Moonless Night

"Cursed... Child?" I asked, at a loss for words. The girl didn't break her smile.

"Kin, right?" she said, in that same soft but cold voice. "I've been waiting for you."

"Do I know you? How do you know my name?" I asked, slightly unsettled by her.

Who was she?

"You're gonna be late," she said, her icy gaze sending chills down my spine. "The moonless night of the Narak Kreeda has already begun."

"Narak...? What are you talking about? Who- Who even are you?"

"Shhh..." she whispered, placing a hand on my mouth. "Listen."

The silence engulfed us as we stood, maintaining eye contact. I tried to protest, but she didn't budge her hand from my mouth. The slow sound of wind started to surround us, bringing us nothing but silence from the dark woods of the mountains around us.

Suddenly, I heard a faint thump from a mountain in the distance. The sound of the wind accompanied it, almost drowning it out.

"There," she whispered. "It's starting."

The first one gave way to another, and then another. It took me until they were playing in a rhythm for me to realize they were the sounds of drums coming from somewhere in the wilderness of another mountain. I looked towards it, peering into the darkness from where the sound of drums echoed.

In the inky black darkness, a fire was lit, like a firefly on the backdrop of the night sky. Then it grew bigger, moving around slowly as the drums started to become louder and more prominent.

"Isn't it beautiful?" The girl's voice came from next to me, but I was too entranced by the sight to respond.

There was something... eerily nostalgic about the sight and sound.

"It's a ceremony the tribe hosts once every hundred years," she said, sitting down on the edge of the cliff, dangling her legs over the drop. "We're lucky to witness it, even though we're the Cursed Children."

"Who are you?" I asked, still in a trance. "I didn't get your name."

"Chi," she whispered. "Your Chi."

I didn't reply.

We stayed there for a long while, time seemingly stopping for me. It felt like both of us were in a snow globe, in a constant state of stillness that could never be broken. I wouldn't mind if this went on forever, I thought. But alas, it eventually came to an end.

She got up and dusted off her clothes as the sound of drums slowed to a stop, and the fire was put out.

"This is only the beginning," she said, her voice colder now. "If everything you know changes forever, if you can't get your old life back, can you still stay the same?"

I just nodded. I didn't know what she'd been talking about this whole time, but being with her gave me a bunch of feelings I couldn't explain. It was mostly confusion, but also some nostalgia. There was also a little bit of fear, but I'm not certain about that.

As the weather grew colder, she turned around and left without saying anything more. When I turned around to see her again, she'd disappeared into the mist.

I wish I had stopped her.