Luci: Moonlight

It began as a small, strange thing.

Lucienne healed an injury the odd wolf boy had given himself, and she did it as competently as she always did -- as she always had -- but there was a feeling of *difference*. Something was off. Not wrong, necessarily, but certainly different. Perhaps, she thought, she merely hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and her reserves were running low. When she got back to the castle, she meditated for a time, which was no real replacement for sleep, but it occasionally seemed to help.

She felt strange praying, these days. She preferred to meditate -- to be quiet and by herself, not focusing on communing with her deity. Though, she did enjoy meditating and praying with Goro. It wasn’t really that she found the solitude calming and enjoyable.

It was difficult to put to words, but she supposed it was because she felt like something of a heretic.

Luci had turned away from Eldath, from the ways of pacifism -- non-resistance, non-violence. She still took no joy in harm, and preferred to find ways to avoid it, but -- she also just got so *angry*, at times. Things used to be simpler. As usual, it had been Hansel who was the disruptive force in her life; it had been finding out about his … godly affliction that made her stop believing in simply accepting and allowing things to happen. It had troubled her, at first, listening to Kheman recounting his trauma, and later -- angered her.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right that Gruumsh could just insinuate himself into a mortal -- not an innocent mortal, to be sure, but one who was unwilling to be his vessel -- could just take Hansel, and break him, and make him kill his crew. Make him try to hurt other people, hurt his family, keep digging fingers into him until he was ash. It wasn’t right to stand by and let it happen, if there was anything that she could do to prevent it.

Gruumsh could not fucking have her father.

And Eldath, she supposed, would instruct serenity. And so Luci turned away from Eldath and to the mountains of books in the Sanctuary’s library, and looked for deities who would help her fight. Not a war god like Gruumsh, not one like Tyr or Helm -- Luci didn’t delude herself into thinking she was a just person. She was an angry person, as it turned out, when people she loved were threatened and she allowed herself to be. She was less concerned with the right of it, and more concerned with holding close those who were dear to her, whether they were right or not.

She had, she realized, always been that way in her deepest heart. She was under no delusions, either, about the justness of her brother, or her father, or -- as time went on -- the circle of people she surrounded herself with. Roddy was gullible and easily-swayed by ill-meaning folk. Goro was antagonistic and painfully pragmatic. Mishka was impulsive and thoughtless. She loved all of them a swelling amount, just as she loved her sharp, shattered brother and vicious hammer of a father. They could all be wrong. She would be wrong with all of them.

No deity who would judge them was right for her. She’d gone through book after book and she’d found Eilistraee, who was gentle and strong, defiant, a melancholy lover of life, an emblem of the moon, and she supposed that in some way, she was drawn to the drow goddess because little was known about her. There was no one who could tell her she was worshipping incorrectly, or that her deity would disapprove. Eilistraee’s dogma was scant.

Luci prayed, and someone was listening, certainly, because she was still able to heal and help and defend, but when she prayed, she felt nothing.

No connection.

She tried to not take it too hard. She tried to not think about it at all. She got used to praying with Goro, who clearly viewed his relationship with his god differently than Luci ever had with hers, and the fact that they were different anyway made it easier to not think about. Perhaps she was also just … different. From him, and from the Eldathyns, as well.

After the healing spell flickered over Ba’ob, she meditated, and she worried. She considered speaking with someone. Goro, perhaps, or Amari. Instead, she read books -- books about heretical clerics, about the devout who lost their faith and lost their magic. Some disappointed their deities by actively acting against them; some simply passively didn’t act in their favor. Perhaps she had disappointed Eilistraee. She went over everything she had learned about her goddess, and tried to find some fault in her actions, but --

What she kept coming back to was the fact that she had never felt any connection to the deity at all. Someone was giving her power; someone was listening. But she didn’t know, truly, if it had ever been Eilistraee.

She thought again about speaking to Goro or Amari, or even to Mishka, because he knew about odd things. But it still seemed too sacrilegious to say out loud.

*I pray to a goddess who doesn’t hear me. I receive magic from an unknown source. Now it’s … changing. What do I do?*

###

Hansel asked her along on a job with him. She was to stay back -- he and Jonn would take care of the bandits whose bounty they were collecting. He still worried very much about her getting hurt, and for that matter, so did Jonn, and she went along with it. It might be for the best, anyway. She was feeling … unreliable. It pleased and calmed her to work alongside them. Maybe it would help somehow.

