[ takes place right after his awakening in april of 2023 ]

Oh god oh god oh god oh god what did he agree too???

Crisium reappeared on his balcony and immediately sank down onto the floor as panic surged in his chest. It was one thing to like…. Have courage in the moment, but now that he was on the planet again (how did no one know about the wonders, how had they not even been alerted to that, did that mean that even the PURELY GAS PLANETS HAD PLACES ON THEM!?) the full stress of the situation hit him like a freight train.

Not that he knew what that felt like. He’d be dead if he did. Like, just splattered across the train tracks, maybe not even like recognizable dead dead.

Oh there were the hyperventilation breaths, yup.

The form of Crisium slipped from him as easy as breathing and Zeke slowly leaned until he was lying on his back on the balcony. The sky above him was still dark, still twinkling in above him. Time had passed while he was on the freaking MOON, but not so much that the sun was starting to come up the horizon and lighting the sky.

He was a Page of the Moon.

Him. Zeke. Chauncy. A ball of anxiety and panic, with broken glasses and more social anxiety than a traumatized cat, was a PAGE. OF. THE. MOON.

He didn’t even know that the moon could have knights! Much less had some sort of… princess? Though weren’t the knights of the moon really new, like, really, REALLY new? He wasn’t exactly sure why the moon had decided to request knights, or where the wonders had come from to begin with but the Mare Crisium absolutely existed and he had stood inside it. Connected to it. Placed a tiny portion of the Code into it to solidify his… protection of it? His power from it? Something like that.

How had the Code even possibly found him a worthy inheritor? Protector? Knight? Of the Mare Crisium?

The concrete was cold against his spine, the breeze cool in his hair. He breathed in the chilly air and focused on the stars above him. He focused on his breathing, feeling his fingers and toes and being present in his body, like his therapist taught him. He hadn’t panicking on the wonder, though he had absolutely felt like he was going to. Mostly it was the whole he was on the moon but still somehow BREATHING that sort of did it.

Breathe, Zeke, breathe, he reminded himself. Focus on your breathing, just like Trisha taught you.

In and out. In and out. In, and out.

The cold sank into his bones as he felt his chest rise and fall in slow, measured motions. He could think about this rationally, he could understand why the Code and the Moon had picked him. Him of all people. He. Zeke. Chauncy. Named after his father, who was named after his father, and then his father, and it sort of skipped four generations back to the original Chauncy Beauregaurd.

He wasn’t exactly hero material. Or ‘main character’. He wasn’t even ‘a side character in two episodes!’ kind of person. He was, well, Zeke was sort of an NPC to be honest. At least he thought so. He was so… well, himself. He wasn’t exactly confident or strong or charismatic, no matter how much his mother tried to get him to be. Zeke’s childhood was a whole mess of episodes where he’d frozen up, shut down, and then had a full blown meltdown when he got overwhelmed. Which had been often, daily almost, until one of the teachers at Hillworth had taken him aside and introduced him to an onsite psychiatrist and therapist.

It took him a few years but it had helped. Learning he was on the spectrum and fighting anxiety at the same time, had been really eye opening for him and his mother. While Ophelia, bless her soul, still took him out to parties and social events and kept trying to set him up with a lady friend - “or lord friend! I don’t judge!’ - she’d been really supportive of the whole thing. It shocked Zeke at the time, to be honest. His mother had always put on an air of perfection or having her life together, and he’d really tried to emulate that.

Hard to do that when your brain literally fights against you at every step though.

Zeke shivered against the concrete and let out a breath slowly.

So. He was Crisium Page of the Moon. He had dominion? - no, that was the wrong word. Charge? Maybe in charge? - of what had turned out to be a sprawling garden of fountains, walking paths and alcoves. He’d sort of gotten the feeling that it was some sort of place people went to talk philosophy or other intellectual topics once. It was deserted now, and maybe a little run down, but it was under his care now.

It was, really, the perfect home away from home for him. Quiet, far away from his mother, a place he could decompress. To take care of. To protect. He wasn’t really sure if he could protect it, all things considered, but he could try he supposed. Even if the concept of fighting evil sent another flash of anxiety into his chest.

As for why he’d been chosen… he still wasn’t sure. He really wasn’t hero material or anything like that.

But…

He had to admit that he’d been brave enough to accept the Code’s offer. He’d been brave enough to follow the speaking, glowing orb to the wonder and to bind himself and it to the pedestal.

He’d been brave.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe it wasn’t about being courageous or charismatic or strong. Maybe it was just about being brave enough to try. To take the step.

Zeke slowly got up and placed his hand on the handle for the french doors. He glanced over his shoulder to the moon and smiled a little.

Maybe he was enough.

[WC: 1006]