure back into place. "I am fine. Just... a dizzy spell. The heat."

"It is a cool day, mistress," the boy said, confused.

"Yes," Luna whispered, looking back at the water, which now showed nothing but sky and stone. "Yes, it is."

She pushed herself away from the fountain. She had to get to the garden. She had to get to Soteira. Soteira would know what this was. Soteira would protect her. Soteira was the Savior.

But as she walked, the feeling of the heavy gaze remained, a cold spot between her shoulder blades, the sensation of a clock starting a countdown she couldn't see. The grayness of the morning was gone, replaced by a darker, sharper shadow.

The predator had caught the scent...

You can read the rest in our new book, Salt & Lightning: A Parable of Awakening, available as e-book and in print from the vendors below:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G45D4X9R

https://books2read.com/u/bPVjZd