I still remember our last conversation. It happened at the old farmhouse of your grandparents, in the attic. You had thrown yourself onto the bed and were telling me how much you wanted to get buried here. To this place. A place where the sun travels the sky a bit differently, time moves differently and the Moon has become unrecognizable. You said the night here were the best, the Moon did not burn like the Sun did.

I moved my hand above your skin, never touching it. I felt the warmth of your skin dissipate the cold November gusts which flowed in through the waterlogged wallboards. You didn’t need anything else, just an attic of an old farmhouse, a bed, a light and an old military radio. The radio was more of a heat source than actual receiver. I still remember how you loved to press your freezing toes against the scorching metal enclosure.

You were telling me about your last find. One sleepless night you had captured it, around twelve o’clock when a sudden blast of wind rushing through the room made you sneeze. And almost at the moment the clouds freed yet another Blue Moon from their grasp, you discovered it. At first you were scared, trying to understand what it was. Because it was more than just a signal. It was a clear message.

Slowly, with your hand still trembling you turned the large dial, faint clicks following one another until the circles of numbers inside the dial finally indicated a number which would have unnerved every modern sci-fi fan. 99.99 megacycles. The fine-tuning the antenna array. Your fingers slowly turning the next dial, click after click, each one a jolt through your body. As if you were afraid you’d lose the signal despite having already recorded hours of it. I counted thirteen clicks, whether it was a coincidence or not, I could not tell.

You adjusted your skirt, pulled your long dark brown hair to the side, to not have an opportunity to sit on them. Just one final click and the old Estonia brand speakers burned everything we wanted or even could hear deep into our cells and memory.

“That’s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...”

The last word repeating forever in the air until the waves of noise drowned it. And then it repeated.

Warm voice of a man no more than twenty five years in age, heard through the phone line. We could not understand whether it was Estonian or not. We assumed it was.

*

It was raining the night it happened. We heard the raindrops pound on asbestos fiberboard on the mossy roof. We saw the lone rays from lightning strikes reach through the slits in the walls and leave momentary traces on the floors. Traces which stayed in our minds for far longer than they had on the floor.

You held on to me, tight. It wasn’t about being scared of fearing the thunder. You wanted to be warmed by something other than a group of four 50 watt vacuum tubes. You wanted to feel the bodily heat of another person. At that moment this other person happened to be me. Lone drops from the slanted ceiling fell on your face and onto the bed. You closed your eyes every time a drop hit you in the face.

Then suddenly, you twisted yourself out of my arms. I did not keep you, although I could have. In reality you belonged to nobody, you were too independent for that. With but a few steps you were back in front of the radio equipment. You started warming up the tubes again, and played back of this mysterious clip of sound. Then, with silent cat-like steps you approached the window, only followed by my gaze. You leaned on the window. Looked outside, at the flashing lightning. You listened to the rolling thunder, that fit so well with the voice clip on the background.

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And then we were in darkness. Lightning had hit something on the ground and now the yellow incandescent bulb which had cast this corner of the room in dim light was dead. The indicator lights on the radio’s front panel had also died. But we could still hear the sound clip. I soon realized that it no longer emanated from the speakers but instead from somewhere else, somewhere outside.

As if expecting us, the bouts of rain receded into heavy mists. Streaks of lightning now occurred only between the clouds up high. The thunder had also retreated into the natural noise floor. But you knew what was happening. The situation was new and unique for both of us, but still you knew, because it was you that dragged me towards the patch of forest nearby. Fog was hanging around the trees.

“Forbidden forest.” Your grandpa had said. Under penalty of getting whipped he had banned us from going there. But he never said, why.

But both of us knew that now was the time. In this dark night soaked with rain. When lightning and rain had backed off for just a moment to let us into the Forbidden Forest. That scrap of utterance revolving in our minds, calling us into the forest.

This vaporous fog we could not see through was not alien to us, it signified the unknown. Like that impassable wall of fog keeping us from that mysterious Forest Lake. With waters so dead and yet so alive. That Forest Lake was the end of space, beyond that there was nothing.

Or that cluster of trees on the other side. Where an old house remained which we had found following your nose. Smell of the dead, you had said. The smell of a person not imprisoned into a grave. Or that mysterious rock formation in the forest to which seemingly two roads lead. Seemingly, because one of them ended with a bottomless pit from which only sharp petrified tree trunks rose. So close to one another that if one were to fall in, there’d be no chance of survival.

But this fog was different. Running into the fog after you I looked up and noticed that the gray clouds had once again released the sky. A black sky in which only one thing shone. The Blue Moon. At that moment I noticed I was no longer running. Damp air reached my nose. I felt sharp cool streams of air all around me. But that scrap of a sentence was still in my ears. I continued running. The wall of fog ended as suddenly as it had appeared. I stood near the Forest Lake. Maybe a few dozen meters from it. I took cover behind the nettles. The last few clouds floated away from the blue moon and I saw it in its full glory.

The interior of a sauna had suddenly appeared into the waters. The high wooden seats, two wooden buckets and two maidens beating each other with bundles of birch branches. All they had in there and themselves as well was made of bluish moonlight. The water in the Forest Lake was also blue and silver in color. One of the maidens descended to the lake to get some water. Small waves were created in the silvery blue water when she pushed her bucket into the water and let it fill up.

I then saw you walk, saw you approaching these maidens. Why did I not stop you? Why did I decide to remain in the bushes? I was afraid. I was afraid of the unknown. You went up to them. I saw their smiles, made of moonlight as they regarded you. You undressed, let your cardigan fall down, your skirt as well, followed by everything else until you finally stood bare before them. I knew of your beauty, many did, but not like this.

You were beaten with birch as well. Every spot the bundle landed on seemed to transform. Finally I saw it was true, you changed into one of them, your body was now like theirs were, glimmering as if made of moonlight. You took your seat and poured shining water from a bucket made of moonlight onto an invisible sauna stove. Mist made of light rose, even I could feel the heat of scalding vapors on my face, despite how far I was. The cold dampness was wiped away. Then, all I saw started to give off vapor. It started to sublimate. You, the two maidens and everything else. Blue light slowly drifting towards the Moon. But before all the light had fully dissipated, the clouds covered the sky again and it all disappeared.

*

I have no idea how I got back to your house. But one thing was clear. You were lost to me. At least physically. It had happened before. That a young woman goes into the forest during the Blue Moon and never returns. I couldn’t tell whence I knew of this, but I did. You were wrong. The moon did burn. The Moon had burnt this message into the air. Doomed to repeat forever on that very frequency. A phone call by some young man who had made it once long ago, hoping to get his beloved back. But now there was no longer any girl or young man. The was only a memory growing more and more dull and a scrap of sentence forever burnt into the aether.

“That’s the reason, I remained because I thought I would get there early-early-early-early...”