"Celisae."

I roll over, pulling my blankets tighter around me.

"Celisae."

My shoulder shakes, then stops. Then it shakes again.

"Celisae, wake up!" A hoarse whisper breaks through the darkness.

I make a humming noise, scooting further away from the disturbance. Pain radiates through my hip when I turn onto my side. The pulsing sensation steadily wakes me up.

"Celisae!" If the voice weren't quiet, I imagine it'd be yelling.

My eyes crack open to a dark blur. I'm in my cave, and the sun is just barely breaking the horizon.

"Celisae, I do not have time for this. Wake. Up."

Slowly, I turn my head. Ixek crouches beside me, irritation hardened on his face. I try to sit up, but wince in the process. Ixek's scowl melts into confusion. Then, I detect a flash of concern in his eyes.

"Are... you alright?" he asks.

I nod. Exhaustion threatens to pull me back under the covers, back into sleep. "Fine. New parcel?"

Ixek stares at me for a moment. His eyes drift to my arm poking out from under the covers as I hold myself up. Deep scratches carve bloody-crusted channels along it.

"What happened?" His voice holds no inflection, and I can't tell if he's stunned or asking as a perfunctory measure.

"I... don't know." I swallow and hedge on. "Perhaps I had a bad dream."

"A bad dream?" Ixek's voice sounds like it's mountain peaks away from my cave.

"Yes." I cough to clear my throat. "I must've scratched myself in my sleep."

Ixek's eyes narrow. The story rings false even to my own ears, but he doesn't press it further. Instead, he simply reaches into his pocket and places a cotton cloth in my hand.

"I'll return tonight," he says. "I need the parcel by sundown tomorrow." Ixek slips away before I process his request.

My gaze drops to the cotton in my hands. It'd be so easy to open it, to find out once and for all what's inside. But I can't bring myself to do so. I can't betray Nal m'se. I can't break my word.

Before temptation overcomes me, I slink to the other side of the room. My side screams from the movement. After tucking the cotton into my bag, I hide behind the curtain in my room to inspect my skin. The light isn't very strong, but already, I can make out a nasty bruise on my hip and rib cage. I drop my tunic and lie down again, catching the last restful minutes I can before my day begins.

***

The next two days pass in a blur. I don't have to move much to my relief. I finish my last orders of fabric and remain near the camp so I don't have to exert myself too much. Mother will have to make due for two days without me. I just hope that she has more sense than to leave the cave in search of food and water.

The first evening, I leave my cave to weave the moonlight I collected. It creates another few sections of the cloak. But when I try to align all the squares I've weaved so far, I realize I'm lacking just a little more. I pack them up again, resolving to embark on one more scavenging mission.

Anxiety churns in my gut the next night, when Ixek said he'd come for the sunlight parcel. Though I'm injured and I'd love to just stay in bed, sleep off my injury, I know it's better to get the last bits of moonlight now, rather than wait. The next half moon is peeking around the corner; I'm reminded of it every time I look at the moon and another sliver has been cut away.

Seasons seem to go by with no sign of Ixek. I can't waste the night waiting for him, but I can't risk him coming while I'm gone. Part of me just wants to fall asleep, at least catch up on something I'm desperately lacking in. But everytime I close my eyes, they peel open again, anticipating that Ixek will appear at any moment.

After a while, an invisible weight settles over my eyelids. They're constantly being dragged down, down. I try to keep them open, but a secondary force wins every battle, pushing darkness lower and lower over my visual plane. I drift into a state between sleep and wake, unable to resist the progress pull into the subconscious.

"Celisae."

It takes a moment for the voice to register. But the disturbance is enough to get my eyes open. Of course, Ixek shows up now, right when I was about to fall asleep. Part of me is annoyed while sensibility reminds me that it's a good thing he showed up before dawn. It's for the best that I finish the moonlight's collection tonight.

"Do you have it?" he asks. I find his question slightly humorous. When have I ever failed to produce a parcel in his given timeframe?

I give the furry package to him in response. He stares at it in his hands, like I just handed him an explosive.

"Why is it warm?" he questions.

I touch the soft rabbit fur, and heat radiates onto my skin. That's the one thing I've noticed in the past weeks — as my skills have further developed from the extra practice, the sunlight thread I've been weaving has grown into higher grades, finer and warmer than ever before.

"Probably from being under the blankets," I say. A yawn comes on naturally, and I hope it makes me seem more nonchalant than I feel.

Ixek's brow creases further. "It's never been this warm in the past."

I shrug, yawning again. Hopefully, he'll get the hint that I'm tired and leave.

"Maybe it's a warmer night tonight," I say.

It's beginning to bother me that Ixek always lingers in my room. It's like he senses something off, but can't place his finger on it. Maybe that's what really is going on — he detects an oddity about me and is trying to figure out what it is. The thought sends a shudder through me.

He can't find out my secret. He has some of the deepest connections to tribe leadership. Nal m'se wouldn't hesitate to punish me if she discovered my secret. And I'm sure Ulane m'ke would do anything to get me out of the tribe.

Then again, he didn't tell them about me sneaking out.

"Well, rest up." Finally, Ixek leaves my side. I crane my neck to watch him disappear up the mountain path. I count five seconds in my head before getting up. My raeriel is already in my bag, and all I have to do is thread my arms through the straps and toss my cloak overtop.

My gaze sweeps up and down the pathway. Deeming it clear, I climb up the mountainside. Fatigue gnaws at the corners of my head. It's never a good idea to allow oneself to nearly fall asleep without satisfying the bodily need in full. It merely awakens a hunger that can only be quenched with complete slumber.

