Wolf Under the Moonlight

"I see you even when you don't look up. The way your eyes dance with the wind... I wonder if they've ever looked for mine."

The town of Windmere always smelled like sea salt and jasmine.

Even at sunset, when the market stalls were closing and the gulls fell quiet, the breeze carried the scent through the cobbled streets like a whisper. Aria Lowell stood at the back door of Bloom & Vine, brushing petals from her apron. The last bouquet had been delivered. The sun had folded itself into the ocean. Her favorite time of day had finally arrived.

She slipped through the back gate, careful not to let it creak, and made her way up the hill that overlooked the harbor. There, tucked between two leaning cypress trees, sat a crooked little bench worn smooth by years of waiting.

Aria called it The Thinking Spot, even though she mostly came here to not think.

She sat down, tucked her legs beneath her, and let the sea do the talking. Boats bobbed gently below. The lighthouse blinked slowly, like a sleepy eye watching over the town. And the moon, as always, had arrived early - bold and full, as if it had something to prove to the sun.

Aria sighed.

She liked the quiet. She needed it.

Because during the day, she had to smile at strangers, arrange lilies and peonies like they meant something, and pretend like she wasn't aching for something else. Something undefined. Unnamed.

Her aunt, Mrs. Whitlock, called it a phase. "You're seventeen," she'd say while pruning roses. "This is the age for longing and poetry. It'll pass."

But Aria didn't want it to pass.

She wanted the feeling to make sense.

She stared at the sky until the first star blinked into existence, then turned back toward home. The walk was short, just a winding stone path past the baker's garden and through the alley behind the library. A cat darted across her feet and vanished into the ivy.

When she reached the small cottage she shared with her aunt, the windows glowed warm and yellow. Aria opened the door quietly, kicked off her shoes, and tiptoed past the living room. The old radio played jazz - something sleepy and soft.

She climbed the stairs to her attic room, the one with the slanted ceiling and moon-shaped window.

And there, sitting neatly on her windowsill, was an envelope.

White. Unmarked. Crisp.

She paused.

The window was shut. Locked, even. She hadn't opened it in days.