When the Moon Hatched

“I close my eyes and plunge into the melody in the same way I once plunged into life—but with the words I’ve since learnt how to speak. Armored by the horrors I’ve encountered since.”

Raeve’s deep attachment to the song she sings creates curiosity about her past. The implication that there was once a time where she loved freely but has since closed herself off to it due to past suffering suggests that there are deep losses from her past yet to be explored.

“She pretends not to worry about me; I pretend not to worry about her. We coexist in parallel with zero expectations—bar the odd supply list and the fancy things she makes for me—and it works blissfully.”

Even prior to Essi’s death, Raeve has closed herself off to loving others. She prefers the emotional distance they keep and the mechanical nature of their friendship, which allows her to pretend that she doesn’t feel for Essi much more deeply than they let on. This passage makes early note of Raeve’s coping mechanisms for protecting her weary, beaten heart.

“I don’t want her to tell me she’s worried. That she cares. I don’t want to say those same words back to her. The folk I care about die.”

This passage references Raeve’s limiting, false belief that she is responsible for the deaths of her loved ones. This false belief drives her to disconnect from others and fuels her Fear of Love.

“‘I love you.’ The admission spills without pause. A heavy truth tilled from the raw, exposed ache in my chest. I realize the words were there all this time, tucked beneath my calloused bits, hiding in a place I thought they were safe. Nothing’s ever safe.”

Raeve is able to tell Essi she loves her only when Essi is dying. Though, in this moment, Raeve regrets not having told Essi that she loved her before, she responds to the loss by shutting herself down further to the opportunity to love others.

“She nuzzles into my neck like she thinks she’s safe. She’s not. Nobody I care about ever is.”

Raeve’s changed perception of Nee following Essi’s death evidences her shift in mindset. While she was already emotionally reserved after Fallon’s death, now she is determined never to care about anyone again.

“Something about the way he rasps the word cuts me down the middle, like he’s stuffing those big, strong arms into my frosty depths, churning my lake into a storm of slush.”

Raeve refers to her internal icy lake, a metaphor for her repressed emotions. This passage reveals the effect Kaan has to pull her emotions from her, no matter how hard she attempts to shove them down beyond reach.

“Her wide, manic eyes lock with mine, and there’s something in those mossy eyes that disturbs my internal lake. Tears flow down her cheeks, and she begins shaping words I can’t hear…though I can see.”

Once again, lake imagery is used to describe an interaction with someone from Raeve’s past—Veya. When Raeve remembers Veya’s name but cannot recall how, she senses a disturbance in the internal lake where all her repressed memories and emotions live, hinting that something from her past has emerged.

“He’s watching me with a haunting intensity that threatens to peel off one of the many calluses crusting my heart. A look that presses against my chest. My soul.”

This passage hints at the effect Kaan has on Raeve’s hardened heart. His ability to slip past her defenses is terrifying to her due to her Fear of Love. The calloused heart is similar to the icy lake—another recurring metaphor Raeve uses to describe the way her painful experiences have caused her to close herself off to emotion.

“Moonplumes don’t survive in the sun, and I can’t lose her. My heart can’t take another hit. I’d rather die than watch her turn to stone.”

This passage from Elluin’s journal marks the beginning of present Raeve’s beliefs about love and loss. Though Elluin begins as a sweet girl who loves everyone with her whole heart, at this point, her losses have made her jaded and guarded.

“I’ve killed folk in the same manner. But seeing this poor, innocent creature loosen its final, gurgling breath jostles something inside me. Makes me feel sick to the stomach.”

This passage from Raeve’s point of view calls back to earlier chapters from Elluin’s journal entries. The entries that detail Elluin’s trip with Haedeon to secure a Moonplume egg highlight her deep compassion for the innocent and vulnerable. Despite Raeve’s now hardened exterior and her willingness to harm bad people without hesitation, she still cannot stand harming animals.

“I cast a noose around the delicate, vulnerable feeling. Hang it from one of my ribs where I can look at its rotting corpse whenever I feel my heart doing the fluttering thing it’s doing right now. Because that’s what happens when I get attached in any way at all. Death.”

This passage paints a brutal picture of how Raeve views her own emotions. To compare her emotions to a rotting corpse hanging by a noose symbolizes her intentional killing off of any potential connection to others. It also serves as a reminder of the dangers should she give into loving someone else.

“I’m tired. Tired of losing things I love. Tired of trying to rip this stupid diadem off my brow so I can wield the power I need to get Slátra home and take my throne from the asshole who thinks he owns me. Tired of being spoken down to by males who believe they know what’s good for me and my kingdom I miss so much, now being run by a cruel, selfish, greedy male I wouldn’t trust with my worst enemy.”

Elluin’s optimism fades the longer she is as a prisoner in Dhomm. She becomes tired and reclusive just as Haedeon became after his accident. She loses her sense of self, her inner strength, and her ability to see the light in the world around her.

