ACT ONE; INITIATE CONTACT
SCENE TWO;  THE MOON AND I 
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"I THINK THE MUGS SHOULD GO ON THESE SHELVES, DON'T YOU THINK?"

"For the last time, I am not an interior decorator, Salem," Alaric huffs, smirking as she narrows her eyes in his direction. "I offered to help you carry stuff up because I'm nice, not because I wanted to help unpack."

Salem snorts, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she places her few mismatched coffee mugs onto the open shelves above her counters. "Oh, yeah, you're so nice, Ric. A real saint, in my opinion."

Alaric shifts, pulling another stack of plates out of a box and setting them on the counter beside her. He nudged his elbow into her ribs, and she immediately tries to shove hers into his side but he blocks it before she can. "Knock it off,"

"You started it, asshole," She pulls the packing paper from between her plates and throws it mindlessly on the kitchen floor, adding to the mess that's already there. "I really want to finish unpacking before I go to bed tonight but I'm already over this."

"Well, if you don't finish tonight, you'll have to do it after you get home from work,"

She groans, face twisting in distaste. "Why did you do this to me? I would've never moved if you didn't tell me that your neighbor moved out!"

"You told me you'd been looking for a place!" He holds his hands up in surrender, a chuckle leaving his lips at her dramatics. "I was helping you out, because I'm a great friend."

"Yeah, yeah," She waves him off, but he doesn't take offense, because he knows that sincerity is rare in their friendship and she's not big on feelings to begin with. "You can ditch me if you have plans tonight, this is literally all I plan on doing."

Alaric winces, shaking his head as he forces his grimace into a somewhat believable smile. "No, uh– no plans." He'd had plans with Jenna, but with Isobel's sudden arrival in town and John's infuriating refusal to leave, he wasn't even sure where they stood right now. At the least, he knew she didn't want to see him any time soon. "I'm sort of avoiding everyone I know besides you right now, so this works out in my favor."

Salem faces him, raising a brow at his words. "Oh, yeah? What's going on?"

"Ah, well," He huffs, thinking of a quick lie. "My friend Damon– he's a bit of a dick. He's one of those people you can only handle in small doses, you know?"

"I'm very familiar," She nods, sliding the stacks of plates onto the shelves. "Everyone I met in college was like that. Like the whole world revolves around them and shit."

Alaric nodded, finding truth in her words when compared to Damon. He glanced away from Salem as he pulled a calendar out of the box beside him, eyes drifting over the generic design of it. "Hey, where do you want this put up?"

"Oh, just, uh, put it over there above that counter with the coffee pot. I want to be able to see it in the mornings."

Alaric nods and grabs a tack from the small container she'd set out for hanging things, and he quickly flips to the current month and pins it to the wall. His eyes flicker to the various things she's got scribbled on the small boxes, and he thinks it's fitting that an art teacher has such nice handwriting. His eyes fall towards the end of the week, and he furrows his brows at the way the square has a large 'X' drawn through it. His eyes widen when he sees the small, almost unnoticeable marking that depicts the full moon, and he looks at Salem over his shoulder.

"Hey, what's this for?" He points at it, feigning nonchalance as Salem narrows her eyes at the calendar, registering his question.

She shrugs a shoulder, pulling out multiple coffee mugs. "It's a full moon,"

Alaric's eyes widen and he half-smiles, more of a grimace than anything. "Anything special about that?"

"My mom was a nurse," Salem hums, not bothering to look at Alaric as she drops the silverware into the organized drawer. "She always said full moons are when the crazies come out, so I've been superstitious about it my entire life. I don't like to leave the house."

Immediately, he breathes a sigh of relief and turns his attention back to the box he'd been unpacking. "I've heard crazy stories about that, actually. Did your mom work here in town?"

Amidst his own relief, Alaric fails to notice Salem's mirroring relief as he changes the subject. Clearing her throat, the woman smiles slightly, her lips pulling up.

"She worked in town part time, but she mostly did hospice. She had the patience of a saint." Quickly clearing her throat, she raised a brow at him. "Hey, are you chaperoning the dance tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I am,"

"Oh, thank God," Salem put a hand to her chest. "I signed up at the beginning of the year, but I did not want to endure that torture alone."

