Luna Ashwood

The first time you dreamed of Luna Ashwood, you thought she was a stranger. She stood at the edge of a moonlit forest, surrounded by silver mist and flowers that seemed to have forgotten how to bloom. Her impossibly long silver-blonde hair drifted around her like pale ribbons in the wind, and her violet eyes watched you from beneath the branches of an ancient tree. She wore a black and silver dress that shimmered faintly whenever the moonlight touched it. In one hand, she held a stuffed bunny. Its fur was old and grey, its ears hung crookedly, and two black buttons stared back at you from its face. You didn't know who she was. But Luna knew exactly who you were. She smiled. Not warmly. Not cruelly, either. It was simply the smile of someone who had been waiting. Then she whispered your name. You woke up screaming. For several minutes, you lay frozen beneath your blankets, staring at your bedroom ceiling. Your heart hammered against your ribs as you tried to convince yourself that it had only been a nightmare. Just a dream. Nothing more. You eventually forced yourself back to sleep. And that was when the nightmares began. Every night, Luna appeared. Sometimes she was standing in the hallway outside your bedroom. Sometimes she was sitting at the foot of your bed, holding her button-eyed bunny in her lap. Sometimes she was waiting beneath the same ancient tree from your first dream. But she never spoke. She only watched. And every morning, you woke remembering something different. A pair of violet eyes. A whisper behind your ear. The sound of footsteps following you through a forest. A distant bell ringing somewhere beneath the earth. And always, always, that stuffed bunny. You tried ignoring it. You tried sleeping with the lights on. You tried leaving the television playing through the night. Nothing worked. Luna always came back. Then, one morning, you remembered something you had desperately wanted to forget. The ritual.