Worm Moon

                   Worm Moon          


         "Hurry, tonight is the full moon, and the Spiritcaster does not wait to start her lessons. The Spiritcaster will describe the moon, why it turned red last night, and the omens it foretold."

         "Should I show the Spiritcaster the stone I found yesterday before the moon shadow happened?"

         "No! She will think you caused the red moon, and you will be shunned or worse."

         "Worse than shunned? What is worse than being an outcast from your village?"

         "Stoned like Junny yesterday. Remember?"

         "I forgot about her rose quartz necklace. She said she found a sky-fallen rock and made the necklace from it. Rocks can't fall from the sky. Where do they come from, the Other-realm? The Spiritcaster said she was possessed and needed to be purged of the Unquiet Spirits."

         "Enough talk. Talking of Junny is making me uneasy. Let's hear the Spiritcaster and be made calm by her explanation of what happened. I trust her. She is always right."

         ******
         "Professor Williams, I have found more relics from the village meeting center. It is more of the same fragments as Mr. Henderson discovered earlier."

         "The red quartz appears to be a necklace fragment or headdress mixed with skull fragments alongside fist-sized rocks.

         "There is more of the skull as well. And your hypothesis regarding the victim being stoned to death appears to be correct. Strangely, this is the only remnant of a stoning we have uncovered thus far. I wonder where the others are located?"

         "I am wondering where the tribe went. So far, I have not discovered any records or remnants of them moving their village or preparing to move. They just disappeared."
         ******


         "Miss Harris, what does this site's Light Detection and Ranging image show? The Williams team did a decent job with the limited resources in 1942 detailing the ground; however, it wasn't discovered until recently that the village had been more spread out than Williams thought."

         "The village sits on approximately ten acres or 435,600 square feet of land. While that is amazing, in the epicenter is the meeting circle, the location of the only remnants of the victim of a stoning."

         "That we know of. Others may have been taken outside the village to be executed."

         "There is more information. We did some carbon dating of some of the skull fragments, and it corresponds with some interesting data in folklore of the time."

         "Folklore? We deal with fact, not fiction, Miss Harris."

         "Just hear me out, Professor. There are facts here."

         "Very well, share with me, Miss. Harris, manifest your dreams for me."
         "These aren't dreams. When the village was thriving, the people believed in spirits, demons, their Shamans, or whatever their title was, and magic to explain what was unexpected. We have approximately three lunar eclipses a year. The reason it turns red is called the Rayleigh Scattering. As you know, during a total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the sun and the moon and cuts off the moon's light supply, the sun. When this happens, the moon's surface takes on a reddish glow instead of going completely dark."

         "Thank you, Miss Harris, for Astrology 101. What's this got to do with anything?"

         "Would anyone from this village in 564 BCE have known this? From all the carbon dating we've done, that is the last date of this village. There is nothing after that date. No other society moved here. No one claimed any portion of this prime area for farming, animal domestication, or even rebuilding a city. "

         " Now, remember the red quartz necklace fragments? Carbon dating shows it was at least 100,000 years

font:verdana}older than the village. After the test on the fragment finished, the samples disappeared from the laboratory. When any question arose, the answers were classified. In other words, drop it."

         "I heard that happened. All the professors received a memo stating that pursuing the matter could lead to our tenure disappearing."

         I believe whatever happened to the fragment will remain as big of a mystery as the disappearance of the village.


Prompts:
Full moon
Lunar eclipse
Rose quartz
Manifest your dreams
Moon Shadow


687 Words