WHO Luna WHEN Monday 21st September WHERE Brooklyn WHAT Moving on and moving forward
Luna had honestly thought that all she needed was a few weeks. A few weeks to mourn, and then sheโd pull herself back up and get on with her life.
But now that sheโd had a few weeks away from Peitho and Hermes, everything inside her still ached like it had just happened. She was so angry with herself for fucking it all up, for not trusting in them like she was supposed to. She had given them the reins of her life and then snatched them back when it felt inconvenient and it had, predictably, blown up in her face.
But, hurt or not, Luna couldnโt just live in this hotel room forever. She went out to the goth club Illunis most nights - Thursday, Friday and Saturday were all full on dance parties, while the rest of the week it was a slightly more sedate gothic bar atmosphere, occasionally with a live band โ and slept and read through most of the day. Luna had stopped buying drinks while she was out โ she had box wine a home because needed to cut back on spending โ but she accepted any drinks strangers bought for her.
Luna had made out with a few of those strangers, but nothing further than that. There was a part of her that didnโt want to lose the last touch of her gods.
A week after Hermes kicked her out, Peitho had called. Luna almost cried at the sound of the goddessโ voice. She had told Luna that she loved her, but that going behind their back with Ares was a betrayal. โHe swore an oath on Styx for you,โ Peitho had said, and the disappointment and hurt in her tone was almost more than Luna could bear. โDo you know how many people heโs done that for in two thousand years? I can almost count the instances on one hand.โ
After the phone call, phrases kept bouncing around inside Luna and wouldnโt let her find peace.
You hurt us.
Heโs broken over this.
We trusted you.
Luna tried to wash it all down with box wine, but either the wine or the words were too bitter to take.
The day after the phone call from Peitho, she received a message from Merlin asking about her new freelance status. The thought of it made her sick, like her stomach was falling out from beneath her. It wasnโt about Merlin. Merlin always seemed perfectly fine: a pervy but rather fun old man with very cool powers and a very interesting library. It was the idea of selling herself at all.
But it didnโt take long to soften to the idea โ prostitution was one of the only jobs sheโd ever done, and she was pretty good at it all by now.
Shit, maybe she needed to start an OnlyFans and start working her image. She already had a foot in the door with her videos on Suedela. It wasnโt going to pay her bills, especially not while living in New York.
For a moment she thought that maybe she could move somewhere else, somewhere that wasnโt this prohibitively expensive city where humanity hummed endlessly, where cars crowded through canyons of glass amongst mountains of steel, where it was never truly silent and you were never truly alone.
No, never.
Luna loved this city. Loved it in the truest sense, because she had seen all the filth and depravity that it tried to hide beneath shiny exteriors, and she thought it beautiful anyway. She loved it when it was freezing and sleeting in the middle of November and one step onto the street could have you up to your calves in a surprise pothole full of icy water. She loved the heat that came wavering off the footpaths in summer, and how every dumpster smelled like death because of it. She loved those things because she loved the other moments that came with them: sheltering under Bethesda Terrace while snow danced and fell around the Angel of the Waters, a couple holding hands as they passed by. Lying on the grass in Bryant Park, still warm at 11pm and with waffle carts and ice-cream stalls open still and calling to her.
What was there that could compete with New York for Luna? Go back to Los Angeles โ muggy and difficult to navigate and full of people desperate for fame? A city that would remind her of all the previous break ups?
Go back even further, to New Mexico? To Albuquerque? For what reason would she ever choose to take those backwards steps?
So that part was, at least, settled.
Slowly she started looking at apartment listings, knowing that even a bad apartment was going to cost a lot- but it would be less than even this cheap hotel in the long run.
Luna was going to be okay, because she had decided โ just now โ that she needed to be. She wasnโt a person who rolled over and gave up. She was a person who pushed through, who worked it out, who made something better of herself when the situation seemed dire. And, right now, it seemed pretty dire.
First, an apartment. Everything else could come after that.