Talking To The Moon

• Sabisha Ofole, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2019

She trekked across the overgrown pebble pathway in the dead of night, where not a sound could be heard save for the calming melody of the trees swaying back and forth in the light breeze. A pair of glowing yellow eyes made their appearance known from behind a small clump of forest, but she was not afraid. With a quiet trill from her lips she called upon her silent watcher to come forward, and so they did – a coat of delicate grey fur and perked ears, listening for the slightest din. After a moment of hesitation the wolf uttered a quiet howl and the pack emerged from solitary beneath the leaves. Now she had an audience, but that was okay because she had brought them a midnight snack. Carefully, she littered a trifle of broken biscuits athwart the thicket floor and waited for her tentative wolves to emerge from the shadows. The girl then sat down just off the very path she had travelled from and, without regard for whether her wolves were attentive or not, she began to speak. Not to anyone in particular. She was only talking to the moon, and to anyone else who would listen. She talked to them under the moonlight and she showed them the stars. She showed them the constellations and how bright the dying stars would shine in the empyrean, and how sometimes she wished she was up there with them. She might like to visit the polar ice caps before climate change melted the ice and sent them underwater, they were told. She shared with them great stories of her father and how he had fought in the war and travelled half way across the world, and she confessed to them her dreams and how much she appreciated them, because they were the only ones who really listened. When her tales had come to end, a great crowd of woodland creatures surrounded her – foxes, with their tails curling and their intelligent eyes glowing, blue birds roosting within a tree cavity, and bears, curled upon a log of driftwood or hiding behind the evergreens. She smiled. The animals had come to talk to the moon with her.