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Waxing Crescent: ...now is my dawning, and I shall grow through her...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The girl stands in a line with others, watching the priestesses pass by. They
are serene and untroubled, like visions or spirits from the ethereal, followed
by the subtle, sparkling glimmers of silver that mark the passage of their
cloaked fae.

The priestesses take their places around the lofty hall. A crescent moon shines
outside, casting its light through the arched window upon the floor. Upon the
flagstones of the floor, a glimmering circle of faeriefire burns. She does not
know, yet, what it means.

The High Priest rises to speak ritual words of welcome and blessing, his calm
voice like the rustle of leaves, echoing in the silent hall. Then he calls them
by name, and one by one the Seekers go forth to kneel beside the glowing circle;
and to each the High Priest murmurs something the rest cannot hear before he
leads them across the line of faeriefire.

The girl's name is called last. As she walks across the stones, she feels their
eyes upon her, and sinks to her knees beneath the weight of their gazes. She
feels the pressure of hands upon her hair, hears a low voice speaking in her
ear:

"You are one of us now, child. Fear not, for you shall never dance alone."

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First Quarter: ...through Companionship and Compassion...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lessons, when they begin, are not what the girl expected. They learn to
meditate, to plant nuts and tend to herbs. She is a quick student, and soon
there are things she is aware of as easily as she breathes: that dusk comes in
two hours, and that the moon is in the First Quarter. Still, such knowledge is
mundane, and she is disappointed, though she does not say so.

It is a delight, therefore, when one day the Moon Guide decides to teach the
apprentices to summon vines. The girl watches him rapt, and is the first to
master it.

Later, she amuses herself, looking out from the window of the Mother's Conclave
at the forest below. She discovers that she can work her magic from a distance,
bewildering a none-too-bright messenger boy down below, who cannot understand
why the vines on the surrounding trees trip him whenever he takes a step
forward...

...until her mind goes hazy and bewildered, thoughts swirling in confusion. She
turns, dazed, to see a figure shining with silver light, terrible and beautiful,
and falls weeping to the ground. Slowly, the silver subsides, and her thoughts
array themselves once more. She finds that she is shaking, and cannot raise her
eyes from the cool grey flagstones.

A cool hand tilts her face upward, and she finds herself staring at the figure
who had bare moments ago shone with such brilliance. It is the High Wisdom,
stern and pale with anger.

Compassion, the High Wisdom informs her in a cold voice, is one of the truest
tenets of the Coven, and to use the arts of Nature to harm the helpless is to
inflict upon others the fear the girl had just felt at the touch of the Moon
Lash.

The girl looks down again, face burning, and says nothing. The incident is not
repeated.

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Waxing Gibbous: ...then devote yourself through the teachings of Mother Moon...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Waxing Gibbous is a time for learning and reflection. Spring and summer
have passed, and the girl finds rhythm in her days and nights.

She wakes in the grey dawn, when the tower is silent save for the sound of her
own footsteps. She extinguishes the late-burning candles in the halls, fetches
water from the Falls for the chalice in the Maiden's Chamber, finds that brooms
are for sweeping as well as for flying. It is peace of a sort, a peace that
fades and flees as sunlight blossoms fully and the Tower wakes.

Mornings are spent in lessons of history and lore: the Journey of Ellindel, the
magics of nature and the politics of the Fae. Afternoons are given to them to
use at their discretion - to wander the forest and the commune in the trees, to
read in the library, or anything else they might desire to do. However, sleep is
the most popular choice, for the nights are full of rituals, dances and prayers
and processions. There is a beauty to it all, and she is content to be a part of
it, to keep her silence and do her duties.

The quiet days do not last. Her sober diligence sets her apart from her
giggling companions, and soon the Moon Guides declare that she has mastered the
basic arts of Nature which they teach, and assign her as apprentice to a senior
priestess.

With some regret, she packs her things. No matter, she thinks, it was bound to
happen. After all, the moon stops for no mortal.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Full Moon: ...let us guide you in the beauty of her Silvered Eye...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Autumn comes, and with it a full harvest moon that is as bright and golden as a
sheaf of corn. All usual duties are set aside, for the Full Moon is sacred for
the forest as well as the Coven.

It begins at dusk, with sparks of golden faeriefire winking between the leaves,
delicate and beautiful. Their subtle glimmer is soon overwhelmed by the ruddier
glow of campfires in the darkness, kindled by the warriors of the Serenguard as
they tell their tales. Spiritsingers wander the woods in laughing groups;
wherever they pass, songs of the forest weave through the night, calling forth
pale spirits of those who have gone before.

For the Coven, it is dance that dominates the night, and the girl remembers a
whirl of robes and the joining of hands, and exhilaration that burns through her
body as she too is caught in the rhythm, body and instinct and the presence of
the moon guiding her feet in steps she never learned.

She is dizzy, yet the world is bright and clear through her heightened senses.
She feels her own breathing, the grass beneath her bare feet, and the full moon
above, so close that it is easy to reach up and bring it down to earth to rest
within her. She feels the light fill her, and the silver glow that she has seen
faintly in the priests and priestesses shines around her as she draws down the
moon.

That night, she becomes an Initiate of the Mysteries.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Waning Gibbous: ...strengthen my weakened spirit...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The waning gibbous brings with it discontent. The full moon is over, and with
its passage, the riotous joy of the festivals dwindle into the quiet sobriety of
the morning, leaving a wistful melancholy in everyone in the forest. So it
always is - but the girl does not know this, new as she is to it all. She
wanders around as if lost, remembering the giddy exhilaration of the festival.