Afterwards, Hansel was badly injured, as he always was from throwing himself into danger, and Jonn was mildly scratched up and chewing him out fretfully, as sure of his own competence as Luci was. Luci healed them both, not getting involved in the bickering and merely enjoying it. It was mundane. Jonn and Hansel worried about each other and her, and about themselves not at all -- equally unstoppable forces and immovable objects.

The spell faltered again, and Hansel noticed. He didn’t ask for her to pray over him a second time -- he thanked her and started to hug her and remembered not to in time, and they went home. But she saw the look he gave her. Concerned and sad.

Jonn noticed it, too. He was observant like that.

“Are you mad at Dad for something?” he asked, sitting in the castle kitchen, on the edge of a chair, never comfortable there.

“No. Why?”

“You didn’t heal him up like you usually do.”

She hesitated in the middle of making them tea. They were alone; Hansel had gone upstairs to be with Mishka and Goro, and it was late enough that no one else was around. She brought the mugs over to the table and sat down. She looked at the floor and worried her staff in her hands.

“I couldn’t,” she admitted.

He frowned. “You didn’t use that much magic in the fight.” He was observant like that, too.

“No, what I mean is -- well, I could, but I would have had to cast again. My magic is … fading.” It hurt to say. She bit her lip.

Jonn just looked at her. He wasn’t able to help her with this. “I’m … I’m sorry,” he said after a beat. “You’re sleeping enough, right?”

She nodded. It was a valid point to raise, but it wasn’t that. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“You could … you could learn magic, I bet,” he tried. “Like Finch does. Like Gwydion.” His voice lowered, there, and so did his eyes. He tried to rally. “You’re really smart. You could do it.”

She nodded, again. She knew that he was right, but it wasn’t -- the same. It wouldn’t be right. Abruptly, she wanted to pull him to the floor, and under the table, like they used to hide in the mess hall at the Sanctuary as small children, and cling to him and cry into his chest. Luci didn’t know who she was if not a cleric. Certainly she could practice wizardry, but she would never be a wizard. If she wasn’t a cleric, she felt that she would be … nothing.

And already, she felt a sort of hollowness. A leaving.

Jonn wouldn’t be able to help her, and telling him these things would only upset him. He might tell Hansel, and then Hansel would be upset as well, and just as unable to help. There was no point.

“Yes,” she said. “I could learn wizard magic, I suppose. If it gets worse.”

Wizards, she knew, couldn’t heal people.

She worked harder to keep anyone from noticing what was happening. It was her healing spells, specifically. They were weaker and they came less readily -- not that they were difficult, only that they were no longer as natural as they had once been. Eldath and Eilistraee both promoted life, sought to see it flourish, and as a devout of such deities, her healing magic had always been very close to the fingertip. She rarely even had to recite prayers for the ability to heal, in the mornings; the ability was always granted to her.

That stopped being the case. She had never prayed out loud, with Goro, so there was nothing for him to notice changing. She just had to be more mindful. Nothing important arose that required the both of them to confer over spells, so she had no reason to tell him that she couldn’t prepare to cast a certain spell because she instead had to focus on one that normally came to her as easily as the moon rising. Lucienne couldn’t lie, but she could avoid speaking at all for days.

###

A troubling thing happened, then.

She was in town, at one of Glimmerton’s small bars. She didn’t enjoy bars, but Roddy was performing for tips, and she enjoyed listening to him and she enjoyed his company once he’d finished his performance. It was bustling and lively, and she had moved back a ways to make more room for the townsfolk to cheer and beam -- Roddy thrived on the attention, and Luci knew she wasn’t terribly good at conveying her approval and enjoyment.

She had settled herself at the corner of the bar itself with a mug of coffee, by herself, listening to Roddy’s lute and humming quietly. A man approached her and tried to strike up a conversation, but it was very hard for her to pick his words out among the racket of the crowd, so she tapped her ear to indicate that she couldn’t hear him.

He touched her elbow, and she became aware, quite suddenly, of his thoughts. They weren’t polite. He found her attractive, and he wanted to take her outside. He thought of how his wife would never need to find out, as she hadn’t found out about the previous times he had found pretty girls in bars and taken them outside, as well. He thought about the wedding band he’d taken off and put in his pocket. He felt vaguely guilty, but the sense of entitlement overpowered it; he wasn’t hurting anyone, he thought, as long as his wife didn’t know.

