Boy in the Moonlight

His hopeful news delivered, the Skull Knight departs with a parting caution: what Guts desires may differ from what Casca desires. Unnoticed by Guts and Schierke, Casca has drifted out of the cabin and along the shore, where she meets a small, naked, long-haired boy standing in the surf. The two simply regard one another. Searching by the glow of Isidro's salamander dagger, Farnese, Serpico, Puck and Isidro find Casca seated with the child bundled in her cloak between her knees, both staring at the sea. As Guts and Schierke rejoin them, no one can place the boy, guessing he is lost or robbed, though Schierke feels something strange about him.

Guts and the child briefly lock eyes before Casca pulls him into a shielding embrace. The group heads back so the boy will not freeze; as Guts moves, he senses someone watching from a cliff but sees nothing and lets it go. Inside, Schierke relays the Skull Knight's news, including that the Flower Storm Monarch might heal Casca. Casca feeds the boy while Guts, mulling the warning that their wishes may diverge, watches. The child ignores Isidro's attempts to speak and clings to Casca. Twice Guts catches the boy's eye and twice the child looks away, leaving Guts puzzled and irritated until he shuts his eyes.

Then he feels a pull at his back: the boy is scaling his cape onto his shoulders. When Guts reaches to lift him off, the sudden motion panics Casca, who rushes in fearing harm, and the scuffle knocks the boy loose. As he falls toward Guts' laid-out throwing knives, both Casca and Guts lunge and catch him together, collapsing into one tangle with the child safe between them. Isidro remarks how much the three resemble a family. Recovering herself, Casca clutches the boy and snarls at Guts while Farnese and Serpico take note. Later, with everyone but Guts asleep, he watches Casca and the boy curled up together, reminded of the night two years earlier when Casca bore their Demon Child. He wonders where that child is now, having last seen it at the Tower of Conviction, unaware it was consumed in the ritual that gave Griffith his new body. Out in the water near the cabin, a pair of crocodile eyes breaks the surface.

Casca discovers a mysterious black-haired boy on the beach, and the two bond instantly. The boy takes to Guts as well, and the three briefly resemble a family. Guts recalls the Demon Child born to Casca two years earlier and wonders about its fate, not knowing it was used to reincarnate Griffith. Schierke senses something unusual about the boy, and crocodile eyes surface offshore near the cabin.

Running twenty-three pages in the Millennium Falcon Arc, this chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 8 on April 2, 2004. It introduces the Moonlight Boy and quietly hints at his connection to the Demon Child. The Demon Child and the Egg of the Perfect World appear only in flashback.