RENZ sat on her arm chair. The silence in the class room was deafening, yet she could already hear her classmates’ mocking laughter. She was heavily scrutinized by her professor again, who happened to also be a lawyer. Last night, she had been reviewing the topic that would be covered for today’s class discussion—Criminal Procedure—and she understood its points so easily. Memorizing the terminologies have been effortless. That’s why it baffled her why her mind suddenly went blank in the middle of her recitation.

Her butt hadn’t warmed up her seat yet when one of her classmates was called to recite. The said classmate managed to answer the professor’s question smoothly.

After class, Florenz Sara Banawa picked up her backpack. When she got out of the class room she was already holding her cell phone with one hand, while the other held her earphones. She picked a song to listen to before putting on her earphones to hear it play.

Florenz, or most commonly called ‘Renz,’ was already in her second year at a law school. She stays in a boarding house close to the school. The boarding house should be her second home, if the school could not. Yet, she was feeling a kind of indifference with that place.

The boarding house was nice. It looked like the typical, old Spanish house used to depict a boarding house on Filipino TV sitcoms. It has windows made of capiz shells, an open-walled basement, and the wooden stairs must be climbed before reaching the first floor of the house. It has a foundation made of cement, but the higher floors were made of sturdy wood.

The living room and kitchen of the boarding house were always clean, and shared among the boarders. There was only one bathroom, but Renz hadn’t dealt with water interruption or a clogged toilet in there yet. But then, a house was not automatically homey because of the convenience it brings. For a house to become a home, it has to feel safe. It has to be peaceful. And those two things were lacking.

Regarding the lack of peace, Renz wasn’t pertaining to her roommate Bloom Mariano. Bloom was nice. They have been sharing a room for two years but never argued about anything. None of them stole each other’s stuff, fought over an electrical plug, or raced to the bathroom to get ahead of each other.

The only thing that Renz blamed for the lack of peace in the boarding house were the neighbors.

The very thought of these neighbors made Renz make a run for it to the university gate. She shoved her way past other passengers just to be the first one seated in the jeepney. Based on the clock of her cell phone, it was already two in the afternoon, quarter to three to be precise. She took note that by three in the afternoon, she must be already at the boarding house.

When the jeepney unloaded her at the corner of a narrow street, she bolted straight to the boarding house. She completely ignored the boarders that she brushed past along the stairs and the living room. Renz headed straight to her bedroom and dropped her backpack on the floor. Without changing clothes, she took off her shoes and laid down on the single bed at the far corner of the room.

She closed her eyes.

Renz lost track of time. She tossed and turned twice or thrice, yet her effort to relax failed to help her fall asleep. The longer it took her to sleep, the more her anxiety took place. It was like a trickle of rain at first, then raindrops shooting on a galvanized roof like bullets. Her anxiety was starting to kick in.

Instead of falling asleep, she nervously waited for the peacefulness of the room to be ruined. It was as if she was gazing helplessly at a ticking time bomb, a time bomb she could not diffuse.

Imagining a time bomb’s clock managed to make her feel dizzy though. Dizziness is a good sign. It only meant that she was already falling asleep. Her eyes slowly closed.

For twenty minutes, Renz finally felt adrift in the clouds. It had been so long since the last time she felt this comfortable . . .

She jolted up on her bed when an earsplitting feedback followed by a voice pierced the ears of the whole neighborhood. The pests began singing using their microphones again.

Renz sat up and screamed, but no one seemed to hear.

It was drowned by the singing voice from the bass speakers of the videoke machine.

***

RENZ rested her chin on her palm while sitting in front of the study table, eyes shifting between the open book and the notebook she was scribbling at. She was reading and making bullet points for each terminology that she would come across from the book. Determination to make it up for her bad recitation earlier drove her to burn the midnight oil.

But how could she review properly? It was already eleven in the evening, but her pests of a neighbors were still ‘bawling’ at their videoke machines.

Renz groaned and shook her head. Then, she stared at her book. ‘Focus. Focus. Focus.’

She tried using her earphones earlier. But as usual, it was useless. Instead of her own music, it was being toned down into nothing by the out of tune voices and the clamourous volume of the videoke outside. The noise made Renz oblivious of Bloom’s entrance in their bedroom. She was still wearing her school uniform—a white button-down blouse with short sleeves and gray slacks pants. Her roommate was singing along with their neighbors.

