Ganymede slept very little that night. Between the excitement of the morning and the frustration of the evening, her mind couldn’t settle on any specific emotion, and she couldn’t process the day’s events without making those emotions worse. Her frustration got worse the more she considered how her family wanted to prevent her from taking this new opportunity. Her excitement got more intense when she thought about how someday, all the arbitrary restrictions of her family and the misunderstandings of her friends might be far behind her.
Sleep or no, the morning came all the same, the glaring sun an oppressive interruption to the moon’s comforting presence. Still, she had no intention of letting a lack of energy interrupt her work, and so she gathered her tools as she usually did, and prepared to head out.
“Mary.”
Before she could finish, though, her mother appeared in the doorway and spoke to her. It appeared that she hadn’t gotten much sleep, either.
“I need to speak with you,” her mother said.
Ganymede suspected this talk might last longer than she wanted, but she chose to stand rather than sit, in the hopes that her height would give her some advantage over her mother. “What is it?” Ganymede asked, as neutrally as she could manage.
Her mother gripped the doorframe. “You need to stop the construction work.”
The two stared at each other. Ganymede didn’t think she needed to say anything. Her mother should have already known this conversation wasn’t going to accomplish what she wanted to accomplish.
Her mother sighed. “I know you don’t want to. And I know how important it is to you. For a little while, I was even wondering if I should just accept it, and stop pushing against it. I don’t understand what you see in it, but it makes you happy, and… it actually seemed to be helping you make friends for once. That’s never happened before. You can understand my apprehension, considering that.”
Ganymede continued saying nothing. She waited for her mother to say anything she didn’t already know.
“But last night reminded me of everything that I’d been scared of in the first place,” her mother continued. “And that’s never changed. Your hobby is still strange, and whatever attention it attracts is the wrong kind of attention. It’s not safe. I’ve tried to tell you this before, and… I’m not sure how to tell you in a way that makes sense to you, but I need to try.”
Another moment of silence.
“When I was younger, about your age, I… was trying to figure out my place in the world, too. I didn’t think I really fit in here in this town… also like you. I did have friends, and I spent time with them, doing the things they wanted to do. But I felt irrelevant to them a lot of the time. As though… I didn’t think they would keep me around if I was ever the slightest inconvenience to them. And so I wasn’t. But that wasn’t enough for me.
“But then I met some people from outside, and… I won’t say everything they did made sense to me, but they seemed to understand certain things that I felt a lot of people in town didn’t. About… certain kinds of feelings a person can have sometimes, that don’t get talked about much here. And about how…” She clenched a fist and glared at it before letting it go. “Constraining this town can be about so many things.
“Well, I decided, maybe these people were my real friends, or could be. More than the people I knew in town.”
This was information Ganymede had never heard before, and it surprised her. She really didn’t think her mother ever would’ve even considered interacting with outsiders. “What happened?” she asked.
“Some awful things, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Some awful things.”
In the silence that followed, Ganymede felt some bitterness returning to her gut. “Things you can’t tell me?”
“Mary… I know the person you met yesterday might have seemed wonderful for any number of reasons. But I’ve been there too, and I want you to know…” Her mother made direct eye contact with her. “No one in this world is wholly wonderful. Everyone has problems. And everyone hides those problems until the worst possible moment.”
“If that’s true, then that applies to people in town, too, right?” Ganymede said, now getting angrier. “It applies to you, and to me, and Father, and Anna. It applies to friends and family. Why couldn’t outsiders be friends and family, too?”
Her mother’s stare was devoid of any kindness or empathy.
“The difference with outsiders,” her mother said, “is that they are unfamiliar to us. Whatever problems people in our town have, we’re familiar with them. We know what kinds of problems to expect, and we know how to resolve them when they happen. This is how we can survive even the kinds of problems that would otherwise be life-destroying. But with outsiders… you don’t know what kinds of problems to expect. You have nothing to protect yourself when they hit you. And when they hit you, the outsiders will abandon you, and no one here would be able to help you, either.” She bared her teeth. “No one here would even want to help you anymore.”
