I shrugged away my morbid thoughts and concentrated on the here and now: the full moon riding like a giant beacon of light above us, and my people waiting expectantly for me to draw down its life-extending rays. There was no real science to it. I just opened myself — best way to describe it. Every child of the moon felt that distinct pull when the moon came into its full and ripe roundness. It was like an invisible, tugging rope reaching down to try to open up a door inside of you. I simply stopped resisting and let whatever was being pulled inside of me flip open and become just a conduit… a conduit of lunar light. It shone down on me now like a spotlight, filled me up, filled me to bursting, then overflowed out from me.

Little butterflies of light flittered down from the heavens, swooped into me and spilled out like a cresting tide, washing over my people, darting into them, bowing their backs, lighting them up like flickering candles set aflame. We shone brilliantly for a long spun-out moment in time until that lunar light was swallowed and absorbed into us. Until we no longer glowed and skin became simply skin once more, not incandescent light, incandescent energy.

The last two times I'd done this, the only two times I'd done this, that was it. Over. Finis. Not so this time. This time was different. This time something hazed my vision. Something hazed the moon, actually, because that was what I was looking at.

Like a veil being thrown across its bright surface, a shimmering darkness swept across the moon like spilling ink, blocking out the light like an eclipse, only faster, much faster. It occurred in the blink of an eye, so fast that I almost doubted what I was seeing. Would have doubted it had I not felt it as well — a weight like a descending hand reaching down to cover me. Not that gentle tugging sensation but something much more heavy and forceful.