The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It was nothing but a gray, cinder block wall, but she’d climb up on the bed and watch shadows grow tall and then shrink away in that lanky way that shadows did.

And at night, the moonlight cast new shadows. Moon shadows that whispered secrets she could never quite make out.

She watched them the way her parents watched that noisy rectangle mounted on the living room wall in the evenings after she was supposed to be in bed. The shadows didn’t make her cry the way the TV made her mother cry when she thought no one was watching.

Luna found the shadows comforting and predictable. She supposed what was on the news was predictable, too, though far from comforting.

Her parents didn’t know that she sometimes peered around the corner and watched with them. That she saw the things they were afraid of. The things that made them cry. Those things gave her nightmares, too.

Her mother had built her life as beautiful as she could, especially considering they existed entirely within the walls of this three-bedroom apartment. But her mother made the best of what they did have. She’d taught Luna to read and write, which opened a new window into endless worlds within her own imagination.

Her father would sometimes venture into the outside world and be gone for days at a time. When he was gone, her mother would keep her happy mask on and continue their routine. Always smiling. She was always cycling through her roles as mother, teacher, and joykeeper.

Luna had always seen her mother as someone with a mastery of powerful magic, like the heroes in the books she read. Her mother’s magic was capable of stealing away sorrows and healing her family with unconditional love.

Luna saw the magic most clearly when her mother’s touch smoothed the creases in her father’s face after he returned from wherever it was he’d gone off to.

Her mother’s magic melted away her own worries, too, so she always thought it had to be real magic.

Each time her father returned, filthy from the red dust storms, her mother added wife to her list of roles, and he added father and husband to his list. And Luna went on being Luna, in the role of cocooned daughter.

But Luna was thirteen now. Her birthday had come and gone and the magic wasn’t working the same way it once had. Her parent’s embraces no longer stopped the ache in her chest. It was a pain that amplified as she tried to sleep until she shot up in her bed, clutching her chest to slow her racing heart.

The shiny memories of her past had never included the glassy eyes of her parents the way she saw them now, and she hadn’t remembered them having to fight so hard to smile. Joy was becoming too hard to hold on to.

She wasn’t fitting into her role the way she used to either. She was outgrowing the little girl they wanted her to be.

Sometimes, she imagined emerging from the safety of her silk cocoon and flying out the window in the form of a moth. Luna had learned all about moths. She was named after one, after all. And she knew she was very close to the next stage of her own metamorphosis.

It would be her final form. Finally free.

What she didn’t know was whether those moths still existed in this world or if they were forever frozen within the pages of her books. She wasn’t sure if the red dust or the wind would tear their delicate wings before they even had a chance to fly.

She wanted to see magic.

The real kind.

Maybe the moon knew magic.

But she was starting to feel she never would. Her mother’s happy mask was crumbling, and that thing she once thought was magic, she’d held it so closely, and it was almost gone.

Or worse, maybe there was just no magic.

It wasn’t real.

Maybe it had never existed at all. Maybe she knew there were no superheroes or sorceresses to save the world.

Maybe it was all just red dust and shadows.

So, should she trade her hope for the red dust-covered shadows of reality that she could see through the window of Artem’s room?

She snuggled into the blankets that still smelled of her brother and wondered why he’d gone. Why wasn’t he here to help keep the magic alive? Was he taken the way their parents seemed to think or had he finally slipped out the window to get a better look at the outside world? Was he following the shadows or searching for magic to save them all? Could he be the hero they needed? She hoped so.

She missed him.

As for Luna, when she found the courage, she would slip out that window too, and when she did, she’d follow the shadows she could see through the red dust. If nothing else, she’d search for the moths. And she hoped they’d lead her straight to the moon.