MoonlightLetters
The letter was unlike anything Elara Rowan had ever seen. By the time she reached her desk, the words had already begun to fade, the silver ink shimmering like the reflection of stars on water.
She watched, transfixed, as the last line flickered before vanishing completely.
"Do you ever wonder if the stars keep secrets?"
Her hands trembled as she traced the edges of the parchment. The paper was cool, impossibly smooth, as though woven from moonlight itself.
There was no sender, no sign of how it had arrived. Only a wax seal, pressed with an unfamiliar crest—a crescent moon entwined with ivy.
Elara lived alone in her quiet cottage at the edge of the forest, far from the hurried pace of town. She spent her days studying ancient texts, translating forgotten languages, and mapping constellations in the margins of old books.
And yet, no matter how much knowledge she sought, the world still held mysteries she could not explain. And now, she held one in her hands.
She searched the room for any disturbance. The window was latched. The door still bolted. No footprints disturbed the dust outside her doorstep. So how had it arrived?
That night, she fell asleep with the letter under her pillow, listening to the whisper of the wind through the trees.
...
The second letter appeared the next night. And the night after that. Always at midnight. Always vanishing with the dawn.
"Night is the other half of life, and the better half."
Each letter spoke of the night in ways Elara had never heard before—of how the stars pulsed like distant heartbeats, how the moonlight carried forgotten lullabies, how the silence between constellations held stories waiting to be heard.
"Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming."
"I wonder if you see the sky the way I do," one letter read. "I wonder if we are looking at the same stars, dreaming the same impossible dreams."
Elara spent her nights reading by candlelight, drawn deeper into the mystery of the unseen writer. The words were more than poetry; they were intimate, as though written just for her. A secret language meant for two souls lost in the vastness of the world.
And so, one night, she wrote back.
"Who are you?" she asked, pressing her quill to the parchment. "How do your letters find me?"
She left the note on her desk and watched it beneath the glow of the moon.
But as the candle sputtered and her eyes grew heavy, she drifted into sleep. By morning, the letter was gone.
...
The next night, a response awaited her.
"I have always been here. Waiting for someone to answer."
Elara shivered. Waiting for her?
Night after night, their correspondence continued. She asked questions, and the writer—Caden—answered in riddles, in poetry, in words that shimmered with longing.
"I am the echo of forgotten wishes," he wrote. "A shadow left behind in moonlight. I do not belong to the day."
"Are you a ghost?" she asked.
"No," he replied. "But I am not quite alive, either."
She imagined him—a figure trapped between worlds, writing to her across the fabric of time. And she felt something she could not name. A tether. A pull. Then, one night, a different kind of letter arrived.
"Tomorrow. Midnight. Where the moonlight meets the water."
Elara's heart pounded as she reread the words. Was it a dream? A trick? Or something more?
....
The lake shimmered like liquid silver beneath the full moon. The air was thick with the scent of night jasmine, and the hush of midnight wrapped the world in quiet anticipation.
Elara stood at the water's edge, the last letter clutched in her hands. A breeze stirred the trees, and the reeds rustled softly.
Then, a figure stepped from the shadows.
He was tall, dressed in midnight blue, his dark hair catching the silver glow of the moon. His features were sharp yet softened by something wistful, something achingly familiar—as though she had seen him before, in dreams half-remembered.
"You came," he murmured, his voice like a sigh of wind through leaves.
Elara's breath caught. He was real.
"Caden?" she whispered.
He smiled—an expression full of sorrow and hope intertwined.
"I did not lie to you," he said. "I have always been here. But I could only exist in words… until someone answered."
Her fingers curled around the parchment in her hand. "What are you?"
"Once, I was like you. Flesh and bone, heart and breath. But a curse bound me to the night. To ink and paper, to whispers carried on the wind. I was never meant to be seen again." He hesitated. "Until you read my words."
Elara's pulse thundered in her ears. The letters had not just been words. They had been pieces of him. And she had pulled him back into existence.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Caden exhaled, glancing at the water's reflection—at himself, as if seeing his own form for the first time in centuries.
"Now, I am free. But only if you take my hand."
She stilled. To take his hand was to leave behind everything she had ever known. The quiet solitude of her cottage, the dusty pages of her books, the life she had carefully built for herself. But had she ever truly been alive before this?
Elara stepped forward. The night held its breath. She reached out.
Their fingers brushed. For a moment, the world stood still. Then, the ink on the last letter shimmered—and vanished.
And beneath the moonlight, so did they.
The End.