It was becoming more and more clear just how much she had to learn about the conflict between light and dark.


    It was also now clear that the moose monster had not fixed her trinket. When she attempted to call the darkness to herself in the rooms like the monster had, it never came. However, when she left her trinket in the hall to avoid its protection, the darkness did find it. A confusing turn of events to say the least.


    A few more tests and she found that the darkness would never enter a room she was in, almost as if it was afraid of her. It had no problem finding her trinket when it chose to, which only made things harder to understand.


    Had she been wrong all along and the darkness was a timid thing?


    The darkness had always frightened her. Always hiding the noises and stealing her vision. She could understand the moose monster not being afraid of that, but if she couldn’t see, how could she run away.


    But now?


    Now she had to think about things from a different perspective.


    The Others had always been watching her. Moving about on the other side of the foggy wall, they had always been interested in what she did. But the foggy wall was not always foggy. When it was bright and she wasn’t close to it, it showed her herself. Showed her a copy of her home. It was only when she got close to the wall and the light was blocked that she could see the fogginess and the Others.


    Her test now showed that she didn’t need the trinket to call the light to herself. While the darkness was happy to swallow her trinket once she left it behind, it would never allow her to touch it. She knew that the darkness hid things. She had never once considered that it might be hiding them from her.


    Had she been cursed with light?


    It seemed that the light was far more aggressive than the darkness. It was also clear the light did not like it when the moose monster banished it with its magic, painfully attacking as soon as it was able. If the light had been attempting to blind her from seeing things, what else had she missed because of it?


    With the moose monster prolonging the conflict between the two, it was clear that there was a benefit to having both. She had no doubt the monster could simply choose one to win and the other would have no way to prevent that. Since that was not the case, it meant it was better to be in conflict, though she didn’t know why yet. The moose monster was too cunning for any other conclusion.


    She would never be able to figure out why either if she couldn’t chase away the light.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    These revelations swirled in her mind as she padded back to her home. She had been eager to find the mysteries in the darkness, how the tiny lights survived if at all. Now that she had realized that it was the light that attacked, it answered some of those questions but raised many more. How to escape the light without the moose monsters magic being one of the first.


    Now that she knew her trinket had not worked from the start, she also needed to undo the monster’s work. While she was curious about the monster’s intentions in altering her trinket, how it did and with what were far more important at the moment.


    Settling onto the floor of her home after closing the wall behind her, she set about examining her trinket much more closely than she had before. It seemed the monster had wrapped the strands around the arms and a moment of working those strands saw them slip off. Left with her trinket as she remembered it in one hand and the addition in the other, she set her trinket down.


    When she tugged on the strands a bit more to see how they were attached to the small blanket, they came off with the end in a small circle. It didn’t take her long after that to discover that the small blanket had an opening just like the creation of the moose monster. Growing excited at the discovery, she set about trying to make a copy of the creation.


    ‘It might be smaller but so am I.’


    <hr>


    She was not happy.


    The creation that the moose monster had made seemed so easy when it had been making it. All she had to show for her long stretches of work was a blanket with an opening it had when she got it and some strands she didn’t make. It was frustrating to know her creativity was less than a moose monster.


    She padded through the tunnels once more. It was a strange feeling to be alone without her trinket, but as she had thought, the light refused to leave her behind. A thought that gave her far less comfort now than it would have even a few sleeps ago. She clearly needed to learn more about banishing the light from the moose monster. Among other things.


    The small blanket proved very useful even without the strands attached though. It was even carrying those strands inside itself right now, along with a few of the books from the Pages. She had been hesitant before, the moose monster being a dangerous thing she had tried her best to avoid. As she had watched it and learned of things she had been unaware of however, she realized that she didn’t know what dangerous even was. While the moose monster was indeed dangerous, what else was also dangerous that she had thought safe? The powder? The noises?


    The light?


    She still trusted that the knowledge in the Pages was useful. She didn’t trust that she could understand or find that knowledge on her own anymore though. Perhaps if she kept watching the moose monster, the knowledge in the Pages would become clearer and she would learn on her own. But how long would that take? How many dangerous things would she not know to avoid before then?


    No, it was best to try and speed things up. She had taken only two of the books from the pages, the one that had the depiction of the moose and one that seemed to combine pictures and words. She would show the moose monster the book that spoke about it, show that she knew what it was. Then she would see what knowledge the moose monster could gain from the other book. It had eluded her what that book had been made for, the knowledge in the words made useless by the pictures, but it would be interesting to see what the moose monster could gain.


    It would tell her if she had been looking at the Pages wrong. Tell her what else she may be able to learn.


    When she found the moose monster’s lair open, she began to get excited to see what else she would learn.


    If only it wasn’t empty.


    Again.