Once again, her mother’s explanations were having the opposite of their intended effect on Ganymede, who found herself tapping her foot out of impatience. “Is this actually how you feel about everyone?” she asked. “About me, about Father? About everyone in town? Like everyone’s just problems waiting to happen?”
“Child, I’m telling you a fact of life.”
“Everything in the world has both positives and negatives! You think I don’t know that?” Ganymede said, her voice now increasing in volume. “Everything can turn out bad in ways we don’t expect… And everything can turn out good in ways we don’t expect! It’s not any reason to not do things!”
“If you understand risk, then you should understand why I’m telling you that this risk is too big to take. If you want to take risks, take them in town. Take risks on the kinds of things we know can have good outcomes. We know nothing about what it is you’re trying to do, other than how many friends it’s lost you, and how much it’s physically hurt you.”
“You don’t know what I know I can accomplish, even though I keep telling you, because you don’t trust me! If you knew, you’d know why it’s all worth it! How it’d make it so no one has to hurt each other or let each other be hurt anymore! How we can help each other regardless of what town or country we come from!”
“Regardless of what you think, you can’t bring about heaven on earth like you’re trying to do. And it’s beyond egotistical of you to think you can do the Alpha’s work like that.”
“Well what about you? What are you even doing? Your life advice to me is that I have to hide from the world because something bad might happen? That I should aspire to stay in this one place because it’s the least bad of my options? You think that’s what I should center my life around?” Ganymede put on her travel pack. “You know, you never seem happy. I’m starting to understand why.”
“Feeling like life should provide you more than it does, doesn’t mean it actually can, will, or should, child.”
“I don’t think it’s worth it to live a miserable life just because it might be even worse if I try to make it better. What you’re telling me is to give up, because you tried once, and then you gave up. I’m not doing that.” And with that, Ganymede pushed past her to head towards the door.
“MARY!” her mother screeched, grabbing her arm.
Ganymede whipped her head around to look at her, expecting to see the stern, angry face of a disciplinarian… only to discover that her mother seemed to be on the verge of crying.
“Please,” her mother said. “I’m out of words. I’m begging you. I can’t watch you do this anymore. You’re hurting yourself. Please stop and stay with me.”
Ganymede watched her for a moment. Then she yanked her arm out of her mother’s grasp, strode to the front door, opened it, went through it, and slammed it behind her.
Even though her work was standard routine to her at this point, Ganymede could tell that her stress was interfering with the quality of it. This fact did not convince her to stop; in fact, it spurred her onwards. She needed the building to be complete so that she could be closer to her goal, which felt more necessary than ever.
She had always felt as though her mother had given up on some part of herself. She suspected this of most people in town, and even had evidence of it in some cases, but her mother had effectively just told her so directly.
She was angry at her mother, yes, but she also felt sorry for her. One or two harmful relationships from her mother’s past had convinced her to restrict herself in relationships in the present. Not only did she not have close relationships with most people in town, but even with family who wanted to love her, who did love her–like Ganymede–she constrained herself and made things tense and strict between them. What was she afraid Ganymede would even do? What had even happened to her?
“Hey, uh, Ganymede.”
Once again, she was pulled out of her intense thoughts by a sudden voice, though this one wasn’t as unwelcome as her mother’s had been earlier. It was James. “Can I talk to you for a second?” he asked.
“Sure,” Ganymede said, standing up and shaking off some of her sweat. “What is it?”
“All right, so… about that goat you met with yesterday. What was that about, exactly?”
Ganymede winced. Was this same topic about to cause even more problems with even more people? Did other people in town really care this much about it?
“She said she was from a group of people called the Lunites,” Ganymede began.
“Wait, ‘she’?”
“Yes, ‘she’.” Ganymede still wasn’t actually sure, but she was also no longer in the mood to be corrected by people who hadn’t even met with Dal-Sun themselves. “They’re an organization dedicated to figuring out the pathway to the moon like I am, and she asked if I wanted to join.”
James looked unsettled. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m not interested in it right now, because I still have too much work to do here. And I meant it.”
James slowly blew out a big breath of air. “Hoooo, Ganymede. I think this is gonna complicate some things.”
“Why?” Ganymede asked, louder than she intended to. “Someone came to town for a visit and then left, what’s the big deal?”
