#🌙 crescent ›› PROMISES MADE UNDER THE RADIANT MOON.

[unsteals-archived]

         ❝ ... marc? ❞   oh, this is fucked. one hand has a khopesh pressed to his throat, the other is taking down the hood of her cloak. he always could sneak up on her. enhanced senses don’t seem to have helped. she adjusts her grip on the handle of her weapon but she doesn’t remove it from his neck yet. she’s still furious with him.   ❝ so you’re alive. you’ve been alive. do you have any idea how worried i’ve been?  what are you doing here? ❞

crescent starter call        ♡        @mnkngt​.

[unsteals-archived]

         ❝ you were gone.  i found ways to manage. ❞   it’s just that one of those ways turned out to be bizarre, and dangerous, and mind bendingly similar to the reason he left her in the first place  ( she just doesn’t know that yet ). layla doesn’t take her eyes off the road, unwilling to see the look on his face. she can already feel how unhappy he is through the tone of his voice. he doesn’t get to be unhappy with her; it’s her province to be unhappy with him after everything he’s put her through. mal has been there for her. sure, it’s been in a somewhat creepy and very confusing way, but at least she’s had someone. 

my baby liking my starter calls cause she’s the best        ♡        @giftshopped​.

[unsteals-archived]

𝚒𝚗  𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑  𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚕𝚊  𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜  𝚊𝚗  𝚊𝚟𝚊��𝚊𝚛;

the very short version of this is that @ofmalice​ and i plotted & are still plotting a verse in which mal chooses layla to enact her purpose in the world, granting her abilities that allow her to continue her work of rehoming stolen antiquities on a much larger scale. she calls herself the crescent. much longer, more detailed version under the cut.

𝚑𝚘𝚠  𝚍𝚒𝚍  𝚒𝚝  𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚗 ?

layla was tracking a set of canopic jars stolen from egypt in the early 20th century. she’d found the name of the british archaeologist that had taken them, and traced him back to two separate properties: one in england, one in northern ireland. when she got to the first estate, she discovered that almost none of the artifacts this particular man had “collected” were on display. apparently, paranoid as the wealth of the land-owning nobility was severely threatened during the uproar of a quickly changing world, the lord had chosen to stash what he considered his most valuable pieces. no one seemed to know where. undeterred, layla decided to do some digging. 

within the boundaries of the lord’s property in northern ireland were the old ruins of a medieval monastery. the village nearby harbored a local legend about it. supposedly, there was treasure buried somewhere within, guarded by an ancient spirit - possibly even a fairy. interestingly, though the locals would claim the legend had been circulating since the monastery’s disuse in the 15th century, the earliest record layla could find about it was an article published in 1957 about a paranormal encounter inside the monastery. it’s interesting how experiences become hearsay, and how hearsay can be mistaken for legend. layla decides she’s found her artifacts and she goes looking in the ruins of the monastery. unfortunately for her, she’s not the only one.

treasure hunting has become lucrative in the last century, and the trend doesn’t appear to by dying. looted antiquities aren’t tracked down solely for the purpose of returning them to where they truly belong; oftentimes they’re recovered, only to be sold off again. layla is joined in the ruins of the monastery by a group with strong ties to the blood antiquities trade, and they’re uninterested in letting her leave, even without the jars. it’s a fight for her life, and it’s a fight to finish the job; it’s a fight she almost loses. but when she throws her hand up to shield herself, when she blindly calls out for help, something answers.

mal intervenes and saves layla’s life... albeit by killing the ones that had been about to kill her. somehow she knows exactly what layla has come for and takes her to the exact spot the monastery’s “treasure” is buried. and then, she’s gone. layla collects her artifacts and, after a miniature crisis about what to do next, she decides to move on with her life and try to put this experience behind her. but mal decides to make her presence known in layla’s life regardless. it starts small, with fleeting glimpses out of the corner of her eye and a sense of occasionally not being alone. it starts with a little luck, with avoiding tunnel collapses by only seconds or choosing the right door to open. 

this all eventually culminates in a true, face to face meeting, where layla is offered a choice. continued on with her life, undisturbed, or enact mal’s purpose in the world by doing much the same as she already is... but with a little supernatural help. layla weighs the decision carefully. she’s not being asked for hardly anything at all, but she’s being given the chance to reall make a difference. in the end, it’s not that hard of a call to make.

𝚐𝚘𝚍𝚜  𝚊𝚗𝚍  𝚊𝚟𝚊𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚜 ?

while layla acknowledges that mal is an entity of some kind, and would certainly be thought of as a god by some, she doesn’t completely think of her as a god. 

as mentioned in her doc, she is in a strange place religiously. she was raised muslim. her family was not very regimented or orthodox, for lack of better terms, and her immersion in ancient egyptian history was also an immersion in ancient egyptian belief. if she really sat down and thought it through, she might call herself agnostic, but she doesn’t sit down and think about it much. no matter what, the belief system she was raised with and surrounded by is going to play a substantial impact on her life, and not even mal’s existence can shake that off. layla is also somewhat uncomfortable referring to mal as a god because of her roots, especially considering mal being linked so strongly to the british isles. 