As she makes makes to leave the feasting hall, she bumps into an elfen guard,
staggering around still disgracefully drunk. He peers at her owlishly, latching
onto her arm. Concerned, she offers to help him to his home - and is unprepared
when he reaches out and draws her close, slurring endearments, the reek of wine
staining his breath.

"You mistake me, sir," she says, but he is either too drunk to hear, or simply
does not care, and grows bolder still, dragging at her, cursing her for a
fickle-minded seducer when she struggles. Panic fills her for a moment, before
freezing into an icy rage. She shoves him, and he falls into a heap, and with a
pointed finger she speaks the spell that she has seen but once in the days of
her novicehood, in a book forbidden her.

She had not expected it to work, but it does - and the look on the other's face
is almost comical as he shrinks, becomes green and bloated and warty, until
finally a toad lies at her feet, ribbiting in a perplexed manner.

Fear at what she herself has done turns her blood cold, as it had not when he
had seized her. Gathering up her skirts, she flees, not looking back.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Last Quarter: ...that I may protect you...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

She expects the axe to fall at any time - after all, it is she who has broken
the High Wisdom's admonition against using the Wiccan arts against the
unskilled. In the meantime, she goes about her work, determined to be dutiful in
that if not in other things. It comes as no surprise to her, however, when she
finds herself summoned.

She expects to be taken to the High Wisdom's chambers. It surprises her,
therefore, when the novice brings her instead to the Meditation Chamber, where a
figure sits cross-legged beside the fire. She makes her curtsey, then stares as
the other stands and turns to face her, for it is the Heir of Ellindel, whom few
Initiates saw. It is said, she remembers, that he was but lately come from
battle.

He gestures to her to sit, and she does. He speaks to her without preamble.
"You know, do you not, that we have recently convinced Rockholm to follow our
ways?"

She affirms, still wondering, still apprehensive. The man turns his gaze to the
fire. "I have spoken to the Serenguard Tribe," he says. "They shall station
their guards there, along with our frost hags and moon maidens, to protect the
villagers of that place. I fear it will be a dull job, of course. There is
little entertainment there - and no drinking."

In a flash she understands what this is about, and begins to speak, then stops.
The other looks at her then, holds her eyes with that sharp, level gaze. "The
Coven defends its own," he says quietly, with a ferocity that would once have
frightened her, but now lends her comfort. "But be prepared, young one. Dark
days lie ahead, and it will take more than diplomacy and a word with the Great
Chieftain of the Serenguard to protect you all."

She nods her head, wordless. Then, after a while, she hears her own voice,
quiet in the semi-darkness. "Thank you." All of you, she thinks. For everything.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Waning Crescent: ...though the weight of dark troubles weigh us down...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Heir's warning had not been idle. Battle approached soon enough, for the
dwarfs never had been a peaceable people, and the orcs and their allies less so.
The girl found less time for her ritual duties in the last days of the waning
crescent, and her time is instead spent on other things: learning to heal the
wounded, to protect the dying, and to dance the resurgem.

In the lore of the guild, the resurgem is named with a certain amount of
reverence, and the younger initiates, having learned by now what is or is not
spoken of, do not ask of it. But the girl remembers the first time she danced
one, led by a senior priest. There had been a body, she recalls, lying battered
and broken on the forest floor: a warrior, caught outside the forest unawares by
a raiding party.

She had barely dared to look. She remembers thinking that surely, nothing -
nothing - could save the bloody mass which was all that was left of the man. But
she had disciplined the urge to be ill, had chanted and danced because it was
what she was trained to do, and had seen a miracle. She thinks of the resurgem
ever after as the heart of what they do - breathing new life and healing into
the fallen.

The moon wanes ever more as she learns, and each night she watches it grow
slimmer and slimmer. This new moon shall bring storms, she thinks, such as she
has never known; yet despite this, she gazes at her own hands that have healed
beyond all hope, and finds peace of a sort.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
New Moon: ...no Wiccan shall walk alone...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The new moon dawned, and war came. It was no accident that the day of the great
invasion fell when the might of the moon was at its lowest, and soon blood flows
in the stone passageways of the dwarf village.

The girl does not wade into the melee; she is no warrior, to take swords and
arrows and still keep on. Instead, it is appointed to her to lead the steps of
war and healing within the village, though they are twice removed from the moon
itself: once by time and once by stone. Still, it is the belief that counts, and
they - the uncertain circle of young initiates, too vulnerable to fight - can
yet believe with all their strength.

It is the darkness and closeness of the tunnels that foils their warriors, that
makes them blind and terrified, lashing out at allies and enemies alike. The
coven dances in silence now, with slow steps striding through the darkness. They
speak the words learned in what seems a lifetime ago, beneath sunlight and
moonlight under the green eaves of the forest, and beyond all hope their prayers
are answered with light.

A coven, the girl thinks, her hands grasping those of her fellows so tightly
that it hurts. We are a coven. Her steps grow surer as she urges her companions
onwards, and the silver light grows stronger, an echo of moonlight shimmering
through leaves, striking doubt into the invaders. The circle dances once more,
with less joy than at the harvest moon, but with no less determination; for this
too is a rite of passage.

They dance, and despite herself, despite the darkness and the danger and the
cries of the wounded, the girl does not fear. She does not dance alone.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Note: The phrases at the start of each phase are taken from the sacred
rites of the Moondance Coven, as recorded in the Lunar Breviary.