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Kyouka has served the Moon Goddess for half her life.
When the moon is full, she knows her goddess watches over her, and every night, she feels Her gaze the way she feels the wind cutting through the trees.
The elders say her devotion is wrong. It doesn’t follow the sacred texts, and her perversion of their beliefs will only lead her down a path to darkness.
But how? How can Kyouka’s devotion be anything but pure when she loves Her this much?
Kyouka knows she’s gifted. She can summon songs the way sorcerers summon magic, and when she became a priestess, she thought that she could use her gift for Her, that She would love her songs and consider them as good as the wine the elders pour for Her into the earth.
And Kyouka can feel Her, even if the others can’t.
They don’t believe, not really. She knows because she sees the dilution in their eyes when they chant their prayers. It’s nothing like how her heart soars when she plays for Her.
It would be nice to know if She was listening, but she doesn’t need her faith confirmed. She believes She’s here, and that’s enough.
Tonight she returns again.
Kyouka always brings her harp to the pools when the moon is full. The first time she came here it was because it was far enough from the temple that she wouldn’t wake anyone, but now she comes because this is where the moon’s power gathers, where Her blessings reach.
But tonight the song she plays is not of her faith or gratitude, but a love song to the goddess she sees in her dreams with flowing black hair long enough to wrap around the world and the kindest smile Kyouka’s ever known.
Tonight she plays because she knows she’s in love with Her, and her love will never be like the other priestesses’. Her love goes beyond ceremony and tradition.
Her goddess is her greatest muse.
She kneels in the grass and closes her eyes, plucking her first notes, and the wind swirls around her. She doesn’t dare open her eyes, because her goddess isn’t meant to be seen with mortal eyes. She should be felt and loved, and looking at Her would only feed Kyouka’s own satisfaction.
The language that comes out of her mouth isn’t her own, but whenever she sings for Her, it never is. The music pours out from her lips and fingers, and a distinct chill covers her skin, prickling the flesh.
She’s here, Kyouka knows it. She can feel Her the way she does in her dreams. Her goddess is here listening to her song, and Kyouka sings until the tears stream down her face.
She loves Her.
She’ll always love Her.
Kyouka’s head falls back with a cry, weeping fully and broken, and the softest hands gently grasp her jaw.
And like a fool she looks, a selfish, selfish fool, completely undeserving of the goddess before her. She looks, opening her tired eyes, and she sees the most beautiful girl looking back at her, eyes as big as the world and skin glowing with pure moonlight.
“Don’t stop,” She says, Her voice light and echoing a thousand times as She holds Kyouka’s face in Her hands. “Your voice is so beautiful.”
Kyouka’s harp falls to the ground, and she completely forgets how to speak, how to sing, how to be.
Her goddess smiles at her, and that’s when Kyouka realizes she’s on her knees, dirtying herself for her and smudging the lavender drapes around her legs in the grass.
“Sing for me, Kyouka.”
Kyouka opens her mouth, but She catches her lips instead, taking her song for herself, and Kyouka closes her eyes, letting herself be kissed for the first time by the only one who ever could.
As so were the vows she took, not realizing that by saving herself for her goddess, She would one day come down to her.
She kisses Kyouka, and her mouth tastes like spring water, pure and cold as moonlight, and Kyouka’s hands hover because she aches to touch Her, but how can she, a human, do such a thing?
“Are you afraid of me, Kyouka?”
“No,” she says against her better judgement. She shouldn’t speak.
But then She smiles, soft as lilies and as lovely as the pools themselves.
“I came so far to hear your voice,” She says. “Why would you keep it from me?”
Kyouka shakes her head with a pathetic murmur before she manages the words. “I’m not one of your high priestesses. The elders would–.”
“Waste vessels of wine without thinking why I would want them,” She says in a whisper, and yet Her thousand voices somehow echo over the pools. “I want to hear your beautiful music again. It’s been so long since someone last sang for me. I came to this world for you.”
Kyouka closes her eyes, and she sings, and she doesn’t stop until the hands on her face release her, and her eyes open in terror because the thought that She could be gone is too much to bare.
She’s no longer at the pools.
Kyouka stares in awe at the room around her and its heavy stone walls and lavender tapestries whipping in a constant breeze. This must be the realm of the gods.
Her goddess lifts her to her feet, and Kyouka has to look up to her because she’s as tall as she is beautiful.
“Here you can call me Momo.”
“Momo,” she says.
Momo smiles, and a glass harp appears in Kyouka’s hands, and when Kyouka plucks the first chord, she feels her soul fuse both to it and to Momo.
Blessed by the moon Herself, she plays for Her, and her songs become the changing seasons, the tides, and the cycle of life itself.
That’s how the moon’s bride became the Goddess of Music, loved through every song, and as eternal as the goddess she loves.