May 2, 2025 -"Do you know there’s a witch-light hatching, not five blocks from here?"
Witch-Light Monologues—an urban romantasy where magic pulses through every corner of a city built on secrets and dreams. Linus, a mild-mannered technician, takes a break from monitoring magical occurrences to speak to a woman he sees daily on the scryers. Several months later, Moss tries to see beyond the lens of her feral past into a softer future.
Vibe: Romance, Fantasy Romance, Cute, Cozy feels
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Transcript for Moonrise:
Moonrise in the City: Linus
So… I work for the city and my job… well, it’s not too exciting.
Nothing glamorous. Nothing dangerous.
I monitor the scryers. You’ve probably seen them. There the, um... little magical orbs in neon blue and white hovering over the intersections and world trees. Wherever the leylines get — well the techical term is wonky.
So I watch the city through the scryers.
Mostly I monitor magical infestations and traffic problems and report them to the academy’s way-finders, or the city rangers, or the witch’s councils. You know, the real heroes.
Mostly it’s looking out for wandering dragon carts or broom crashes.
Sometimes, if we’re lucky we catch a crime or a missing child. I mean— not that it’s lucky to have a crime happen or a child go missing. Frightening experience in this city… being so close to The Greens. I only meant… well, watching scrying screen all day makes one feel, obviously like a spectator. It’s always motivating, enriching to see that one’s job can make a real difference.
Not that— most of the time it’s just, you know, traffic and magic infestations.
Like for instance, do you know there’s a witch light hatching, not five blocks from here?
I think of myself as a collector of beautiful experiences. I vacation to pretty and interesting places…waterfalls and canyons. I love art galleries. I make a hobby of circulating pretty and interesting photos and things I’ve collected in my apartment. I change it at least once a month, like a new art exhibit. I call it shopping from home.
But anyway… this one time, well no, not one time. I—
I’m Linus, by the way.
(pause)
Moss? That’s as very lovely name. Very interesting. Yes… quite. Um.
(pause)
I’m not perverse or anything. I hope you can believe me when I say that. Please, believe me? It’s just… it’s my job. To see things.
It’s usually boring, but one day, I see this woman– really pretty– looking up at the scryer and smiling. So peaceful and serene. With a sort of delicate wildness about her.
In fact, absolutely gorgeous. And I thought, “Wow, what a… peaceful, serene, and absolutely gorgeous woman.”
And that might have been the end of it. But a few days later, I saw her again. And again. Same street.
I moved the scryer around to investigate what she was looking at. But um… There was nothing.
Nothing magical.
And yet this woman, kept coming.
To the same corner. Always looking up at the same scryer and smiling.
And I know she wasn’t smiling for me. Or if she was, she didn’t know it was me. She was probably seeing something pretty and interesting just above the scryer.
But I couldn't help but notice… no one else seemed to see it.
This is a city of tourists.
All over the place, people see something pretty and interesting and they stop and take a picture of it or point it out to someone else. Most of the time the beautiful thing they see is just out of the sight of the scryers. We aim those at very specific places, where there’s a confluence of ley lines or a lot of pedestrians and… my point is— I like to go out and see what the people see and point out to each other— in my off hours, of course.
For instance, do you know there’s a building on Bone Street with a mural and people have gratified poetry all around it. And there’s a high-rise with a balcony whose owners have grown their ivy to spell out ‘Good Morning, Sunshine’ and that’s lovely. I got a picture of it. Do you want to see?
Yes, the mouth of the J-line. People come out of the cold, dark underground and look up, and there’s this neat little balcony just saying… good morning, Sunshine.
Ah, anyways… well, I simply had to see what fascinated this lovely lady every day, you know? To see whatever it was the scryer wasn’t detecting. When I got to that corner— this corner, in fact— I didn’t see anything special at first.
No interesting trees or pretty buildings. I thought I might have missed it entirely, but then I saw it. The moon rising in the city.
Right there. You see it, too? Perfect, isn’t it?
I’m sure you… figured out by now— well, I hope this isn’t too unpleasant or uncomfortable for you. This is rather new… new kind of a new experience for me, but—
You’re the only one who sees the moon rise. You see it, and you smile at it every day, and that’s the most beautiful thing I can imagine.
And I… I would like to see more beautiful things with you, so… if you’re available and not finding this all terribly unpleasant or uncomfortable or… goddess forgive me, boring…
Would you like to take a walk with me? About five blocks down. See a hatching witch light?
MOONRISE IN THE CITY: Moss
Sun’s coming up, streaming through the windows, bouncing off the dozens of picture frames on the wall.
