Title: "The Girl in the Red Moonlight"

In the sleepy town of Duskwood, where the fog rolled in thick and the pine trees whispered ancient secrets, seventeen-year-old Eli Granger had always felt out of place. He wasn’t extraordinary—average in grades, average in looks, with a quiet disposition that made him invisible at school and misunderstood at home.

But he had one secret. Each night, Eli would escape to the forest behind his house. Not for mischief, not for rebellion—just for peace. Among the trees, he found silence, a place where the noise of the world faded. That was where he saw her.

It began on a night of the red moon, when the sky bled crimson and even the birds dared not sing.

She was standing by the ruins of the old stone chapel, where ivy climbed broken walls and the air held a strange, sweet coldness. Her skin was pale as moonlight, her eyes a sharp, impossible silver, and her hair flowed like black silk over her shoulders. She looked about his age—though something in the way she moved, fluid and deliberate, made her seem timeless.

She turned her gaze to Eli as if she’d sensed him long before he saw her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, voice like falling snow.

“I could say the same,” Eli replied, trying to sound braver than he felt.

She smiled—sad, almost fond. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“Then why are you?”

She tilted her head, thoughtful. “Because you’re the only one who isn’t afraid of the forest.”

He didn’t ask her name that night. He didn’t even ask why she was barefoot in the cold or why her dress looked like something from another century. He only watched as she disappeared into the trees like a shadow melting into deeper darkness.

But he came back.

Night after night, Eli returned to the chapel. She was always there—sometimes sitting on the broken altar, sometimes lying among the moss, her eyes fixed on the stars. Her name was Lira.

And she was a vampire.

He learned it slowly. In hints. In the way she recoiled slightly when he offered her a silver pendant. In the way her voice tightened when he spoke of sunlight or churches. And eventually, when he asked her directly, she didn’t deny it.

“I was born in 1842,” she said one night, her voice soft. “Turned at sixteen. I’ve been sixteen for a very long time.”

Eli didn’t run. He didn’t flinch. He only said, “Do you still drink blood?”

“Yes. But not from people. Not anymore.” She looked ashamed. “I haven’t killed anyone in decades.”

There was a long silence.

Then Eli whispered, “Do you ever get lonely?”

She looked at him. Truly looked at him. “All the time.”

That was when he knew he loved her.

It didn’t make sense—not to his brain, anyway. She was a creature from a different world, an immortal with a past soaked in blood. But she was also kind, and curious, and sad in a way that made his heart ache. She told stories of empires that had fallen, of cities that no longer existed, of poems long forgotten. And he listened—not out of obligation, but fascination. He told her about school, about how people never really saw him. She said she saw him just fine.

They were both ghosts in their own lives, in different ways. But together, they felt real.

One night, under the silver frost of a winter moon, Eli kissed her. It was cautious, trembling, like stepping off a cliff and not knowing if you’d fall or fly.

Her lips were cold.

But she kissed him back.

For a few weeks, they had something fragile but beautiful. Meetings in the forest. Stories. Laughter. Touches that lingered too long. The kind of secret love that could only exist between two people who knew it might not last.

Then came the hunters.

It started with rumors—dead animals drained of blood in nearby farms. Then strange lights in the forest. Men with guns and old symbols carved into stakes.

Eli found her by the chapel, waiting.

“They’re here for me,” she said simply.

“Then we run.”

“I can’t,” she said. “They’ll find me. I’ve lived too long. I’ve done too much. I can’t bring you into this.”

He took her hand. “You already did.”

She looked at him, eyes shimmering with something close to tears. “I love you,” she said, barely a whisper. “But I’m not good, Eli. I’ve tried to be. For you. But they’ll never see me as anything but a monster.”

“Then we show them they’re wrong.”

She gave a sad smile. “You don’t know what they’ll do to you if they find out you helped me.”

“I don’t care.”

But she did.

That night, she kissed him one last time, deep and desperate, like a drowning person gasping for air.

And then she vanished.

The chapel was empty the next day. And the day after that. The forest was colder without her. The silence heavier.

The hunters left after a week. They never found her.

Years passed.

Eli grew older, but he never forgot. He left Duskwood for college, became a writer. His first novel was about a girl in the red moonlight.

People asked him if she was real. If the story was based on someone.

He always smiled and said, “She was someone I once knew.”

And sometimes, on red-moon nights, when the wind carried the scent of pine and the stars seemed closer than usual, he would walk to the edge of the forest and wait.

Just in case.

Because love like that doesn’t disappear.

Not entirely.

Not even in the dark.