Luci jerked her arm away. Of course, it wasn’t the touch that had triggered the thought detection magic -- that wasn’t how it worked -- but nor had she cast a spell. She wasn’t intending to cast a spell, either, when she told him that he should walk away and go home to his wife, but she felt the magic lace through her words regardless.

The man was ashamed. He left her be. Luci fidgeted and listened to some more of Roddy’s performance, then wrote a note for him saying that the place had gotten too loud and she’d had to excuse herself, which was largely true. She walked back to the castle, twisting her staff. The moon was full overhead.

She thought of Gavi often, ascending to godhood. How it could, just as easily, have been herself. It wasn’t as if Luci wanted the responsibility; she didn’t want to be on an entirely different plane from her family, unable to speak to them, unable to aid them. It was just that -- if she were a goddess herself, it would rather make the crisis of faith disappear.

###

Jonn had been having a difficult time. She went to Skyport to visit with him, at his friend Asya’s home, and Asya made them cocoa to ease the chilly evening wind coming off the ocean, and then left them alone. She kissed the top of Jonn’s head, like Hansel always did. He looked tired and worried, but better for a moment when she did that. Luci asked after Finch, because it was the polite thing to do; Jonn didn’t want to talk about it.

He liked staying with Asya, he said. She told him she liked staying at the castle. They could share a room and bed, she reminded him, if he wanted to visit -- like when they were kids. Like he used to with Hansel. She supposed Hansel’s bed was rather full, these days, and didn’t say that part.

“You know,” she said, “I, um. I was talking to Goro the other day.”

“Uh-huh.” He liked Goro, she knew. He liked it that she spent time with Goro.

“We were talking about Mask.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“Oh. I was just interested.” This was true. Luci’s only talent for deceit was in saying things that were true, and simply not the full picture. “He shared some scriptures with me. Do you know much about Mask?”

Jonn shrugged. “Iunno. Lotta street kids are … not really worshippers, but more like … y’know, you just pick up habits and stuff for good luck? I used to do stuff like that. When you were little.” He paused, thinking. “Lex and Jacob followed Mask.”

He never called them *Mom and Dad*. At least not to Luci -- possibly to other people, or in his head, but she had no desire to read his thoughts. Only Hansel was ever *Dad*, and they had no mother. A surfeit of fathers, to be fair -- these days.

“Oh,” Luci said.

He looked down at his cocoa and swirled it, then back out at the nearly-set sun. “Helena told me I should pray to Shar. ‘Cause she caught me doing it to Eldath, and she said that was a stupid goddess for a thief.”

“Oh,” Luci said again. “Did she follow Shar?”

“Dunno. I guess so. She just told me I should follow someone like that instead.”

Luci mulled it over. It sounded very simple. Jonn often just did what he was told to do, especially by people he trusted. He trusted Luci, and if she told him he should stop following Shar, and follow Mask instead, he would likely just do it. It wasn’t as though he were particularly devout anyway, from the sounds of things. It was … Jonn. She doubted he even knew the appropriate way to worship Shar anyway. He probably just substituted her name in the Eldathyn prayers he knew.

“You know,” she said again, because that was how people began sentences, “Goro told me that Mask teaches that wealth belongs to whoever can acquire it. It’s why he favors thieves, I suppose. You’re a very good thief, aren’t you?”

Jonn shrugged.

“I think you are,” she said, and paused. Jonn rarely took pride in anything he did. He would seek out people to tell him he’d done well, but she didn’t think he knew how to tell himself. “I’m -- um, you know, I’m not an expert, but I think that Mask would … be a good fit for you?” She went on hastily. “Goro explained it to me by saying that Mask is about surviving. He said that … Mask is a patron of the downtrodden. And a protector. And he watches over the people who work from the shadows.” She paused again. “It made me think of you. How you looked out for us, before Hansel. And … you still do it. For Finch, too, right? You help him survive without -- asking for thanks or praise. From the shadows.”

She looked at him nervously, not sure if she’d said the right things. He was gazing distantly out over the ocean, still.

“That sounds nice,” he said softly, after a moment.

Luci watched him for a moment, then set her cocoa down and got out of her chair. She left her staff behind and went to pull him out of his chair, too, and lead him over to the edge of the roof to sit down with their legs dangling. She curled her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. The sun had set below the waves, and the moon was bright above them.