the term “avatar” as it’s used in the context of moon knight is another thing. it’s a concept borrowed from hinduism. it finds parallels in several other world religions that may or may not have their own word for it. essentially, in hinduism, an avatar is the material manifestation of a deity. the concept appears to have developed around and after the sixth century ce. the world incarnation has also been applied but there is some debate about the accuracy of the term, particularly in regards to the world’s understanding of what avatar actually is in hinduism. layla is not an incarnation of mal, and she’s only referred to as an avatar here to make it understood that she’s in a similar situation as marc is with khonshu. she is a mortal through whose actions mal’s purpose is affected on the world, and who has received gifts from mal in the form of abilities and physical objects. 

in ancient egyptian mythology, maat is the ‘fundamental order of the universe’ and there are some mortals who are considered to have been maintainers of maat. most prominently and most importantly would have been the pharaoh; there is some disagreement about whether the pharaoh was traditionally considered to be the incarnation of a deity or the son of a deity, but there was definitely a divine link. the pharaoh would have been considered a representative of the gods. layla can certainly understand her connection to mal, and her work of restoring stolen heritage to its rightful place, in an extremely loosely tangential context to this. mal’s purpose, in its simplest form, is reconciliation. layla genuinely hopes to reconcile egypt’s past with its present, to reconcile the field of archaeology as she loves it with its early and damaging past, to reconcile with marc... it’s a pretty big theme. mal has also been a patron for those who fight, and layla fights tooth and nail for what she believes in. she’s scrappy. she never gives up. 

𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚎𝚛 :

as previously mentioned, layla has been given gifts in the form of abilities and physical objects in exchange for her bond with mal. 

the first ability that she’s granted is the gift of foresight. it starts with gut feelings that give her a few seconds’ warning about things, but develops into strong sensations and dreams that she is able to navigate treacherous times with. the second ability that she’s granted is the gift of elemental manipulation, in its most basic form. layla has some influence over the four elements  ( as western people see them ) : air, water, fire, and earth. it takes an enormous amount of concentration and energy - and a lot of practice - for her to effectively use this ability. 

the first material gift she’s given is a cloak. the fabric is dyed a shade of maroon, quite muted; it’s not an eye catching garment. it wraps around her shoulders in a style reminiscent of the examples of shawls and capes in ancient egyptian fashion, and is pinned at the right shoulder with a golden brooch in the shape of a jackal’s tooth. layla identifies mal with the jackal, and she sometimes identifies the field of archaeology with the jackal. when the hood of the cloak is raised, it renders her unnoticed. the eye will dance over her without recognizing there’s anyone there that shouldn’t be. 

the second material gift she’s given are weapons, which she dual wields. they were created by mal from the broken, aged handles of two khopesh blades. the khopesh is a sickle-shaped sword that evolved from battle axes, and it is typically about 20 to 24 inches long, with both smaller and larger examples existing. the pair layla wields is smaller  ( i’ve yet to decide how much smaller ). mal restores the handles and forges new blades, which seem to hum with energy and can be summoned with a flick of the wrist. in fact, flicking her wrist to bring out the blades & vanish them becomes a restless habit when she’s thinking. 

&&  that’s the verse as it stands so far. layla continues her work, but with her eyes on much, much bigger targets. 

[unsteals-archived]

❛ you’re not alone. you never were. ❜        ♡        @ofmalice​.

         layla forgets how to breathe for a couple of seconds.  the voice ringing in her ears seems to come from everywhere at once, while also being right behind her. she’s sat on her knees in a burial chamber, shut in, trapped. she hadn’t necessarily given up but she hadn’t been ready to try and formulate a plan yet. still, no sooner had she thought  she wished she didn’t have to die alone  than she was made aware that she very much wasn’t. in truth, she had known; she simply hadn’t acknowledged. that evening in the ruins of an irish monastery might have felt like a fever dream, but all the times she’d felt the presence after began to feel so normal. in her bones, she’s known the whole time that something has been with her. guiding her, protecting her, for reasons she doesn’t understand.  might have done her a solid and stopped the entrance from caving in at all, but beggars can’t be choosers.  she slowly pushes herself to stand, to turn and look at her strange horned guardian. 

         ❝ who are you? ❞   she’s schooling her voice as carefully as her expression. there’s no helping her thoughts, though, and she’s fairly sure those are being read too.   ❝ what do you want from me? ❞

[unsteals-archived]

“I was so worried about you.”        ♡        @soulstcne​. 

         ❝ i almost... ❞   layla hesitates before she finishes the sentence. she doesn’t know how to explain what happened inside that tomb to aisling; she doesn’t know if she even understands it herself. she’s lucky she got out. when the entrance collapsed, it might have been a death sentence for her, trapping her underground with a limited air supply and a structurally unsound corridor. finding the back entrance, for lack of a better term, was completely a matter of luck. honestly, stepping back from the unstable section before it caved in on top of her had been a matter of luck too, but she doesn’t want to think about that. she’s sitting in a camping chair in the excavators’ camp now, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and a thermos warm between her hands.   ❝ i don’t know how to tell you what happened in there. ❞