myth for artichoke

Not many know that the moon is eaten every month. And that it is covered in layers of reptilian scales. That's why it's so bright and basks in the sun.

“You will tear this moon apart every day for a month.” The wrinkled woman instructed. “Each scale is food that you will bring below ground.”

“How do I take the scales off without hands,” Sweetie said. Holding her arms out. For she had given her hands away.

“You will. The moon knows you now.”

The woman smelled sweet and base. Tulsi was still in bloom all around her. On her eyes and her fingertips.

“What will happen once I have fed the creature?”

“The creature will dream the solution.”

The old woman responded.

“But the creature doesn't know my story.”

“ You don't need words. For the being, You don't need words for the being to understand. It feels your story in the way you've pulled the scales, the way you place the scale. The way your eyes speak, and your body moves. Place the scales on the cart and on the last day, take them to the beast.”

So Sweetie began. The moon was fleshy at the bottom. She tucked herself in, and she saw scale after scale, like a labyrinth before her. And she realized that though awkward and exhausting, it was not impossible to disassemble the moon. She placed each of the scales on the shadowed cart, where they kept until she would bring them to the creature below. When the month was over, Sweetie stood on a grass field. That swayed and shimmered like fuzz on a moth. From earth, the sky was black, only Sweetie could see the subtle shimmer of the secret field by starlight on which she stood. And into which a dark moon becomes. She pushed the cart into the pool of water in the centre. That same pool of water where she had been lost. And there, Sweetie left the moon, a second time, as the skies, shimmering field.

And she did not see the old lady sitting, the old lady of the moon, face as wrinkled as a peach pit, singing and caressing the grass like it was a lion's mane, and crushing Jimsonweed flowers, so they filled the air in clouds.