Moon laid her head on the rock and dozed. Her head flopped to the side as she drifted off, and she lost awareness. She dreamed of sheep. Soft lambs, heady rams, and loving ewes. They jumped over the moon –of all things. Not Moon herself, but the porcelain orb hanging in the sky made of pitch. The soft lambs lightly leaped. The heady rams bounded in pursuit. The loving ewes daintily followed. They did not leap, or bound, or jump. They softly stepped, like elegant ladies with books on their heads, who go slow so they won’t trip. She watched the sheep as they progressed across the cratered surface of the big white moon. Moon’s eyes drifted across the spangled blanket of sky and landed on a cluster of stars. They were moving towards the moon, rapidly gaining speed and sharpness. Their points were fractured like glass from a broken mirror and were refracting the moon’s pale light like sun catchers twirling on strings attached to the eves of an attic. They arrived at the moon and began to barrage the slowly stepping ewes. They smashed and smattered and scattered the helpless ewes. The no longer leaping lambs and bounding rams watched, wailing in animal fashion their horror as their mothers and mates turned the porcelain orb in the sky a piercing ruby with their blood. The sky, a banner of stars on an endless background, once reflecting the moon’s soft light, was now a dim and bleak blanket of blood and gore, a shadow over the world. Their protection from the murky night was no more. Moon startled at the feel of a rapid tears sliding down her cheeks and falling from her chin. She looked down and gasped as the metallic scent filled her nostrils. The tears flowing from her eyes were a dark maroon. They stained her clothes and the surrounding grass. She watched as the blood flowing from her clothes slid along the grass to trickle into the nearby stream. The water that had once been like a crystal oasis on a bottle-green hill, now turned to blood and stilled as it clotted. The shrubs and plants that lined its banks shriveled and crackled as they dried up. Pitiful bleats drew Moon’s eyes back to the dull sky. The grieving lambs and rams were crowded and on a cloud drifting below the moon. The ewes blood dripped on them turning their fluffy coats a dusky crimson. The blood streamed down their coats and seeped from the clouds, raining on the bleak world. The clouds expanded till there was no more sky and only blood. Endless blood filling the air. It flooded Moon’s nostrils, her throat, her ears. She could no longer feel the air of the night tickling her skin. All was blood.

Moon jolted awake weeping and panting and sobbing in great disturbed gulps. She scrubbed her hands in frantic sweeps across her face and arms and legs and clothes, only stopping when the phantom blood was gone and her skin was raw. She let out a wheezy gasp and crumpled onto the rock. A silky, moist nose pressed lightly against Moon’s leg. She started and bolted to her feet, only to find her gentlest ewe from her flock gazing up at her. “Oh! Fern! I'm sorry, you scared me.”

Fern rubbed her fuzzy and mercifully bloodless fleece against Moon’s also bloodless legs. Moon patted her supple black head and sat down once more. “I dreamed about the Legend of the Blood Moon.”

Fern’s eyes were concerned as they gazed into Moon’s as if to say; “Again?”

“Yup. Again.” Moon rested her head on Fern’s coat, letting a tear slip down her cheek. “The death of the ewes was so vivid this time. I felt like I was there… I was there.”

Fern’s velvet nose caressed Moon’s hair, rumpling it which made Moon laugh. She looked up at the bright blue sky. It was far from the obscure and gloomy sky of her dream. The sun had risen and was fiercely illuminating the sky like a blazing torch striking a flying banner. She couldn’t imagine how she could have worried about the sky. It took care of itself. It always had; it always will. The moon was long gone, taking her nightmares of smattered and smashed ewes with it. Besides, she shouldn’t be having such thoughts anyway. The early lambs would sense her distress, scare, and cause a fray. At that thought, Moon stood on her slightly wobbly leg sand reached down to grab her staff lying nearby. Firmly grasping her staff, and with Fern in tow, she strode down the hill.

The path into town wound like a lazy serpent down the hillside, its stones still cool with morning. Fern trotted at Moon’s side, her hooves clicking softly, her fleece brushing Moon’s hand whenever her thoughts drifted too far inward. The dream clung to her like cobwebs—thin, invisible, impossible to shake.

By the time they reached the outskirts of Brackenford, the market was already in full swing. Stalls bloomed like wildflowers: bolts of dyed cloth, baskets of early pears, jars of honey so golden they seemed lit from within. The air smelled of yeast and woodsmoke and the faint metallic tang of the blacksmith’s forge.

Moon tried to let the noise swallow her unease. She greeted the baker, nodded to the potter, let Fern nose at a barrel of oats. Everything was normal. Comfortingly, stubbornly normal.

Which is why the stranger stood out immediately.

He had set himself up on an overturned crate near the well, a tall man with a coat the color of dried blood and hair like storm clouds. His voice carried above the chatter—rich, ringing, too smooth to be accidental.

“Brothers and sisters,” he called, “the signs are stirring. The moon bleeds in dreams before it bleeds in truth.”

Moon froze.

Fern pressed against her leg, uneasy.

The preacher’s eyes swept the crowd, bright and fevered. “You have felt it, some of you. The trembling in the air. The heaviness in the sky. The visions that come unbidden.”

Moon’s breath snagged in her throat. She tried to step back, but Fern nudged her forward, as if insisting she face this.

The preacher’s gaze landed on her.

Not on the crowd. Not on the sky.

Her.

