The Vale of the Broken Moon

Behind the Scenes

Busy Day

But… I prayed big. Dropped 3’s in abundance. Wrestled a cop. And now I’m off to a networking event called “football” parents.

But I did also work on something

That I’ve worked on quite actively for some weeks now. I’m not quite ready to say that this is “coming soon.”

Except that it is; and this time I know what I’m doing….

These are the footnotes from today’s narrative clean up:

The Vale of the Broken Moon.

That’s what the Dominae called it—not the Back Half, not the jungle cavern. Often just the Vale. But the first time I heard them say the full name, it was the only name that stayed with me. Not just because it felt older than my own imagination—but because I could tell it felt that way to them.

Without a map, I never would have guessed its meaning. I might have thought the name came from the way the dome caught the light silver at night and golden during the day. Whole. Towering. Sacred. The veined gold and burning copper walls bearing down onto The Pool of Sight here deep in The Overgrowth of the Yirat Dominae. And the rest—the Athuth, the Piquthei, the Thorah, , even the Laetziim—each in their ancient oaths. The Fading Pool. The Eclipse. The Sky Fissures. I didn’t know any of it. They were all glyphs in a language I could not yet see, words in a name that I could not yet test.

The Scrapes.

Eastern wing of the lower holding tank past Gate 17. Half-collapsed, half-forgotten. Fumes from the cracked chem-line kept the frost off in winter, and the roof still held most nights.

That was enough. It was ours. We claimed it. Just a dozen. But a crew all the same. Honor like wolves, rules like rats.

I was ten, maybe. Just old enough to count. But she was the smallest. Four? Five? Good at high windows, though. But this wasn’t the place for high windows and the rat that had just wandered in wasn’t looking to parlay.

He was on patrol.

Bigger than me. Belted. Grease and gore dried on him. Going feral? What did I know. He was outer-rung trash, and he was hungry.

He went straight for her.

I didn’t wait. Met him at the corner. There was a pipe Ricks had been swinging about the day before. I had it now.

I lunged. She screamed—and steel sank into flesh, driving low.

He fell. Not dead. Not yet. Growling.

One jerk, ripping it free. One stroke, across the jaw.

No one else spoke. They didn’t need to.

I counted now.

Fruect.

It tasted like you couldn’t forget. Half-sweet, half-salt, like corn and dust. The fresh stuff smelled like you could stomach it, and the aftertaste made you gobble, but engineered to addict, engineered to rot. The Back Half lived on it—and died from lack of it. Without? After three days, you stop talking. Get all silent. After five, the crazy acting sets in. Then the shaking, the blood from the nose, the hunger that turns feral. I’m not talking in metaphor.

No one knew what was in it. But we all knew where it came from. We all understood how the Silent King in City One owned us. We all knew we had to come back eventually.

I hadn’t had mine in, what, days? Weeks?

PS The Slip Box Lives