I fight both mental and physical exhaustion to reach the cliff's top. From there, I start a long ascent up the mountainside. My hip doesn't hurt as badly as yesterday, but I still need a stick to help me along.

The song of crickets counts the seconds that go by. Seconds turn to minutes, maybe hours. It's difficult to tell based on the moon.

One moment, I walk along a narrow path carved in the rock. The next, it drops off in a precipice. I freeze at its edge. If I were to take one more step, I'd be trying to walk on air instead of solid ground.

I'm about to turn around, but a familiar glimmer snags my eye. I squint at the trees below, growing out of jagged rocks. It's faint with distance, but I'm certain I see chords of moonlight swaying in the mountain breeze.

It's worth a try to summon them. Today, the moonlight song comes out light and metallic, partly because I'm too tired to dig into the string. Notes are painted blue from the tone, evoking the remorse that the moonlight identifies with. Pale light swirls in from far and wide, called by the mountain cliffs' echoes. It assembles en masse into a single sphere that spews light over the canyons. With a signature, blinding burst, it drops — right into a tree several feet below.

My heart plummets with it. It's too far to reach without somehow climbing down. My side aches just thinking about it. But I refuse to let all that moonlight go. It takes about two seconds for me to decide to descend down the mountainside.

I survey my route options. A narrow ledge surrounds the drop down below. From there, I can swing into the tree, grab the light, and crawl back up. I press my heels against the rock ledge. Slowly, I inch my way around the perimeter of the drop. Dizziness spins in my head, both from fatigue and the altitude. One false step, and I plunge straight below. If I don't die from being impaled by jagged rocks or from landing on rock, I'll probably break every bone in my body.

I lean my weight against the rock at my back. The craggy surface scrapes at my tunic. Sometimes, the rock protrudes a little more in one area compared to the others, shifting my balance forward. I compensate by pressing harder against the cliffside, no matter how much the sharp rock hurts, taking a moment to stabilize my footing and breath.

Pain throbs with every step. I grit my teeth against it, focusing on the forward movement. Inhale, exhale. It becomes almost rhythmic shuffling my feet along. At long last, I reach the tree curving its way upward. Moonlight shines just a few feet away. If I were on the ground, it'd be so easy to walk up to it. But in the air, I have to jump through a few more hoops.

The nearest tree branch is thinner than I'd like. To be honest, the whole tree trunk is only slightly thicker than my circumference. Alarms blare in my head, but I'm so tired, it's easy to ignore them. Just get to the light. That's all you have to do.

I reach toward the branch. My fist closes around the narrow end, but when I try to swing onto it, the branch snaps. My back thuds against a lower branch, knocking the wind out of me. Pain emanates through my bones. I lay there for a minute, blinking through empty boughs at the starlit sky. Slowly, my vision shifts to the moonlight, just two branches higher than me. I force myself up, though my body screams in protest.

My eyes squint at the brilliant sphere of moonlight. I test a branch before placing my weight on it. It hoists me up enough so my fingers can detangle the moonbeams from a few barren twigs. I have to blow on them frequently to combat the frigidity stiffening my joints. Finally, the moonlight is free, and I place it in the box in my bag. The last strands of moon thread are collected.

I gaze up the cliffside, at the distance I somehow must travel. My eyes travel from the ledge down to the tree, then back up again. Any branches that reach that high seem too flimsy to be reliable.

As I debate my predicament, I feel a strange shifting underfoot. It happens again, and realization smacks me in the face.

The tree is slipping. It must not be able to support my weight. Frantically, I scan the cliffside for something, anything, that might bring me to the top.

In the faint moonlight, I make out the shape of a notch in the cliff. I start toward it, but the tree descends another inch, and I must adjust my position to not fall. I climb upward, heart pounding in my chest. The tree backpedals again, again, faster now. My hand plants itself in the rock right before the tree drops from under me, descending into the dark abyss below.

I drink in rapid, ragged breaths. I can barely process what just happened. But what I do feel is my arms about to give out. I channel all my strength into my upper body, dragging myself between the tiny notches in the rock. My nerves tingle from the height, from the knowledge that if I let go, I'll share the same fate as the tree.

My muscles feel like they're being ripped apart. I keep going up, keep digging my fingers from rock to rock, until I blessedly reach the top ledge. Hanging on the edge feels like a break, even though my arms burn with the exertion.

Just a little more. You're almost there.

I walk my hands along the edge. And I thought it was hard traversing this path with my feet. Sharp rocks and twigs bite into my palms, but it makes me fight the pain harder.

It's all in your head. I repeat this over and over, willing myself to have the strength to continue. When I reach the end, I nearly release the cliffside. The thought of pulling myself up drains my last energy reserves. Every time I think I can't do this, I combat it with the opposite. I have to do this.

If I die, Mother will be discovered. The deal with the Earth Watcher only stands if I complete the moonlight cloak.

I allow myself a moment's relaxation, or whatever the hanging-off-a-cliff equivalent is. It gives a final burst, allowing me to haul myself over the cliff, onto solid ground. I lay there, my dead weight bearing into the mountain. I'm unsure how long it takes the spinning in my head to slow, the hammering in my ribcage to stabilize, the pain overwhelming me to subside. But when it does, I slowly roll onto my stomach, slowly maneuver my raeriel back inside my bag, slowly, painstakingly, stand up. It's going to be a long trek down the mountain. Part of me doesn't care if I return before dawn. The other part of me insists that all my efforts tonight can't be in vain. The tribe can't know I've been gone.

This had better be worth it. My grumblings are mostly null. I already know it's worth it. The Earth Watcher never said it'd be easier to weave the moon.