Lunar Eclipse

That was the last night I saw her. It.

It said… Jesus Christ! She was too beautiful and tantalizing to simply be addressed as an object. She said that her name was Tena, from her origin supposedly a balite tree. No one could see her but me, and that somehow comforted me from someone, other than her own kind, would draw her attention away from me. I was at a ripe fifteen, my boyhood influencing my moods and my neediness. She didn’t tell me her age, but she physically looked the same age as I was, though many an old wives would tell you that druids lived to up about a hundred years.

She didn’t even deserve to be called a druid. Your initial picture, and mine even, of one would probably be of this hideous creature, human in form and in some ways animal like, with eyes and skin of unearthly color, with twiggy fingers and long sharp nails, palms and feet as adhesive as a lizard’s, enabling it to go up and down its abode with ease and horrific fashion. To you, it would probably even have hair so thick and unkempt, like vines so it could camouflage itself as it sits heinously on top of its tree’s branches.

But Tena was astoundingly beautiful, and her beauty was human, actually. She had tan skin, unlike, again, of common fairy imagery, who would have an intimate white complexion, but her tan was intimate, no doubt. She had green eyes and green hair, the former as brilliant as the moon and the latter as smooth as zephyr. Her hair, too, was shaggy and not too long, and from afar she herself looked like a young tree if she stood still. In most aspects, she was human: five fingers, five toes, just the right number of eyes, nose, mouth, ears (long but not pointy), neck, legs, feet, hands…and dare I say, womanhood.

She asked me, a few nights after the one I first met her, “Do I resemble a human woman?”

“Yes, a lot,” I replied, “But human women are flesh-colored, like me. And they don’t have green hair, unless they color it with dye, and…”

“You blush, I see, though it is the New Moon and only stars alight my view of you.”

“Well, women of ours… they have a certain elevation in the middle of their…chests… and they have, they have… umm… slits, between their thighs.”

“Strange… aren’t my chests elevated?”

“Yes, they are…” In fact they’re amply elevated, yes, I thought, “but there’s still something that’s missing in the middle.”

I raised my shirt and showed her one of my nipples, for simple demonstration, of course.

“Oh, that,” She said, looking intently on that pinkish brown spot in the middle of my pale chest. “What is it for?”

“Well, actually we human men don’t have much use for it,” I taught her, pulling my shirt down and relaxed a while, “but human women have an important use for it, they use it to feed their children when they are too young to feed themselves.”

“But are woman… elevations as flat as human man’s?”

“No! But some are… Nya-ha. They are elevated because they store milk there, but we don’t because male milk comes from somewhere else.” I naughtily said. She didn’t comprehend, and I didn’t wonder why not, and I laughed about it myself, which she didn’t seem to mind.

“How about,” she continued, “these… slits, you call of?”

“I don’t have those, so I can’t show you. They run across that area, and they use it too… to show someone they’re really in love. Usually how they’re in love with human man. They let the man’s love enter those slits so they could be one…” I was saying this nervously, and not to be further embarrassed, I changed the topic, “Do you know what love is, Tena?”

“I do.” She said, surprisingly. She gazed at me then looked above towards the sky and said nothing more.

“I have knowledge of how it feels although it’s very foreign to me,” she continued, whispering, “it’s like how you humans know about the stars and the sun and other heavenly bodies but you’ve never exactly been there.”

“What do you know about it?” I asked, sounding as curious as I was, “and where did you know about it?”

“I’ve been around a long time,” she replied, emphasizing how long ‘long’ was, “and I’ve seen many humans come and go. And I’ve seen how they did.

The first time I saw a… ba… baby? Is that right? A baby. I was astounded by how human woman and man kept it so caringly, as if it fell from their arms it would break like piece of glass. It was so small, too, but it looked like a mixture of woman and man. It was like a medley of both, and it was beautiful. It did keep me up once in a while, with its annoying crying. Huwah! Huwah! Druid children are as quiet as petal falling to the ground.

Then after a few lunar cycles, the baby grew. And grew. And grew. No longer did it look like itself when it was embraced in woman’s arms. She was a loud woman, very mean, screaming to her parents when she came home late at night from somewhere with some man. She had ornaments all over her, looking like a shrub with mixed berries, and she wore really loose clothes that widened in at the bottom, looking like a silhouette of a tree. She kept me awake, always coming in loudly from that engine thing that brings her places. Sometimes she would breathe ‘white twig’ and have smelly mist come out her mouth, and I cough and cough when I inhale its mist once it reaches my balite. Of course she can’t hear my discomfort because she’s not special like you. But I wish she was so that she can stop bothering me with putrid mist!”

“She sounds like a hippie. That wasn’t too long ago, for your… age.” I said. Though her story lingered, I was fascinated now at how everything seemed alien to her… the baby, the clothing and how she described it, even the cigarette or possibly even one of them sticks she called ‘white twig’. Then I realized my own remark and, at the same time, recalled her saying something about ‘druid children’. How were they reproduced anyway?

I asked her for an explanation, for no one else would know but her.

“Well, druids from our class, we are called the Buanon, we follow lunar cycles, stages of moon. Every new moon Buanon are created by the heart of tree, usually balite, but sometimes narra and acacia have Buanons occupying them, too. No one is responsible for the creation of us, perhaps we’re just influenced by moon’s powers. When the moon is full, our growth too, becomes full, and so we can go out of the tree’s center and into the human realm.

Our sole purpose is to nurture the tree. Why do you think it lasts long with just rain? You think being in soil and just having occasional water and a lot of sunlight enough? Trees have life like you and I, but they are not mobile to fend for themselves. So we gather nurturing elements from sky, water, land, and sometimes from hearts of human beings and other creatures, and nurture the tree. The tree in turn, provides our home, and we feel very safe there.

Sometimes, other types of druids occupy our tree, some grotesque and evil looking, others rash and grouchy, others meek, others mischievous, but we’re strong enough to defend our tree. Sometimes, if tree big enough, we can share, but usually one of us don’t last long with the other. Druids are very loyal to their classes.”

Tena paused. A long one. I didn’t know how to continue because I was nostalgic of the stories my “influenced” mother affixed me with as a child. All those fairies and creatures that she claimed she saw had all the needed details that would reveal how much an influence LSD was in her nurturing days. Of course I saw the colors and the whimsicality enjoyable at that young age, and though she was dysfunctional she wasn’t negligent of me at all.

I looked at Tena after that short reverie. Looking at her was like being entranced by another reverie. But she seemed taken aback by something – something she failed to explain to me. And I knew just what it was, though I’m not sure how, until this very day.

I looked at my fingers as I saw its edges highlighted by moonlight. “Do you live forever? Do you die? How do you die?”