“What if he says something too big and painful for me to discard? What if his words resonate with another unsettling strike of familiarity? Drains more of my icy lake? Exposes more stones? What then?”

The threat Kaan poses to Raeve’s intentional avoidance of her emotions becomes very clear to her the longer they spend time together. This passage illustrates her awareness of this danger and the worry that he will empty the lake she’s spent years filling with things she wishes to avoid.

“My thoughts tunnel to a memory I discarded long ago, its corpse laid out on the shore of my internal lake, stripped of all the frilly emotion I plucked from it, leaving only the bony skeleton of something that might’ve hurt one time.”

While the practice of dumping her emotions into the internal lake rather than dealing with them is unhealthy, this passage illustrates its advantages from Raeve’s perspective. She views a once painful memory she drowned in the lake now as a corpse on the shore. Only the bony skeleton is left, leaving nothing of substance to hurt her anymore.

“I happen to like living in my blank oblivion. It’s lonely, but lonely folk have nothing to lose. That suits me perfectly.”

Raeve’s avoidance techniques are her coping mechanisms for dealing with stressful situations. Though she admits that it is a lonely existence, she is still deluding herself by claiming that it’s one she prefers.

“I don’t feel like Haedeon anymore. I feel like Allume—wobbling along, being forged into something strong despite my broken bits. Perhaps I’ll fly, too.”

This passage from Elluin’s journal details the shift that occurs in her psyche when Kaan begins integrating himself into her sad life at Dhomm. Much as Elluin worked with Allume to strengthen her and bring back Haedeon’s vigor for life, Kaan’s attentions on Elluin strengthen her and bring her back to life in the same way.

“I’ve never felt inclined to journal before. But this place does weird, unexplainable things to me, and for the most part, I’ve been going with it. Exploring these odd urges in this quiet place where there are no eyes. No ears. No commands. In the beginning, I called it an experiment. Now I see it a little differently. I think I’m learning how to exist without shackles and expectations. Without the hurt and the crippling fear of loss that hacks my head from my heart. I think I’m learning what it means to live. Fallon would be proud.”

The melding of Raeve’s two identities begins to take effect at this point in the novel. This passage in which Raeve takes on an activity that Elluin devoted herself to—journaling—evidences the intermingling of personalities that is bound to occur as Raeve’s memories continue to trickle back.

“Something about those silver ribbons and the drums and the dragons makes me want to run toward something for a change. To rip down the bars of my self-restraint and crack open my hungry heart, crumble it into a silt, mash it together with some moisture, then mold it into something soft again.”

Slowly, but surely, Raeve’s dedication to remaining aloof from everyone and everything is slipping. Her desire to join the rest of the town in celebrating The Great Flurrt is powerful and something she must work hard to resist.

“This is it. The pin that’s finally going to burst the bubble of imagination I’ve lost myself in. Found myself in, if I’m honest with myself. Not that it changes anything. But what a spectacular way to go out? A goodbye fit for everything we used to be. The quiet acknowledgment I now see that I owe…us.”

Raeve convinces herself that a night spent fully giving into the love she’s beginning to feel for Kaan will be enough to satiate the desires she’s feeling. She also believes that it will serve as the satisfying goodbye to Elluin and Kaan’s relationship that they never got.

“The only beam of light I’ll ever need or want in this world, my love for her sitting like a moon in my chest. Only this moon will never fall, no matter how hard she tugs on it.”

The moon symbolism when Kaan refers to his love for Raeve is powerful. The imagery of the moon symbolizing his love never falling no matter how much gravity (Raeve’s resistance) threatens to pull it down is a testament to the devotion he feels toward her and the solidity of his love.

“She’s hurting. Lost someone. Maybe more than one. She thinks she doesn’t deserve…this. Us. That if she opens her heart and lets me in, something bad will happen.”

Up until this point, Kaan has been frustrated with Raeve’s avoidance of love without truly understanding the reasons behind it. He finally understands that in the time since he believed her dead, she’s lived a life full of more loss than he can ever imagine, and her behavior is just a coping mechanism for survival.

“She needs to be able to make a justified decision about her future based on the facts of reality. Not this smokescreen she’s living behind.”

Though Kaan is sympathetic to the trauma that Raeve is dealing with, he also knows that her game of pretend where she avoids every issue in her life is not sustainable. This is especially true regarding the important information he must share with her.

“There’s such bold shock in her stare that I feel like I’m seeing the real her for the first time since she fell back into the world. Not just Elluin. Not just Raeve. A beautiful, devastating blend of both.”

Kaan’s character arc reaches its end of growth in the first installment with his realization that the Elluin he originally fell in love with is long gone. Rather than trying to force Reave to remember who she used to be, Kaan understands that he must learn who she is now and love her as that woman.