_{The image featured is what was used to inspire the piece, permission to use the image granted by the contest host in the contest post.}

_{My first thought when I saw the image was that it was of a dying tree by a moonlit lake, and the moon light shone upon a hidden creature that lurked by the banks. After writing the piece and showing it to my partner, he informed me it was actually a tent and probably a UFO beam descending upon the poor people inside. Woops! Either way, this is what was inspired by the image. :)}

Moonlit Masquerade

Alexia sat within the boughs of a long-dead tree and watched as the ethereal mist shrouded the moonlit sky. She had been there for hours, lost amidst the flow of her thoughts as she delighted in the transformation from day to night, and now... a familiar despair had begun to encase her with its icy tendrils. The return to the soul-crushing confines of the city was inevitable, and she did not want to go back.

There was nary an isolated space within the chaos, the solitude she so desperately sought unattainable as the incessant noise slowly drove her mind toward the inescapable maw of madness that lingered within the depths of her ever-expanding insanity. She had been grateful for this silent escape, this reprieve from her reality, and her sorrow only grew as the moon reached its zenith. The morning would soon come.

Her wandering gaze strayed towards the lake, its reflective surface a perfect mirror of the cloud-swept skies, and she momentarily forgot her sadness as the moonrays illuminated an indistiguishable shape beneath the great expanse. Alexia stared at the silhouette for an objectionable length of time though she could not determine the likeliest possibilities, nor could she decipher the illusive whispers that had suddenly sprung up about her, a cacophany of ghostly messages that seemed to emanate from the perfect lake itself, and as the golden dawn at last peered over the horizon she felt an overpowering urge to dive fully-clothed into the flawless waters.

Compelled to follow the desires of the whispering voices, Alexia climbed to her feet and held an unsteady hand to the thick trunk of the tree, her eyes were focussed upon the distorted shape that remained concealed beneath the surface, and the agony of her life was pushed far into the recesses of her mind as all that now mattered to her was the bizarre shape the moonlight had revealed.

The water was as ice against her bare face as she plunged into the spring and swam into the depths, the whispering voices now shrill with glee as she descended further into the darkness, her lungs desperate for breath though she ignored their plea and forced herself to the rocky bottom.

The voices stopped. The illusions vanished. There was nothing.

Her long hair billowed about her as she turned and gazed up at the surface, the water about her a burden that weighed down on both her body and mind, the constriction about her lungs almost a pleasure as she realised the world she had come from no longer matched her reality and that her misfortunes were now irrelevant.

Beneath the lake's mirror, alight with the warm tones of the rising sun, Alexia smiled; she had found a new home.