The Word - Lunette

There would be no fancy trappings for the son now. The man smirked, revealing blackend eye teeth, the tips of them broken off. He moved from the unconscious boy, to the warison sitting pretty as a bird on top of the wooden armory. He pulled the gleaming lunette blade from it's sheath. It was a pretty trinket about half the length of his arm. The white gold hilt, gleamed, holding blade in place. It wouldn't have been the best of metals to use, but with the ivory enlaid in it, it would fare well enough. He tested the tip and drew back his thumb with red gleaming on it. Sharp. He smiled as the blood turned blue. Some magic to this as well, it would have to be in order to have such a rare material used as a working handle. The man pulled out a silken handkerchief, wiping the blade clean once more and returned to the son. Chanting softly in his native tongue, the man dropped the point of the blade over the boy's heart, dipping the point into his skin, deep enough to draw the life blood to the surface, but not to kill. Changing the tone of his chant, he watched as the blood flowed up the lunette, it turning blue before working its way back down the other side to return to the boy's body. From the entry , it spread out underneath the skin, keeping its darkened color leaving the mark of bonding there. No matter what he did now, the son would be unable to separate himself from the blade. The man smiled again, as the last words left his chapped lips. It would be the only possession from his old life that he would keep.

Lunette: 1: Something that has the shape of a crescent or half-moon. 2: the figure or shape of a crescent moon.

History Behind the Word- "Lunette," a word borrowed from French, looks like it should mean "little moon" --luna being Latin for "moon" and "-ette" being a diminutive suffix. There is indeed some 17th-century evidence of the word being used for a small celestial moon, but that meaning is now obsolete. Earlier, in the 16th century, "lunette" referred to a horseshoe having only the front semicircular part--a meaning that still exists but is quite rare. "Lunette" has other meanings too rare for our Collegiate Dictonary but included in our Unabridged.Among these are "a blinder especially for a vicious horse" and, in the plural form, "spectacles." (Lunettes is the usual term for eyeglasses in modern French.) The oldest meaning of "lunette" still in common use is "something shaped like a crescent or half-moon," which evidence dates to circa 1639.