###

And then, the worst thing happened.

Luci lost her magic entirely.

She tried to use her light cantrip, just so that she could see the mortar and pestle on the high shelf in the kitchen, and it didn’t work. It wasn’t as if she was depleted, and besides, it was a cantrip -- she ought to be able to use it regardless. She tried another spell, attempting to fill the sink with water, and that failed, as well.

Every spell she tried -- nothing. There was nothing. No light, no spark, no warmth, no presence. Nothing.

She didn’t know what to do. Amari had restored the shrine down by the lake, and Luci all but fled to it, praying to no deity in particular on the way, because she had this dreadful feeling that none were listening.

*Please*, she thought. *Please, please. Eldath, please. Anyone.*

And she sat and prayed for a while to her old goddess, the one she’d forsaken, and she prayed to her new goddess, the one who had never heard her, and in time, she lost the ability to concentrate on such things because she was crying too hard. She despised crying where anyone could just walk up and see, so she dragged herself up into an alcove in the wall, where some statuary had been broken, and tucked herself into the back to cry herself out. She would feel better, then. She would be able to think clearly. Any Eldathyn would tell her that she must accept her feelings, allow them to permeate her being, pay attention to them and to what they meant.

She tried to do that, but she already knew what they meant. They meant that she was devastated. They meant that she was without guidance, and she was nothing -- she was some reject who had scorned the goddess whose followers raised and protected and nourished her, and now no deity would look kindly on her again. She had failed.

After a spell, she heard movement outside the alcove, and scooted back to try to keep out of sight. It didn’t work, but she was slightly relieved -- and slightly mortified -- to see that it was Goro. On one hand, if anyone would understand it was another cleric; on the other hand, if anyone would judge her harshly, it was another cleric.

He clearly didn’t know what to say or do, but he tried. She told him about her magic being gone, and about the man in the bar -- how she can been able to hear and control him. He didn’t judge. She should have known that he wouldn’t, but there were several things she should have known.

“Y’know,” he commented, “there’s always those assholes saying you don't choose to be a cleric. Your god chooses you. It's trite as fuck, but." He shrugged. "Maybe it's fuckin' true."

He told her about how Mask had chosen him, when he had been a street child -- turning him invisible to hide him from someone he had stolen from. It wasn’t a spell -- just as how, when she’d read the man in the bar’s thoughts, that hadn’t been a spell. A brief flash of divine will. A deity exerting their power to protect their chosen.

"Maybe some god's got their eye on you, and they were doing that,” he suggested.

Mask hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t sent him any visions. It had been a feeling, he said. A gut feeling. A certainty.

"Listen,” he said finally. “Uh … I know how you are, with the books and the research and shit. It's fuckin' great. Don't ever change. But … we're not wizards, Luci. We don't learn magic from books. You gotta -- you gotta be in tune with your god. You gotta … do less reading sometimes, and more listening. Stop thinking and start feeling. Not all the time. Just when thinking's not working anymore."

He was right. Luci needed to remember -- later, when she was thinking more clearly -- to tell him that. All her life she had been inundated with clerical teachings and dogma, and she had researched and studied and discussed and prayed, and still -- it was Goro, who’d had no formal teachings of his god and been forced to hide his faith, pretending to follow a different deity entirely -- it was Goro who understood, she thought, better than anyone. She thought that was remarkable. She should tell him that.

First, however, she prayed.

Luci returned to her room in the castle and meditated, breathing deeply and calming down. She’d been quite upset, earlier. She was glad Hansel hadn’t seen, because he would have wanted to hug her and been distressed and not known what to do. It seemed likely that Goro would tell him what had happened, but by then --

By then, hopefully, the moon would have risen.

###

Luci waited until it was dark, and she went upstairs. She politely asked Amari if she could sit on the balcony in her room. Roddy had one, as well, but Roddy wasn’t very good at being quiet -- Amari merely smiled and told her of course, and made some soothing tea for her in case she wanted it. Amari was an excellent Eldathyn. Luci still greatly respected that -- respected Amari.

She apologized to Eldath before anything else. Thanked her childhood goddess for aiding her, for continuing to sustain her while she worked out who she was, who she wanted to be. It was … very Eldathyn, the support. She appreciated it. She regretted that she’d lost her connection to Eldath, in some ways.

