In the hushed glades of the Alderthicket Wood, where the owls crooned riddles to the leaves and the brambles whispered gossip to the mushrooms, there lived a fox unlike any other. His coat shimmered between rust and gold, as if the setting sun had kissed each hair before the fall of night. All the woodland creatures knew him—Renwyck, the clever, the sly, the silver-tongued charmer with paws soft as stories and eyes sharp as promises.
Renwyck made his den beneath the roots of an ancient ash, whose gnarled limbs clawed at the stars like a dreamer too long awake. While the other beasts contented themselves with routine and rhythm, Renwyck watched. He watched the moonlight slip down from the sky and pool like milk in the hollows of the grass. He listened to its hush and glow and wondered—not for the first time—if something so graceful might be caught.
One night, while prowling through the dew-laced heather, Renwyck met an old badger, grey as frost and slow with secrets.
“You watch the sky with longing, fox,” the badger said, sniffing the wind. “Mind it doesn’t watch you back.”
Renwyck only smiled.
“Tell me, old one,” he said, tail flicking like a slow match, “can something so gentle as moonlight be held?”
The badger huffed. “Not by paws or claws. But perhaps… by glass.”
And that was all Renwyck needed.
For weeks, the fox courted the wisdom of spiders and glass-blowers, fireflies and forgotten apothecaries. He stole flasks from human camps, learned the chemistry of lunacy from owls who hooted in tongues, and at last, on a night when the moon was swollen and proud as a queen, Renwyck stood on a wet knoll and caught the moonlight in a bottle.
It glimmered like pearl dust in storm water. His heart trembled just to see it.
The next morning, he took it to the Whispering Hollow, a trade-place sacred to the wild. There, under the watch of bickering magpies and the solemn gaze of the stag-priest, Renwyck announced his bargain: a bottle of moonlight in exchange for a single, honest wish.
The first to come was a hedgehog who wished to no longer be small. With a nudge of paw, a breath of glow, it was done—he grew as large as a boar, surprised and delighted. Then came a squirrel who wished to fly, a hare who wanted winter sleep to vanish, a raven who asked to sing golden tales. One after another, moonlight transformed the world, and Renwyck grew rich—not in coin, for there was none—but in respect, in admiration, in power.
But moonlight is a subtle thing. It does not like to be hoarded.
Renwyck, drunk on craving, grew bold. He captured more and more of it, bottling it in finer vessels, growing reckless. Each time he drew it down from the sky, the night that followed seemed thinner, wearier—as if something old and sacred was being scraped away.
One evening, beneath a wan slice of moon, the old badger found him again.
“You’ve taken too much, fox,” the badger said, voice heavy as dusk.
“I barter with beauty and bring wonders,” said Renwyck, ears tilted high. “The forest thrives.”
“Perhaps,” the badger said, “but look up.”
And Renwyck did, for the first time in many nights, truly look. The sky was pale, no longer velvet but a dull smear. Stars blinked like tired eyes. The moon, once glorious, now hung frail and brittle—like a lantern run dry.
It was then that the silence of the wood changed. The rustle of the leaves grew restless. The shadows no longer danced—they loomed.
Renwyck panicked. He dashed to his cache, uncorked bottle after bottle, uncaging the moonlight in desperate flares. But now the light was harsh, like blades. Where once it healed, it now scalded. Flowers withered under its touch. Trees shied away.
“Moonlight is not yours,” the wind seemed to whisper. “It is the night’s breath, not a bauble to be pawned.”
Too late, Renwyck understood.
On the final night, when clouds thickened like guilt and no creature stirred, he carried the last of the bottled glow to the Forgotten Hill—the place where earth and sky still spoke. There, he howled an apology, a song, a plea. He raised the flask and shattered it upon a stone.
The light inside rose like a sigh, soft again at last. It spiraled into the heavens, and the moon, though faint, brightened by a shade.
Renwyck was never quite the same. His coat dulled. His steps lost their arrogance. No longer the merchant of wishes, he became the teller of caution, the whisperer of balance. When kits played in the dusk and asked why the moon sometimes hides her face, the mothers of Alderthicket simply said:
“Because once, a fox grew greedy and tried to steal her smile.”
And every now and then, if you walk under a waning moon, you might glimpse a lean shadow watching the sky—not with hunger, but with deep, quiet regret.
