EIGHT
Endymion feared that this time when he woke up, that he would be back in his bed, and this would have all been a dream. There was no poking this time, no touching, and if it had been touching him the last time, it learned well enough to stay away.
He hoped it would soon forget that lesson and become curious again, or allow the curiosity to overpower its common sense. He was definitely dealing with a smart creature, smarter than most humans he knew. It learned not to poke the bear.
So Endymion did the only thing he could when he opened his eyes this time and got his barrings. Head in the direction he had previously decided was where the creature was heading. Hopefully he would find its nest or something.
What he finally stumbled across, and he did stumble, a blow to the head and being absorbed by light that had knocked him out for however long, would make anyone a little disoriented, not to mention all the things trying to snag him and trip him. What he finally came across was not a nest. It was however the remains of an altar. There was no roof, but four pillars which suggested that there may at one point have been such a thing. There was also a pedestal in the center and four more posts outside of the four pillars, but they were easily discarded.
Movement caught his attention and he called out, not expecting an answer, but caught it off guard enough that it stilled and Endymion learned that its true form was an upright creature, moving on two legs, not four. He took to chase it again, and managed to lose it again, but not before catching a more concrete glimpse of it.
He started talking, out loud to it, in several languages, trying to get it to respond. "I'm not here to harm you, I only want to understand- I just want to talk..."
His hand finally snagged her arm, and she was caught. Her hair was over-grown, covering her eyes and most of her face. He almost feared moving it out of the way, for what he would see even as his hand lifted to do so. She could be a humanoid, with sharp shark teeth and no nose and wild hungry tiger eyes. Her hair could try to ensnare him or kill him in some other format. If he so much as put his hand near her face, he might not get it back. Her game of cat and mouse might be just that, her being the cat and getting the mouse to follow her instead of the other way around. Then again, wouldn't she already have attacked him? Though her appearance wouldn't give him any positive indications. She was wearing white, and how it remained so, was a mystery to him. It was torn and tattered, so perhaps she wasn't as good as maneuvering this forest as she appeared to have.
Her hair while overgrown and a little wild, wasn't completely out of place, she only looked a little ruffled. She was also dirty, mud caked her bare feet and hands. Splatters covered her legs and arms and neck, leaving very little bare for him to tell what her skin color was. And she was fighting him, struggling to get free.
"Listen, all I want to do is talk. I'm not going to hurt you. Honestly. But to do so, you have to stay still." He encountered the hair and this is what he felt was silk before. It was odd, but not completely out of context. "Come on, just let me have a look." He tried to be as gentle as possible as he smoothed her hair back and away from what he assumed was a face and down the back of her head, pleased that there wasn't something on the back that would eat him.
He gasped when he saw her face, it wasn't anything he was expecting. It was so much worse.
She was human looking to the very core. But what made it so much worse, was the fact that she looked absolutely... gorgeous. She was unlike any woman he had seen, even though she looked like every single one of them. She was just more. If she had been anything he might have walked away just then, anything else, but she wasn't, she was what she was. And if he was honest with himself, even if she had been the ugliest creature to have ever existed, worse than any combination on Earth, he still wouldn't have walked away. Not for any instant attraction reasons, but because he had come all this way and to find anything here would have been a chance to find out about the Moon and perhaps why he was so drawn to it. It was all altruistic, he told himself. However even that was a lie. She could have been ugly and he still would have been drawn to her. Maybe because she was different. Maybe because she was from the Moon, but he didn't think so. He'd seen similar things happen to his men on Earth with ugly girls and beautiful girls alike. They saw them and they were hooked. Besides, beauty was in the eye of the beholder and cultural norms of the time. The inner strength of one woman often dictated the ideal for many others. Men were not free from this either.
It was stupid to claim it was love at first sight. He knew absolutely nothing about her, but it was definitely attraction and somewhere in the magical region of his heart there was a connection that was made. He just hoped it wasn't a poorly made connection that would end with his life being taken or them hating each other forever.
He lost his ability to speak and he just stared at her. She was not talking either, and he worried that maybe she couldn't understand him or his gentle reassurances. He would have to use more body language to calm her as none of the Earth languages reached her understanding.
He reached out to smooth a loose strand behind her ear and she jerked away at the same time, falling as she yanked free of his grasp. He winced as she landed with a loud thud, unable to grab her flailing fingers in time as that was the only thing he had had been close enough to do anything about, as she kept him at arms reach.
He knelt beside her, intending to help her up and make sure she was all right, when she jumped to her feet and ran again. Obviously not hurt in anyway, but he chose not to take off after her, she lived near this part of the forest, and so he would stay and wait her out. He would find some way to communicate with her. She would get used to his presence. In the meantime, he would have a look around her home.
Then he saw what was on the pedestal, it was hidden from view when he had first come upon it, but now that he was at a different angle, there glowed something that far surpassed anything he had ever seen before. He was surprised the blinding light hadn't been noticed even slightly blocked. He didn't think that it reacted to its owner's distress and being manhandled, even in the nicest way, would have caused it to be distressed, especially if he was the first human being she had ever seen.
He walked towards it, drawn to it, like he was drawn to the moon, the mirror, the roses, and its owner. It could have glowed ten times brighter next to its owner and he would have never noticed it though, but since they were all a part of her in some way, it pulled him in. His finger extended on his hand, all he wanted to do was run the finger down the cool surface but a voice called out.
"Don't touch it!" It sounded alarmed, and afraid. He wasn't sure if it was the girl or not, but he was more confused whether or not she was afraid for him, or for the object he was about to touch. But by then it was too late.