Oh, I’m at Linus’ house.
That’s…unnerving.
Unnvering isn’t the right word. I never actually spent the night at a man’s house, even though I’ve slept with about a dozen of these city boys. I thought Linus and I were going to do that but…
He wanted to talk to me about his pictures. Give me the tour of the current exhibit. There’s so many and they are all so different. When he talked about shopping from home, I thought it would be all landscapes. Or all art pieces. All framed and pristine. I worried that the order of his life, his curator’s eye, would not tolerate a wild creature like me.
But the collection is… He’s got post cards and newspaper clippings. Print outs and sketches. That’s an ad from an herbalists catalog. That’s a child’s drawing that looks like it was stepped on and crinkled up. That’s bird-shaped bit of embroidery that was cut off a backpack and framed. All pretty. All interesting.
His word was eclectic. I don’t have a word for it.
But I like it.
Neck’s stiff. Blanket’s slipped around off my shoulder and into my lap. Linus is—
Asleep still.
Still holding me.
His big eyes are shut and his little mouth is open. He’s still wearing his glasses and his bow-tie. Still got his arm resting over me because I fell asleep watching a movie at his place.
And he stayed still all night.
Didn’t move me. Didn’t try to get away.
Just let me sleep.
Like I was something precious he didn’t want to disturb.
I don’t know what to do with that…
In the Greens— you don’t linger. Stillness is dangerous in a place where everything is alive and ready to bite. The land shifts and moves beneath your toes if you pause too long.
You move or you get moved.
It dangerous to sleep in the open in the Greens. Doubly so if you’ve got someone to lose. So I never slept in the open. And I never had someone to lose.
When the city-witches came into the Greens to reclaim me for civilization, I’d had no one to fight them. No one to return to. No one to miss.
They call it an act of mercy and heroism, tracking down the feral ones and rehabilitating us, but it didn’t feel like rescue. It felt like being trapped. Being cornered. Being killed.
By now I’ve learned how to stay inside, how to stay clean, how to work, how to cook my food, how to talk. But I’d never learned to be still. To let myself be seen. To be loved.
Not like this…
Linus’ eyes are shut, but flickering under his lids. He’s seeing something in his dreams. I hope it’s pretty and interesting.
I want to touch his face, but I’m afraid to break this quiet, this peace before I understand it. So I stay. Curled under his arm, looking up at his magic-touched eyes. Almost inhumanly large, but not quite. He told me the glasses help to minimize the effect of the magic, but also that he never minded it.
It was a harmless side-effect that most scyer monitors got used to. They had access to potions to reverse it, but he never minded.
He confessed so nervously. Was he telling me he’d change himself if I didn’t like it?
I do like it.
I like that he sees beauty in the ordinary and the small. I like when he talks about wild ivy, or the wall of graffiti poetry or actual art in a museum as if that are all part of the same secret truth. And maybe for him they are, and he’s always trying to share this holy truth. Not with the certainty of the city-witches or the weak smiles of the priests. I don’t understand it yet, maybe I never will, but he wants me to see it, too.
And I want to become someone who can see it.
When Linus took me to the hatching witch-light, I was afraid. That much magic, unfettered and wild. It didn’t belong in the city, not where all the magic was so tamed and soft. The shimmering wish-giver was too much like the Greens. Something that will move you, or eat you, or change you without asking if it will hurt you, or if you will recover from it.
But because to Linus it was just something pretty and interesting, I didn’t flinch from it. I didn’t try to hide.
He never seems surprised when I flinch, or by how I peer around a corner before I step into the open. He gives me the space to feel safe and moves slowly with me. I know he sees it, but that’s the nice thing about Linus. He looks at something to see what makes it pretty, what makes it interesting, what makes it… itself. He doesn’t want to tame it or to rescue it. Just see it as it is and admire it.
I didn’t mean to fall asleep on him.
I should probably get up and sneak away. There’s something strange about sleeping upright beside someone all night, with his arm wrapped around you and your hands on his knee. If we slept like that in the Green we would be moved together. Neither of us would have lost the other.
I won’t lose him. I’d miss him, so I’d look for him. I’d fight to keep him. The thought makes me smile.
Maybe when he wakes up and we both stretch out our cramps and aches, we will go to that cafe with the graffiti poetry. Or maybe we will go to a garden and eat fruit and I will point out the birds or the squirrels. I notice them, like I notice the moon, a trace of the wild in this place of order and reason. Something small and flitting that reminds me of home.
I should wake him up, but for one more minute, I’ll stay.
In the warmth of his arms, in the hush of the morning, on this quiet, ordinary day.
And I will be still.
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