Luna's Letter

“Dad! Where are you?” Luna steps outside, trying to find Alaric, her father. Scanning the enormous backyard that accompanies their castle like home, Luna can’t seem to find her dad. She has searched the entire house and now the outside, “Where could he be?” she thought to herself. A smile spreads across her face before she runs inside the house, towards her dad’s private study.

Luna and Alaric moved into this house nearly a week ago, but Luna still gets lost trying to navigate through the floors. Alaric is a talented and famous writer, director, and artist. Luna’s mom, Thea, was a world renowned surgeon. She would get calls to come to hospitals all around the world to perform surgeries on all types of difficult cases. Fame, however, can’t prepare you for cancer.

Thea was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, stage 3, when Luna was 3. Suffering through keom, while still traveling for her job, was a challenge to say the least. When the doctors told her she can’t travel anymore and she was on house arrest, she set her focus on curing her cancer. Three months later, and she found a way to cure early stages of Ovarian Cancer, which helped to cure early stages of all cancers.

Thea Harlow became a world famous name, for everyone. She was the woman who cured cancer, but couldn’t use it to save herself. Thea died 2 months after her discovery, a year after she was diagnosed. Everytime someone uses her cure, half of the payments went to Thea, now going to Alaric and Luna. Alaric wanted to get away from the memories, so he found an abandoned castle in Scotland and fixed it into a house.

The first floor has a ballroom that he left almost untouched, a grand entrance with two curved staircases leading to a loft on the second floor, and many random rooms. The second floor has the loft that over looks the ballroom, a kitchen Alaric added in, his bedroom and study, and a glorious library. The third floor is all Luna’s. Her bedroom, own bathroom, and three towers that she uses for different things. Now, almost two years later, it’s still just Alric and Luna, alone in this castle.

Luna finds her way to her dad’s study and runs in. The room has a floor to ceiling wall of windows across from the door that she entered from, and the walls east and west of the windows have bookcases imbedded into the walls. She already searched in this room for her dad, but there is one place she didn’t look. She rushes over to the bookcase covering the left wall and found the middle panel bookcase.

She scans the fourth shelf and finds the book title “The Mysterious Door”, and she tilts the book forward, out of the bookshelf until she hears a click and the panels pops out a bit. Luna moves to the side of the panel that popped out, grabs the indent in the wood and pulls the panel open. She grabs a lantern off of the table that is just to your left when you enter the passageway and descends the stone spiral stairs.

This secret stairway leads under the house, where Alaric has transformed a dungeon to a gallery of his priceless paintings and artworks, and a studio that he can work in. Luna reaches the bottom of the stairs and, sure enough, there is her dad, looking at his favorite painting. It was the painting of Thea’s portrait. He painted this when she first got sick, so she could remember how she looked before she was sick. Now, he can’t look at it without feeling sad and wishing he could see her again.

“Daddy?” Alaric jumps and whips around to see Luna standing behind him, “Why are you looking at the picture of mommy?”

Alaric smiles and picks Luna up, turning back to the painting, “I’m just sad. Mommy went to heaven near Christmas, and Christmas is almost here.” He looks at the painting and smiles a sad smile, “Mommy was very pretty, wasn’t she?” Luna nods. Not only was Thea a genius, she was also exceptionally beautiful. Even when she was sick, her eyes still glowed and her smile still lit up the world around her.

“Daddy, I know what I want for Christmas from Santa!” Luna says excited, remembering why she was searching for her dad.

“Oh yeah?” Luna nods once, “And what would that be?”

“A pony!” Luna wiggles out of her dad’s arms and runs to a painting on the far end of the room Alaric following behind her, “Like this one.” He looks at the painting that Luna is pointing at. It’s a painting of his and Thea’s first home, which was next to a farm. In the bottom corner of the painting, there is a horse running through the field. It’s all white and very beautiful. Alaric smiles.

“That’s a great present,” he kneels down in front of Luna, “Now, why don’t you go write a letter to Santa and tell him you want a pony. After you’re done, we can take it to the post office.” Luna giggles, hugs her dad, and runs up the stairs, excited to write her letter. 10 minutes later, Luna is ready to go. They drive to the nearest post office, which is in town, about 5 miles away.

In the post office, Luna hands her letter to the guy at the desk -she didn’t want her dad to touch it, because it is her letter, not his- and after a second's hesitation and confusion on his face, the guy puts three post stamps on the letter and tosses it in the bin, getting an annoyed noise and scolding from Luna, because he didn’t carefully put it in. Then they got in the car and headed home. Luna couldn’t wait for Christmas day.

2 weeks pass and Christmas arrives. Luna jumps on Alaric and squeals when he tickles her off of him. They both run into the kitchen, where Alaric makes his famous blueberry pancakes and maple bacon that he makes every Christmas. This year, however, he also adds cinnamon rolls, Luna’s favorite. After breakfast, Luna runs down to the ballroom, where they set up the Christmas tree.

“Wow!” Luna yells, looking over all of her presents, “I must have been very good this year!” She rushes to her first pick -which just happened to be the biggest box- and tears off the wrapping paper. Many presents later, mostly toys and clothes, Luna runs to her dad and gives him a big hug, thanking him for the presents. As they’re hugging, they both hear a noise coming from the backyard.

“What is that?” Alaric says, standing and looking out the windows leading to the backyard. Luna runs to the glass doors and gasps, screams with delight, and opens up the door, running outside. “”Luna!” Alaric runs after her. Getting outside, he can see what she was so excited about. There, in the middle of the big grass yard, was a pure white horse, with glowing copper eyes.

“Santa came! Santa came!” Luna’s jumping around the horse, stirring up grass and some dirt. The horse makes a sniffle and sneezes away from Luna and Alaric. Only thing is, it wasn’t just snot and air that came out of the horse. Fire came out too. Luna steps back a few back and Alaric grabs her and moves her behind him. Alaric notices a note on the horse’s saddle and slowly steps to the horse.

Alaric grabs the note and reads it. His face grows pale as he reads the note and he turns to Luna. “Sweetie,” he says, stepping to her, “are you sure you made the letter for Santa?”

Luna looks up at her dad confused, “Yes, why?”

He reads the letter to Luna, “Dear Luna, I think you addressed this letter wrong. I received your letter, not Santa. I was going to make sure Santa received it, but when I thought about it, he wouldn’t get the letter in time. So, I got you a horse myself. My dear Luna, Maximus is a priced horse and I’m sure you’ll love him. Merry Christmas. Yours truly, Satan.”

He looks at Luna when he finishes and Luna smiles, “Satan got me a horse?!” She runs over to the horse and grabs his rein, “I love him!” Luna leads Maximus over to the stone shed that they haven’t put anything in yet, and leaves her dad, pale and concerned. How could such a sweet girl love a present for Satan?