“Dal-Sun!” Martim called. “Dal-Sun, you idiot, we still need to set up camp!”
“Are you KIDDING me!?” Dal-Sun shouted back. “You wanna let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity just slip by!?”
“It’s several DAYS to that mountain from here! DAYS! We need SLEEP, Dal-Sun!”
“Fuck you!”
Ganymede found herself running, keeping pace with Martim and Dal-Sun, though she was still quite a ways behind them. She had left Arya lying in the field, unsure of exactly what to do in the current circumstances, but didn’t want to be left behind by the others.
What was happening? Was any of this even real? She had seen the existence of magic just a few nights ago, something that was already a struggle for her to believe, and now she had seemingly seen a beast fly from the moon and land in the nearby mountains. It went against everything she thought she understood–but it didn’t go against what she knew about the moon, and she’d come to understand that she couldn’t necessarily believe everything she thought she knew about the world, with how many lies her hometown told her.
But more important than that, she was tired of never understanding anything, of never knowing what to do. She decided that if she was going to keep running into things she’d never seen before, she’d simply accept them and move on. She needed to refocus and get her bearings. Even before she saw the beast in the sky, she was already starting to feel like she needed to rethink her approach, and with this new development, time was of the essence.
“Shouldn’t we stop and talk about how we’re going to approach this, anyway!?” she yelled after the other two. “We need to wait for Arya to catch up, too!”
“How can we make a plan if we don’t even know what we’re dealing with!?” Dal-Sun shouted back, not slowing her pace in the slightest. “Our first step is to get over there and see what it is, ASAP!”
“We’re not fucking running the entire way there, Dal-Sun!” Martim yelled.
“Maybe YOU’RE not!”
Ganymede thought through what she could do. “Did you see what was in the light? Because I did! But I’m not telling you what it was unless you agree to slow down and wait for Arya!”
“Not worth it!” Dal-Sun kept running.
“Are you going to skip eating over the next few days, too!?” Martim said. “What do you think is going to happen if we just slow down a bit!?”
“If you wanna eat, you can eat my ass!”
Ganymede was worried. Dal-Sun had mentioned she’d been strengthening her body using the moon rock somehow, but Ganymede still didn’t know the exact effects. Did Dal-Sun now have the stamina necessary to last several days without sleep, food, or water? Surely not, right?
“Dammit, Dal-Sun, I’m not letting you take off with our supplies! Slow DOWN!”
“No!”
Ganymede watched as Martim took off zis own backpack and grabbed what looked like a coil of rope. Without slowing down or missing a beat, Martim twirled the rope and threw it at Dal-Sun, where it fully tangled her legs, causing her to fall to the ground. Martim caught up to her quickly after that, slamming her to the ground and tying her paws together before she could fight back, though she vocally protested zis moves every step of the way.
Dal-Sun was still wrestling with her binds and yelling profanities at Martim as Ganymede finally caught up to the both of them, slowing her pace so she could catch her breath. “Is this really necessary?” she asked Martim.
“I’m not taking any chances,” Martim responded, breathing as heavily as Ganymede was. “I have no idea what the fuck it was we just saw, but this is not the time for our group to be splitting up. And you’re right, we should really be talking about our next approach, too.”
“What’s there to fucking TALK about!?” Dal-Sun screeched, seemingly not out of breath as the other two were. Martim ignored her.
“Ganymede, I’m gonna stay here and make sure they don’t run off again,” Martim said. “Could you go and find Arya and bring her back here, and then we’ll go ahead and set up camp for the night?”
“Um…” Ganymede had to think for a few seconds, to regain control of her thoughts in the midst of everything. “Do you think it’s okay if I just stay here and wait for her?”
“Again, I’d rather not take chances. I’d really rather us all get back together as soon as we can. I think it’d be best if you go find her and escort her back here.”
Ganymede rubbed the back of her neck. “All right,” she said, and then turned around and walked off, trying not to listen to whatever Dal-Sun was yelling about.
Ganymede eventually found Arya still perched in the grass where they had originally left her. She was no longer crying, but she looked miserable, wilted, not even looking up at Ganymede as she approached.
“Hey,” Ganymede said, softly. “Martim caught Dal-Sun and is, uh… sitting on her… so she won’t go anywhere… and ze wanted me to come back to get you.”
Arya said nothing, and continued staring at the ground.
“So we can go back to them as soon as you’re ready,” Ganymede said. “Um… are you… are you doing okay?”
Arya receded further into herself, turning away from Ganymede. There were tears in her eyes again. “What just happened?” she asked, her voice cracking.
Ganymede sighed. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. That’s why we gotta go check it out.”
