The Father Who Feared the Moon

I woke from a dream that wasn't mine, copper thick on my tongue and crimson staining my palms. The blood was warm, fresh, but when I blinked it began to evaporate like morning dew touched by sun. By the time my eyes fully focused, only the memory remained—and the certainty that somewhere, something had bled because my daughter dreamed it.

Across the dying fire, Dorian sat sharpening his blade. The rhythmic scrape of steel on stone should have been comforting, but his posture made it feel like preparation for war. He watched Ashara where she slept in her nest of furs, but the distance between them might as well have been oceans.

He wasn't holding her. Wasn't touching her. Hadn't for days now.

"Did you sleep?" I asked, though his haunted eyes gave answer enough.

"Some." The blade never paused in its circuit. "She was restless. Making sounds."

"Babies do that."

"Not like this." He finally looked at me, and the fear there stole my prepared reassurances. "She was speaking backwards. Words I know but in reverse order. Like time means nothing to her voice."

I wanted to argue, to defend our daughter against his growing unease. Instead, I lifted Ashara, her small weight familiar as breathing. She stirred but didn't wake, perfect in her innocence. "Here. Hold her while I tend the fire."

"Let me scout ahead first." He was already standing, sheathing the over-sharpened blade. "The path looks unclear."

"Dorian—"

"She sleeps better with you anyway." He moved toward the trees, each step carefully away from us. "I'll be back."

But when he returned, he maintained the same careful distance. When we broke camp, he walked ahead or behind, never beside. When Ashara fussed, he found tasks that required both hands. The space between us grew with each excuse, each gentle deflection.

By midday, I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Hold your daughter."

The command came out harder than intended, but I was tired of dancing around his fear. He stopped walking, shoulders rigid beneath travel-worn leather.

"Aria—"

"Hold her. Look at her. Tell me what you see that I don't."

He turned slowly, and the anguish in his face nearly broke my resolve. But he took her, his hands trembling as they cradled her small form. Ashara opened her eyes—silver bright in the forest shade—and studied her father with that unnerving focus.

"Something's changed," he said quietly. "She stares at me and I don't see a child. I see someone choosing how the world ends. Weighing options. Making lists."

"She's just a baby."

"That's what makes it worse." His voice cracked on the admission. "Because I still love her. Even now. Even while being afraid. What kind of father fears his own child?"

Dorian remembered being seven, watching his father's hounds corner a rabbit. The kill was quick, efficient—but afterward, the lead hound had stood over the small body and howled. Not triumph. Grief.

"Why does she cry?" he'd asked his father. "She won, didn't she?"

His father's weathered face had been grim. "You fear what you don't understand, boy. But sometimes what you fear is your blood. The hound knows she's killed something that can't fight back. Knows it was necessity, not honor."

"But she did it anyway?"

"Love doesn't stop you from fearing. It just makes you stay despite the fear."

Now, holding his daughter who spoke prophecies in her sleep, who made strong men carve themselves to bleeding, who drew worship without wanting—Dorian finally understood that hound's howl.

Is love enough when you fear what your child might become?

"Look at me," I said, pulling him from whatever memory held him. "We've faced gods. Mirrors. Prophecies trying to wear our skins. We can face this too."

"Can we?" He gestured to the space between us where Ashara rested. "Her breath fogs only on my side when she sleeps between us. The moon reflects in your eyes but not mine anymore. Last night, I saw symbols form in the blood from her healing cord—the same ones I see when I dream."

"You think she's choosing to push you away?"

"I think she knows I'm afraid. And I think..." He swallowed hard. "I think she's trying to protect me from herself."

The words hung between us like a blade. I wanted to deny them, but I'd noticed too. The way Ashara's cries softened when he moved away. How she slept deeper when he kept distance. As if some part of her—conscious or not—recognized his fear and tried to minimize the cause.

That night, he made his bed at the clearing's edge. Not in anger or rejection—in surrender to a distance that had been growing since the dream-sick village. I didn't wake him, didn't argue. Just held our daughter and watched the fire dance.

Ashara slept peacefully until the moon rose full. Then her eyes opened—not awake but aware—and her tiny hand reached toward where her father lay. The gesture was simple, innocent.

The fire died instantly. Not banked, not smothered—simply ceased, as if it had never been.

"No," I whispered, fumbling for flint in the sudden dark. "No, little one. You don't have to reach for him like that. He's still here. He just needs time."

She smiled in her sleep. Not the reflexive expression of infancy—this carried weight, carried knowing. Sad and ancient and accepting, as if she already understood how much her father would lose trying to understand what she was becoming.

I wrapped us both in my cloak and crossed to where Dorian sat upright, staring at the moon with eyes that saw too much.

"I dreamed she looked at the moon and called it down like prey," he said without turning. "I saw her feed it her name. Saw her teach it to hunt."

"Then dream different."

I placed Ashara in his arms before he could pull away, holding his hands in place until resistance became acceptance. He trembled—this man who'd faced monsters without flinching, shaking as he held his infant daughter.

"She needs her father," I whispered. "Not a soldier. Not a guardian. Her father."

"What if I'm both?"

"Then teach her to be more."

He looked down at Ashara, who had settled against his chest with a contented sigh. For a moment, just a moment, the fear cracked. Beneath it lay love so fierce it took my breath—not despite the fear but alongside it, two truths existing in one heart.

"She's so small," he breathed. "So perfect. How can something so small carry so much?"

"Because she's ours. And we've always carried more than we should."

The moon watched our tableau—father, mother, child bound by love and fear in equal measure. In the distance, wolves howled, but the sound came wrong. Backwards. As if tomorrow's hunt was echoing into tonight's peace.

Dorian began to hum—tentative, uncertain. The lullaby I'd sung since her birth, the one that had become our anchor. But his voice cracked on the final note, the harmony shifting to minor key without his choosing.

Ashara stirred, and for one heartbeat, her eyes opened fully. She looked at her father with perfect understanding, then reached up to touch his face with one tiny hand.

"Papa," she said clearly. Too clearly. Months too early.

Then she fell back asleep, leaving us both stunned in the moonlight.

"First word," I managed through a throat tight with too many emotions.

Dorian held her closer, tears tracking silent down his cheeks. "She's trying to tell me she's still mine. Despite everything. Because of everything."

"Then believe her."

We sat together through the night, our daughter cradled between us. The fire eventually relit itself—gentle warmth rather than consuming flame. And though the wolves still howled backward in the distance, though the moon watched with eyes that weren't quite neutral, we held our ground.

Love and fear could coexist. They had to.

Because our daughter was becoming something beyond our understanding, and we could either fear her alone or love her together through the terror of change.