Old Maeg kept a jar of moonlight on her shelf.

"Don’t touch it," she warned. "Full moon’s truth will skin you clean."

Old Maeg kept a jar of moonlight on her shelf.

"Don’t touch it," she warned. "Full moon’s truth will skin you clean."

I touched it anyway.

She caught me, of course. Said if I was so curious, I might as well learn to steal it properly.

We began on a Waxing Crescent. Hopeful and thin, like me. She showed me how to climb the roof silently, how to hold the silver thimble just so. Moonlight doesn’t pour like water, she said. It must be coaxed.

Each phase gave something different.

Crescent for courage. She’d bottle it and sell it to soldiers, brides, and gamblers.

Gibbous for clarity. Scholars paid in gold for a single drop on the tongue.

Full for truth. Only the desperate dared ask for that.

She never stole the New Moon. “Nothing there but secrets,” she muttered. She always locked her windows tight.

I grew quick. Learned her steps, her mutterings. Learned that people didn’t want truth. They wanted stories that felt true. And Maeg was happy to sell them.

But the jar on the shelf was different. It glowed like a heartbeat. Full moonlight, pure and untouched.

One night, I opened it.

I only meant to look.

Instead, I saw.

Maeg, before her wrinkles. Laughing in a lover’s arms. Screaming as her baby was taken. Standing over a body with a bloody jar in hand. Face after face: hers, mine, others. All flashing silver-bright in the glass.

Truth.

It burned.

She found me curled in the corner, bleeding from the nose, eyes silvering over.

“Stupid boy,” she whispered, not unkind. “Now you know.”

I couldn’t speak for days. But when I could, I asked to stay.

“You sure?” she asked. “Truth like that doesn’t go quiet. It echoes.”

“I’d rather hear it,” I said, “than wonder.”

She nodded.

From then on, I wore gloves. Stole only slivers. Learned to listen.

I know now why the full moonlight is dangerous. Not because it lies, but because it doesn’t.

It shows what was, what is, and what you hide even from yourself.

I keep a jar on my own shelf now.

And I tell my apprentice the same thing Maeg told me:

“Don’t touch it.”

They will, of course.

They always do.