Alaric chuckles, pulling out a fake potted plant. "A bunch of teenagers dry-humping to sixties music, and punch that we all have to pretend isn't spiked. It'll be our personal slice of hell."

Salem laughs, shaking her head at his less than enthusiastic tone. "I can't wait."

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She walked into her mom's bedroom, a smile on her face as she pushed the door open with her hip, careful not to disturb the too-full cup of coffee. "Mom, come on! I made pancakes,"

Her mother didn't stir in the bed, and Salem set the cup of coffee on her nightstand before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. "Mom, wake up, come on,"

Again, her mother didn't even twitch. "Mom?"

Salem's breath hitched in her throat and she laid a hand on her mother's cheek, feeling the chill to her skin. "Mom, come on,"

Her throat tightened around the lump that grew in it and she dragged her thumb beneath her mother's eye, wishing for any sign of life. A shaky sigh left her lips and leaned over her mother's still figure and pressed a kiss to her forehead, brushing the frizzy baby hairs off of her forehead.

Standing slowly, Salem walked back to the kitchen in a daze, grabbing the landline off the wall and dialing 911.

"911, what is your emergency?"

"My mom," Salem choked out, her voice shockingly calm. "My mom is dead."

"What did you say?"

"My mom is dead." Salem repeated slowly, staring through the kitchen window that overlooked the peaceful street they lived on. "She had cancer, she was sick. She isn't waking up. She's dead."

"What's your address, ma'am?"

Salem listed off their address and the woman on the other end assured her that an ambulance would be there in a few minutes. She hung up the phone shortly after that and sat on a stool at the counter until the sound of sirens echoed closer and closer to her house.

The paramedics hurried into the house when she didn't move to answer the door, and one gave her a quick once over. "Where's your mom, kid?"

Salem lifted a hand, pointing down the hall towards her mother's bedroom, he nodded, the rest of them quickly departing after him.

Time moved slowly as they eventually wheeled her mother's now-covered body out of the house, and she watched with furrowed brows as a police officer approached. "Do you have someone you can stay with for a few days?"

"I'm 18," She says. "I'm going back to college on Monday."

The officer paused, giving her a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She doesn't say anything, and after a minute, the man walks away, his radio echoing with something she doesn't hear.

Salem stands from the stool and walks down the hall towards her mother's room, pushing the door open to find the mess the paramedics left while they handled her mom's body. Ignoring the disarray, she steps into the room, walking over to the nightstand where the coffee she'd made for her mom remained untouched and growing colder by the second.

Folded under the mug, unbeknownst to her before, Salem notices a piece of paper. Her fingers reach for it, lifting the mug up slightly to grab the torn paper.

She unfolds it slowly, seeing her mother's handwriting creased in the middle of it. When she reads what her mother wrote, her shoulders tense, and she lets out a sigh.

Salem wakes from the dream calmly. She doesn't cry or feel the heavy grief like she used to, and there's no body-encasing nausea that keeps her up on the bathroom floor all night in reminder of the loss she'd gone through on her own. She's peaceful, as if she'd dreamed of a paradise. Sighing, she pulls her covers off and lets her feet land on the hardwood floors of her loft. For a moment, she looks out of the large window behind her bed, straight into the heart of the nearly-full moon sitting in the sky.

She wonders what her life would be like without the control of the moon, but her mother's words ring in her mind as true as they ever were.

The moon is your center. If you are true to yourself, you are true to the moon.

Her bare feet carried her to her kitchen and she grabbed a glass from the shelf she'd unpacked earlier that day, filling it up with lukewarm tap water she grimaces at. Her mismatched eyes shift to the calendar hung on the wall, and the 'X' drawn through the date in a few days' time.

She'd never been a wild person near the full moon, but the uneasy, prickling feeling never left the back of her neck even as she went back to her bed, trying to distract herself with the thought of what she had to do at work tomorrow.

She fell asleep with the thought of the decade dance on her mind, and didn't dream of her mother again.

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author's note; idk if i specified but (obviously) salem and jackson are siblings but they're half siblings!! they have the same dad and different moms 

edited and published; 2.1.23. 

- liz