Though she had no idea if Eilistraee had ever listened to her, Luci spoke to her next -- apologizing, again, for invoking her name erroneously. Thanking her for taking no issue with the misuse and allowing it to continue. She still believed strongly that Eilistraee was a venerable deity, worthy of being followed. She would continue to light candles for both of them on her altar, out of respect and remembrance.

Then she took a breath, and tried to pray to Selune. She didn’t know the words. She didn’t know the correct offerings. She had avoided researching Selune, because she’d felt a pull, in her gut, and she’d denied it unhappily and blocked it out. Lied to herself. It had upset her, knowing that her brother followed Selune’s sister and nemesis -- she couldn’t bear the thought of them being celestially at odds. But Jonn was … Jonn. He cared very little for the deity he’d been told to follow -- he still liked Eldath, bafflingly. And he had liked Mask, who was on poor terms with Selune as well, but Goro followed Mask and Selune had blessed Hansel, and they were fine. It would be fine.

She didn’t think that she was lying to herself this time.

Without the words and rituals and trappings of worship, she floundered slightly, because these had always been the things she propped herself up on -- the routine she focused on. It was halting. It felt juvenile and strange to simply watch the moon, then close her eyes and speak, and hope to be heard.

But --

There it was. The spark, the warmth. The magic. A flooding deep to her core of approval and love, a sense that someone was pleased with her and proud of her. It shone through her. It said, *Do not fear.* It said, *You have always been mine.* It said, *You are home.*

###

Luci went back to the Sanctuary of Eldath. She had a room, there, still, where she had left some clothes, some sentimental items. Jonn came with her, and received some leery looks from those who remembered him, which Luci met with piercing stares. He had fought for the Sanctuary’s freedom; besides which, they were only there for a day. The other clerics could tolerate it.

He helped her pack up. She had never had much -- little trinkets Hansel had gotten for her in his travels, mostly. Some books, but she had always relied on the Sanctuary library for the most part. She would miss it. But she also greatly liked the Castle’s small library and the vacant spot in its shelves, and she liked the idea of going into Skyport with Ombre to pick out new volumes to stock them. It would be their library -- her own.

She left behind her Eldathyn vestments for the next occupant, as well as some small pieces of her personal shrine that they may find useful or inspiring. A dull, broken knife. Blue candles. Matches, in case they couldn’t cast a fire spell yet. It only seemed right to pass it along.

The final thing to attend to was returning her staff to the Mother. She was -- she was very attached to her staff. It had been a comfort object for a very long time, given to her by an old cleric to help with Jonn’s moods. It had been entrusted to her, she supposed, because she was so often with Jonn, and because he would listen to her and willingly submit to the staff’s gentle compulsion as long as it came from her. She knew it was a powerful artifact, and once she was old enough to consider it, she’d been surprised it had been given to a child. Granted, she had always been a very level-headed and responsible child.

She firmly told the Mother than she was moving out, finally, and that she no longer followed Eldath. Luci had tried to keep it secret, for fear she’d be evicted from the Sanctuary and the staff taken away from her, but she was ... ready to move on now. She wasn’t afraid anymore. The old woman knew, which really, was no great surprise -- she was as wise as she was old, and she’d watched Luci grow up.

The Mother was, however, confused by the staff.

“Lucienne,” she said gently, “I didn’t give you your staff.”

Luci was puzzled. “What?”

“No, dear. We were never sure just where you had gotten it from, but it was, well.” Her gaze flicked to Jonn, standing quietly behind Luci. “It was very useful, so we allowed you to keep it.”

“But … a cleric gave it to me,” Luci insisted. She’d been young, and the memory was vague. “An older, human woman. Curly, graying hair. Rather … plump and matronly.” She realized that there were so many clerics that could describe. “I don’t recall her name, but …”

Now that she was thinking of it, she couldn’t recall ever seeing the same cleric around. There were a great many of them, and she’d been so young that many faces passed in and out without being committed to memory. She had always remembered that one, though, smiling down at her, passing on the ash-gray staff. She’d been confused for a time and thought the woman was the Abbess, because -- well, she supposed because of the aura of calm she possessed, of serene power, of old authority.

“The staff is yours, dear, regardless,” the Mother told her, smiling.

Luci thanked her, for some reason, slightly dumbfounded, and she and Jonn went back to the castle. Back to where she belonged, now.

*You have always been mine,* the feeling told her. *You are home.*