"My little star!" her mother exclaimed when she saw her, her face lighting up with pure joy.
She extended a hand toward Luna, inviting her.
And then it began.
The usual storm of praise...
"My beautiful girl, my perfect treasure, my brilliant light," her mother took her in her arms, spinning her in the air while Luna screamed half laughter half mortification. "You’re the most precious thing that exists in the whole world. You’re more beautiful than the stars, brighter than the twelve moons together!"
The words tumbled out in a torrent. Exaggerated and dramatic, but completely sincere despite sounding like dialogue from a romantic play.
"Mom," Luna had protested, her face burning with embarrassment. "Stop!"
"Stop?" her mother laughed, the sound like music. Like joy given voice. "Stop telling my perfect daughter how much I love her? Impossible! You’re my reason for waking each morning, my last thought before sleeping, my everything!"
"Mommmmm," Luna groaned, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder, trying to hide from the embarrassment that felt like it would consume her. "It’s embarrassing!"
"What?" her mother squeezed tighter, voice muffled by Luna’s hair but still audible. "My love for you is embarrassing? How cruel you are to your mother, my little merciless star!"
But she was laughing while saying it, kissing Luna’s head repeatedly. Each kiss landing with exaggerated sound effects that made Luna want to disappear.
"I love you I love you I love you I love you," each kiss came with another declaration. "My perfect girl. My angel. My reason for existing."
Luna had blushed so hard she probably glowed in the darkness.
It was too much.
Her mother was too much.
Too affectionate, too expressive, too intense in her love. Like she’d taken normal parental affection and amplified it by ten until it became this overwhelming force that filled every space it touched.
It made her cringe, honestly.
All those exaggerated compliments, all those dramatic declarations of love that sounded like they belonged in terrible poetry rather than normal conversation.
It was really embarrassing.
Especially when she did it in front of other nobles, who looked with expressions between amused and uncomfortable while Luna’s mother proclaimed her eternal love for her perfect daughter.
"Mom," Luna had begged, desperate for mercy. "Please, act normal."
"Normal?" her mother had asked, finally setting her down but keeping hands on Luna’s shoulders. Not releasing completely because that would mean creating distance and distance was the enemy. "My love, normal is boring, normal is cold, normal is what the others are."
She’d knelt to be at Luna’s height, her eyes of the same intense blue looking at her with absolute tenderness.
"I don’t want to be normal with you. I want you to know, every second of every day, how much I love you... How much you mean to me. Because love isn’t something to hide or contain, my star, love is to shout from the mountains, to write in the skies, to show without shame!"
She’d kissed Luna’s forehead softly.
The gesture somehow more powerful for its gentleness after all the exaggerated displays. Quiet affection after loud proclamations, proving the intensity was real rather than performance.
"And I love you, with every fiber of my being, with every beat of my heart... I’ll love you until the stars go out and the moons fall from the sky... I’ll love you beyond death itself!!"
Luna had rolled her eyes. "You’re so dramatic, Mom."
"I’m not alone," her mother had responded with a wink. "Your father is equally dramatic when it comes to people he loves. In fact..."
And then she’d called Sirius, who was ’observing’ something on the other side of the garden, completely red.
And when he came, her mother had begun her own attack of praise toward him, while he glowed the same intense red as Luna. Mortification apparently genetic, passed down through Starweaver bloodlines.
Until his wife forced him to speak...
And although he did it with extreme embarrassment, he also did it with intense love that surpassed the shame. The two ended up declaring eternal love with language so flowery and exaggerated that Luna genuinely wanted to disappear into the earth.
Her parents were so embarrassing.
So intense.
So completely, irrevocably in love with each other and with her.
And Luna had thought, with the wisdom of her six years, that she wished they could be a bit more... quiet.

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