Bloom put her backpack down on her bed, which was positioned on a corner close to the door. Her bed shared a very small distance to Renz’ that was beside the study table and the window.

“Oh, why is the window shut?” Bloom stood behind her. “Aren’t you feeling hot?”

“It’s noisy outside,” Renz muttered, her eyes still on the book. “I don’t mind the heat. The fan is faced to me.”

“But later, you have to rotate the electric fan, ha? The air has to reach my bed.”

“Yes. Sure. By the way, why are you late? Lucky you, Nanay Cita did not scold you,” she said, mentioning the landlady of the boarding house.

“I hung around our school for a bit. Plus, how can Nanay Cita scold me? She’s already too old, so I bet she was already deeply asleep at this hour,” Bloom chuckled lowly.

“Lucky her, for having weak ears.”

Bloom was already fishing out clothes from her drawer. “Why are you not yet used to the noise here? Just use earphones when you go to sleep.”

“Nonesense. Even if I put on my earphones, I will still hear the voices of the demons.”

Bloom laughed, but Renz could not hear that because of the noise from their neighbor’s videoke. Her roommate closed her drawer and draped her clothes on one arm. Then, she hung her pink bath towel over her shoulder.

“I’ll just take a shower.” Bloom headed to the door.

Renz stopped reading but never glanced at Bloom. “Go ahead.”

***

EVERYTHING was deep, dark blue. Smoky with a tinge of green in the midst of blue hues that could only be seen overhead, right on the area that the muted light from the surface could touch. Aside from the greenish, blue waters above, whitish speckles were also dancing.

All of these, reflected on a pair of green spectating eyes with black, narrow-irises.

Small bubbles surrounded the creature when an apparition of three spirits appeared. They were all wearing white, and looked as if a gentle breeze was toying with the strands of their hairs and the ends of their skirts. While floating, they drew themselves closer before halting a few meters away from the giant eyes of the creature.

‘When will you get your mission done?’ said one of them using telepathy. It stared at the creature without even the slightest of quivers on its lips.

The large eyes never blinked. ‘Mission?’

‘Didn’t you swear to swallow the seven moons in the sky?’ said the other one telepathically.

‘There’s one more left. When will you devour it?’ added the third spirit.

‘Why are you asking me these? Didn’t you all join forces to stop me years ago? What’s happening?’

The three could not look away from the creature’s eyes, eyes that were bigger than the three spirits whose were all human-sized.

‘If you devoured the last moon—’ one of them explained. ‘—you will change the way the world turns. You will change the way the tides wave. You will change the blow and direction of the wind, but not the seasons and climate because they will be gone. There will be no dry and wet seasons; no summer, spring, autumn, winter.’

The second spirit continued. ‘These effects are the only remedy we have in mind that will heal nature from climate change.’

‘Meaning, you want to use my thirst for vengeance to save the humankind that I despise so much?’ the creature gritted in spite of displaying calmness. ‘My goal of swallowing the moon is for them to die. Not to help nature that nurtures them and provides for them!’

The shape of the creature slowly outlined in the dark waters like slivers of silver. It could already be seen that the three spirits floated above its long snout. The bright white light coming from the spirits touched the scales of the creature making its bluish black hue glint against the deep, sea darkness.

‘There’s no assurance though that swallowing the moon will meet the expectations of the three in white.’

The three spirits and the creature got confused: where was that fifth voice coming from?

Looking up or looking around was unnecessary. Their senses were sharp. They would simply glance at the direction where the foreign presence was coming from, but they remained still. They just could not locate the presence of the strange voice.

‘When the moon is gone . . . the tides could become too high or evenly distributed in all the oceans all over the world. When the moon is gone . . . the winds can get violent. When the moon is gone . . . either we lose the four seasons or the opposite, their effects will magnify . . . So, I guess, just push your luck.’

Everyone fell speechless, but a gentle motion brought turbulence to the calm waters. The underwater rippled a little as the giant creature stretched out its big mouth into a sinister smile that exposed its fangs.

Renz blinked and was transported from under the ocean back to her room at the boarding house.

“My dream is so weird,” she yawned while sitting up straight. Apparently, she fell asleep on the study table.

When she turned to Bloom’s bed, that was when she noticed that her roommate was not there at all.

‘Did she go to school already? What time is it anyway?’

Renz was about to look for her cell phone to check the time, but before she could make another move, she heard a voice.

‘Who says that what you just saw is only a dream, babaylan?’ Priestess.

She froze in her seat. “B-Babaylan?”