“You,” he said softly, pointing with a long, pale finger. “Shepherd girl.”

Moon’s stomach dropped. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

He stepped down from the crate, boots thudding against the packed earth. Up close, his eyes were stranger still—gray, but fractured with tiny flecks of red, like embers trapped in ice.

“You’ve seen it,” he murmured. “The Blood Moon. The drowning sky. The ewes.”

Moon’s pulse hammered. “How do you know that?”

The preacher smiled, but it wasn’t comforting. It was knowing. Ancient. “Because I have seen it too.”

The market had gone quiet around them. People watched with the wary fascination of those who sense a storm but cannot yet see the lightning.

Moon swallowed hard. “It was just a dream.”

“Dreams,” he said, “are the first warnings the world gives before it tears itself open.”

Fern bleated sharply, stepping between them. The preacher regarded the ewe with a tilt of his head, as though she were a scholar interrupting a lecture.

“You keep good company,” he said. “The gentle ones always sense the truth first.”

Moon’s hands tightened around her staff. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Only to tell you this: the legend is not a story. It is a prophecy. And those who dream of it are not cursed—they are called.”

Moon felt the ground tilt beneath her.

“Called to what?”

The preacher leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to echo anyway.

“To witness the beginning.”

He straightened, stepping back as though the conversation were finished. “I will be in Brackenford until the next full moon. Seek me when the sky begins to dim.”

Moon shook her head. “The sky isn’t dimming.”

The preacher looked up, and for a heartbeat—just one—Moon thought she saw the blue above them flicker, as if something vast and red pressed against it from the other side.

He smiled again.

“It will.”

And then he turned, coat swirling, and walked into the crowd, which parted around him like water.

Fern nudged Moon’s hand, trembling.

Moon didn’t realize she was trembling too.

Moon didn’t go looking for answers.

They found her anyway.

Brackenford’s apothecary sat at the far end of the market street, half-hidden beneath a sagging awning of faded green canvas. The sign above the door—Ash & Honey Remedies—creaked in the breeze like an old throat clearing itself. Moon had passed it a hundred times without ever stepping inside. She preferred herbs she gathered herself, plants she knew by scent and soil.

But Fern nudged her toward the door with a firmness that brooked no argument.

“Fine,” Moon muttered. “But only for a calming draught.”

The bell above the door chimed as she entered. The air inside was thick with the perfume of dried lavender, crushed mint, and something darker—iron-rich, like the inside of a cut finger.

Shelves lined the walls, crowded with jars of powders, roots, and tinctures. A cat the color of smoke watched her from atop a stack of crates, its eyes glinting like polished coins.

“Welcome,” said a voice from behind the counter.

The apothecary owner was a woman named Jalaye —her hair silvered at the temples, her hands stained with the ghosts of herbs. Her eyes were a deep, unsettling brown, the kind that seemed to read more than they should.

Moon swallowed. “I… had a dream.”

Jalaye nodded as though she’d been expecting that answer. “Many have, of late. But yours was not like theirs.”

Moon stiffened. “How do you know that?”

“Because,” Jalaye said, stepping closer, “you came in with blood on your breath.”

Moon recoiled. “There’s no blood.”

“Not real blood,” the woman said gently. “Dream-blood. Vision-blood. It clings to those who see the old things.”

Moon’s heart thudded. “The preacher said—”

“The preacher,” she interrupted with a dismissive flick of her hand, “sees only the surface. He speaks of prophecy because prophecy is dramatic. But the Blood Moon is older than prophecy. Older than scripture. Older than the first shepherd who ever named a lamb.”

Moon felt the room tilt. “Then what is it?”

Jalaye studied her for a long moment, then reached beneath the counter and drew out a small wooden box. Its lid was carved with a crescent moon split down the middle by a jagged line. She opened it. Inside lay a single object: a shard of something white and curved, like a piece of porcelain broken from a larger whole. Its surface was stained a deep, dried red. Moon’s breath caught. It looked exactly like the moon from her dream.

“This,” the apothecary said softly, “is a fragment of the First Moon.”

Moon blinked. “There was more than one?”

“Oh yes. The sky has worn many faces. But the First Moon was alive.”

Moon stared at her. “Alive?”

“Not in the way you or I are. It was a guardian. A watcher. A vessel for the ewes.”

Moon’s skin prickled. “The ewes in my dream.”

Jalaye nodded. “The First Moon held them—spirits of protection, of gentleness, of balance. When the world was young, they kept the night safe.”

Moon’s throat tightened. “What happened to them?”

She closed the box with a soft click.

“They were slaughtered.”

Moon felt the dream surge back—shattered stars, bleeding ewes, the sky drowning in red.

“By what?” she whispered.

Jalaye’s eyes darkened. “By the same thing that shattered the First Moon. A force older than kindness. Older than light. A hunger that drifts between worlds, looking for cracks.”

Moon’s hands trembled. “Why am I dreaming about it?”

“Because,” the apothecary said, “the Blood Moon does not appear to warn the world. It appears to choose someone.”

Moon’s breath hitched. “Choose them for what?”

The apothecary stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to settle into Moon’s bones.

“To mend what was broken. Or to break what remains.”

Fern bleated sharply, as if protesting the very idea.

Moon felt the weight of the words settle on her shoulders like a cloak she had never asked to wear.

The apothecary placed the wooden box in Moon’s hands.

“When the sky reddens,” she said, “bring this to me. And do not come alone.”