“The town council doesn’t like it when random people come snooping around town when we don’t have established business with them. It’s suspicious. This town is too out of the way for any passers-by to want to come visit, and we don’t have any especially precious resources to trade, so… the remaining possibilities tend to be ‘escaped convicts’ and things like that.”
“You’re saying you don’t trust anyone who comes to this town because this town sucks too much for anyone to want to come to it?” Ganymede said, again louder than she intended. She was really starting to regret her lack of sleep now.
“That is not what I’m saying, and you need to chill. I’m just saying that this is a hurdle that we’re going to have to address with the townspeople if we want to maintain their support for this construction project.” He looked off towards the direction of town. “Especially since we hadn’t actually communicated with everyone about the project yet, meaning that this particular bit of news is their first introduction to it. It’s not a good look.”
“Why is it a bad look? She came to talk to me, and it wasn’t about the building or any of the other workers or anything like that.”
“It wasn’t about the construction project?” James asked incredulously. “You’re telling me that someone from out of town managed to hear about you for some reason other than this huge thing right here?”
Ganymede was silent. He had her there.
“Even if it were true, it’s not gonna be what the townspeople believe, I wouldn’t think,” James said. “No, I’m sorry, but now the main association people have with this tower is ‘it draws in strange people from out of town’. I might be able to talk around that if I can think of the right way to do it, but it’s a huge setback, and… I’m not sure we’re gonna recover from it, honestly.”
Ganymede pressed two palms to her forehead and let out a long groan in the direction of the sky. “What do you want me to do about it?” she asked.
“Nothing, right now. I just came to ask you for that info. I’ll do what I can with it… maybe I could take a tourism angle? I don’t think the townspeople would really go for that, either. Well, that’s not for you to worry about at the moment. Just keep doing your work, I’ll do mine, and we’ll meet back up to talk about it more later. Steady pace, all right?”
And then he walked off, leaving Ganymede to return to building alongside the other workers. All of a sudden, though, Ganymede felt like it was even more of a struggle than it had already been that morning.
Ganymede’s mood failed to improve over the course of the next few days. Her own work improved some once she managed to get some sleep (from sheer exhaustion), but it wasn’t enough to make building construction go faster, because she had discovered a new problem: fewer people were showing up to work than before.
When she looked into why, she confirmed that the reason was due to the rumors that were spreading as a result of Dal-Sun’s visit to town. Workers were still getting paid, but there was a question of whether they would continue getting payment in the future, and there were now other projects that would be more reliable payment for them, where they wouldn’t have to fear being associated with a failed project. Even before then, some workers had already left because they had been uncomfortable for their own reasons.
Ganymede sat with Jess at the cafe, despondent. She hadn’t approached Jess herself, but Jess had been checking up on her in light of all the bad news to see how she’d been handling it, and she’d suggested taking a break to talk with her on this particular day.
“I still don’t understand why it’s such a big problem that we had a visitor,” Ganymede said. “The whole point of this project was to help people make connections with each other, right? And the town council decided it was a good idea because it would help people do that? Why is everyone upset that it would help us make a connection with someone especially far away? Doesn’t that mean it’s good at what it does?”
Jess considered her. “You’ve got a good heart, Ganymede,” she said. “And you’re strong, too. Making connections is actually really scary for a lot of people. It should be for you, too, you’ve been through worse parts of it than most of us. But you just keep diving back into it.”
“Whatever strength I have, I’m willing to provide it to others to help them do it, too. But I feel like they don’t even want to try.”
The two sat in silence for a minute. Jess looked out a nearby window, while Ganymede simply stared at her paws.
“Ganymede,” Jess said, “does the project have to be a moon thing?”
Ganymede looked up. The two of them looked at each other for another several seconds.
“Yes?” Ganymede said.
“I mean, I knew you were going to say that, but Ganymede… how often do you ask yourself that question?”
“I’ve never had to ask myself that once. I always know. I’ve never known anything so clearly.”
Jess furrowed her brow and drank her coffee. “It’s just… you want so badly to make connections, but in spite of how often your focus on the moon gets in the way of that, you keep sticking to it anyway. I guess I’m having trouble understanding why.”
