278. The First Moonly Letter

The Leafies speak:

"The Moonly Letters  are letters from Heather to her brother Arley, one each moon. One fay calendar has twelve moons, meaning months. First is the White as Driven Snow Moon, or white month, that corresponds to January. Next is the Moon of the Sweet Blue Violets, that corresponds to February. The  Tender  Green Youth Moon is March, while the Bittersweet Lilac Moon is  April. The Inviting Rosy Moon is May, the Warm Lavender Moon is June, the  Red as Rubies Sun Moon is July, the Turquoise Sky Moon is August, the Misty Silver Moon is September, the Glorious Golden Moon is October, the Spotless Black Moon is November and the Evergreen Truelove Moon is December. Arley’s answers to these letters cannot be published, but Heather's letters can, and we are in possession of three."

278. Heather’s first letter to Arley, written and sent during the White Moon, which brings Little Mauel charity cakes and the promise of a birthday cake on the first day of each month.

Dear brother of mine,

I hope this finds you very well and doing just as very well and being happy with your new job.

Just as we promised you we would, Thistle and I claimed your Twelfth Night gifts for you and prepared a parcel and we are sending it to you care of Aunt Nekutarin along with this letter.

I also want to tell you that Little Mauel, Grandpa’s pet cat, came up to me today, on the seventeenth day of the moon at its whitest and asked me if I could invite him to a charity cake, because today is the feastday of St. Anthony of Egypt. 

So I made some tea and charity cakes and when we sat to have them we got to talking and he informed me that I had things wrong, because Grandpa does sort of have a birthday, though it isn’t exactly one, but he could say it was if he wanted to. Little Mauel says most people think of time as a long straight line that advances and advances. But, he says, it is really more like a circle. And the beginning and the end are right next to each other. 

A spirit’s birthday is the day the spirit first appears in this circle. Even gods have a sort of starting point in this circle. Mauel says Grandpa and Grandma have always been in it, having been where the beginning and the end fuse, so there is no moment when they didn’t exist. Little Mauel boasts of having been third to appear in this circle, and to have slept in Grandpa’s cradle, when all was darkness except for our grandparents, who lit up the dark more and more stongly as seconds passed. Everyone else appeared later. Nobody else gets to the beginning and the end. 

Mauel doesn’t know about the end. He admits he never was there. We spirits just go on and on, though some, like Merlin, have reached a point where they move backwards, and then, when they get back to their first beginning point, they move forward all over again and repeat the cycle. 

Mortal souls are, of course, different. They appear where they appear and they advance from there a little, never very much, until they lose their mortal wrapping and then they become rather static, though there are a few things they can do, like wander back and forth where they once existed, though as observers mostly. But most prefer not to roam there. Most either fly a little upwards or sink somewhat downwards and meet with others of their kind there, but they don’t return to their first moment and start over, though some may start again at some other point, with a different wrapping, and almost always having moved  forward, but backwards is possible too, though much rarer. 

Well, that is more or less how Little Mauel explains it, not that I understand his explanations very well. Little Mauel says his own birthday is on day one, and that from this day on are other days counted by those in the know. Grandpa and Grandma would start all over on that day. And that Grandpa doesn’t want to be reminded of his birthday because he doesn’t want to be thought of as a baby in front of anyone, which he never is, being an old grouch of a baby when he is one, and far fiercer than the Child Hercules strangling snakes in his cradle. Plus there is nobody there with him but Grandma who is there with him on day one, from the very first second of course, and at the last second of the last day too, but she was a not so harmless baby herself back then. 

And the little old cat says Grandma thinks of Mauel as her first present to Grandpa, because she wished for this kitten to be, since she, having known everything up to the end second, remembered what a darling creature a kitten was, and Mauel was, and she put him in Grandpa’s cradle, because he was the best thing she had to give him then and is the cutest thing she ever wished for, according to the little cat. And in this sense Mauel was the first birthday present ever he himself. Mauel told me all this because he himself loves cake and presents and says it’s fine to give him cake and presents on his birthday, because he really likes them and he can be very useful when he is grateful. 

Now, you or I were never near the first day and I don’t know if we will ever get to the honest to goodness last day, or if we will bounce backwards somewhere on our way there and start all over moving backwards. But Little Mauel says he is willing to celebrate his birthday on the first day of any calendar, and even of any month or any week. So we are going to have to give this cat something special at least once a year, I think, because that is probably what he was angling for when he told me all this. Ah, he is saying at least once a moon, please!        

Well, maybe by now and because you are working where you are working you already know more about all this than I do. Just don’t forget us, Arley, because your sisters love and miss you. Take good care of yourself and ´bye for now, says…

Heather.

P.S. Thistle sends her love and Little Mauel his best regards.