Benjamen is naive, seeing all the fascination in the world around him but none of the threat. (The only times he remembers the danger only when he wakes in the middle of the night and cannot breathe from the weight of the water once crushing him.) He either does not see it or he has not yet learned recognize it. If asked, Ben would tell you that he knows a good soul when he sees one— but this same little boy, closes his eyes when evil walks his way.
So when the girl, the stranger, stops and turns around he closes his eyes for an instant before dark lids slide back open to watch her. He could not think her anything but beautiful, mystical, enchanting, kind, and radiant. He has heard his mother use these words before, to describe Elliana, Maeve, Bird, Nicnevin, and so they are easy to call into his own, young, vocabulary.
“Will you bring the light back?” He asks, with a half formed tear in his eye that disappears as quickly as it had formed. Ben is too young to know who he asks (it is usually his mother, his father, his older sister, but neither are here.) So he asks the girl, the world, the night.
And then the moon, that sacred, sacred moon, is brought before him. Too young to be weary of magic, he can only flush with gratefulness. If he had just been a touch older, he might have told her how beautiful she was. “You look like the moon,” he says to her instead, an innocent observation. Ben has little life experience to compare others too. His mother would always be the sun, his father the stars, his sister the shadows. “Is that why you’re best friends?”
“I’m Benjamen,” he says before breaking her gaze, his blue eyes looking around the small area, suddenly bold and brave underneath the steady, thrumming glow. “Do you get to play with the moon every night?”
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
image by Gary Bendig
@[cressida]