Ganymede looked at her paws again. “The moon is part of me. If I remove the moon from who I am and what I do, then I’m not making connections with anyone anymore. A part of myself will have gotten lost on the way.”
“I see,” Jess said, though Ganymede wasn’t sure she did see. She looked so sad when she said it, after all, rather than happy.
“I’m still surprised that you and others don’t see it the same way. I know the same thing happened with you when you gave up on music back in school. I felt like you had given up on a part of yourself, something beautiful about you, when you did that. A part of yourself that no one else would get to know, anymore.” Ganymede was barely speaking above a whisper now. “And I could tell… you were so happy when I told you I wanted to see that part of you again. I could tell you wanted it to be part of our connection. You’ve just been choosing not to have it be, and I don’t understand why.”
Ganymede glanced at Jess, who was looking away from her. Jess was smiling, but also looked like she was about to cry.
“You think that part of me was beautiful?” she said, her voice also barely above a whisper. Jess made the smallest of laughs to herself, then continued. “You might make a connection with me when I make music, but… no one else does. That’s why I don’t do it. Because when I play music, it reminds me of what isn’t there, something that I wish was there, and it hurts too much to feel that way. So I choose not to do it at all.”
Ganymede looked away from her, too.
So you gave up, too, Ganymede thought. Just like my mother.
Another few days later, Ganymede walked through the forest as she did every day, to return to her project. At this point, everyone else had left, so it was only her doing the construction work. The whole situation had put her in a depressed mood, but the fact was that, in the beginning, she thought she was going to be alone from start to finish; continuing to work on the project by herself wasn’t a problem for her, in that sense. It would even give her the freedom to go back and make the adjustments she wanted to make.
The fact that everyone else had left was what made it surprising, though, that she was starting to hear what sounded like construction work in the direction of the project. For a moment, she wondered if James had actually done the work of convincing the town that the project was a good idea again. She hadn’t heard from him in a while, and assumed he’d been busy with that.
Then she realized that the sounds she was hearing weren’t standard construction work.
She dropped her bag in the middle of the forest to lighten her load, and she ran as fast as she could to the clearing.
And there was exactly what she feared: The town’s workers, the same ones who had been helping her build the building just a few days before, were now actively tearing it down. Breaking wood into unusable pieces. Stripping it of its life.
“What are you DOING!?” she screamed at them in uninhibited rage. “STOP!!”
“Miss Mary Lewis, this construction has been determined to be untenable by the town council, and is being torn down under the orders of Frederick Anderson,” came some uninvited voice behind her. “It’s been determined that not only has it caused lasting damage to the forest, but it has drawn in an unsavory element of–”
“Shut the FUCK up,” Ganymede snarled at the source of the voice, grabbing him and throwing him to the ground. Huffing wildly, Ganymede ran to the nearest person destroying her beautiful building, and she punched him square in the jaw, knocking him out cold. She then ran to the next person in order to do the same thing to him, but when he raised his sledgehammer to defend himself, she grabbed that and wrested it from him before punching him out.
At this point, the town guard were already on her tail. If it had been like her days where she had been bullied at school, she might have run away, since she was outnumbered–but she had grown taller than them, and she had built up a lot of muscle, and she couldn’t afford to run away from this. She swung around with the full force of the sledgehammer she had grabbed, hitting one in the side of the chest and slamming him into the other one, knocking them both down to the ground. She snarled and barked fiercely at the next few to arrive, stopping them in their tracks long enough for her to land some blows knocking them down as well.
Though most of the workers had been successfully scared off at this point, there were still a few people encroaching on her, and they were more prepared for what she was trying to unleash upon them. The guards she had knocked to the ground earlier were already starting to get up, too. They were starting to surround her. Ganymede didn’t think she could successfully land a direct blow without her weapon being taken from her, not to mention these people had weapons of their own, now, so instead she decided to take a risk in throwing the hammer at one guard as she went into fisticuffs with the others.
She got some kicks and scratches in, but before she had time to see it was happening, she had already been grabbed from behind, slammed to the ground, and had her arms pinned behind her back. She continued to snap and snarl at them until something heavy hit her in the back of her head, knocking her unconscious.
