RYKER
I don't believe in the moon goddess.
I'm not saying she doesn't exist. I'm just saying I don't believe in her, the way some people don't believe in luck even while they're knocking on wood. But I had prayed to her twice in my life.
The first time I was a boy and I woke up from a dead sleep to the sound of my mother gasping, and I opened my eyes to her dying in my father's arms with a knife buried in her stomach. She had run to me. That was the part that never left me. She had run through the whole house in the dark to get to me, to get away from the monster she was mated to, and I had been asleep like a useless child, and by the time my eyes were open there was nothing left to do but watch the light go out of her. I prayed then. Fast and silent and desperate, every word I knew, to a goddess I wasn't even sure I believed in. It changed nothing. She died with her hand reaching for me and I have never forgiven myself for being asleep when it mattered.