Arya turned further away. “Ganymede, I… I don’t have an explanation for what we just saw,” she said. “There is nothing in our scriptures about anything like that. Nothing. And, and, I’m struggling to think of anything that would explain how it’s even possible, what it could be, and I can’t think of anything and I, I, I’m scared, I… I don’t know what to do.”
Ganymede was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, she knelt down in the grass next to Arya. “I think I felt the same way when I left my home,” Ganymede said. “And I kinda still feel the same way now. I still don’t understand anything, and I still don’t know where things are going. But I’m still alive, and I’m still willing to do what I have to do to figure things out. And since I’m already working on that… I don’t mind helping you do the same, if you want. If you don’t know where to start.”
Ganymede held out her paw. Arya stared at it, then slowly, softly placed her own talons into it. Ganymede lifted her up to a standing position, but could see she was shaking.
“Try not to worry about these things just yet,” Ganymede said. “Let’s get back to the others first, then we can talk this all out.”
Setting up the tent was a harder ordeal than usual, with only Ganymede and Arya doing the work while Martim kept hold of Dal-Sun. Eventually, though, they were settled in the tent the same as usual, except Arya was still shaking and Dal-Sun was still tied at the wrists.
“Okay,” Martim said, “now let’s calmly talk about what it was we just saw, and what it is we’re planning to do about it. Arya, do you want to get us started?”
Arya shook her head and looked away, wringing her talons together.
“Okay,” Martim sighed. “I’ll start, then. So, to repeat what happened, to make sure we’re all on the same page… when I looked at the moon, I saw weird waves of light and shadow moving across it, and then I saw some kind of bright light forming on it. Then it grew, and flashed, and then it stopped. That was the first part. Right?”
Ganymede nodded. Arya was still looking away, while Dal-Sun simply glared at the tent wall.
“So then the light came back, except now it was like… some kind of giant ball of light that… Well, it flew down here and crashed into the mountain! You all saw that part, right? With the flash and rumbling and everything else? There’s no way anyone missed that, right?”
Silence from the others.
“Okay, so… was there anything else to it that anyone happened to notice?”
Ganymede paused before speaking, slightly doubting herself with the absurdity of everything about the situation. “I thought I saw… some kind of beast in the light.”
This got everyone else’s attention, and they turned to her.
“A beast?” Dal-Sun asked. “What kind of beast?”
“I don’t know. It was white, it… it had big wings…”
“A bird?”
Ganymede scoured her fading flash of memory. “That doesn’t feel right…”
“It wasn’t a beast,” Arya suddenly said.
Now the others looked to her. She was shaking her head aggressively. “It couldn’t have been,” she said. “All living creatures were sent to earth a long time ago. Only the gods stayed on the moon, and they stayed on the moon. It’s their home. They have no reason to come down here.”
“Are you fuckin’ serious right now?” Dal-Sun mumbled.
“It can’t happen!” Arya said, at a higher pitch and volume than Ganymede had ever heard from her. “I don’t have an explanation for what we saw, but it couldn’t have been anything living.”
“Why write anything off?” Dal-Sun said. “None of us know what it is! Nothing like this has ever happened before! You don’t know any better than us if it was a god or whatever else! And there’s no point sitting here talking about what it might be when we can just go over there and see it!”
“And we will,” Martim said, “but Dal-Sun, why are you in such a big damn hurry?”
“Why aren’t you!?” Dal-Sun said, stamping her hooves as well as she could. “This is the biggest breakthrough there’s ever been! And if Ganymede is right and it was a beast that flew here… Don’t you see how that might mean we could use it to fly back!?”
The others pulled away.
“That’s a pretty big ‘if’, Dal-Sun,” Martim said.
“It’s the best possible chance we have! It doesn’t matter how small the chance is, so long as that chance is infinitely bigger than every other chance!”
“My point is, it’s still not worth rushing over there.”
“What if someone else gets there first!?”
“What if someone else gets there first? There’s already a town at the base of that mountain, they’ve got a head start on us no matter what. There’s no point in trying to be the first ones there.”
“That’s why we need to HURRY!” Dal-Sun yelled.
“I have a question,” Ganymede said.
“WHAT!?”
Ganymede flinched, then steadied herself, took a breath, and asked her question. “Why are we all trying to get to the moon?”
The others stared at her.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Dal-Sun asked.
“Yes,” said Ganymede, suddenly feeling more resolute. “I never really asked this question before, because I just kind of assumed everyone wanted the same things, but it’s been clearer to me lately that we don’t. I feel like it makes it harder for us to work together and make decisions if we don’t all agree on what we’re after. Even if we do have a pathway to the moon in front of us right now, what’s the point of pursuing it if we don’t even agree on what to do when we get there?”
Dal-Sun started visibly shaking in her restraints. “This is the worst time to be having this discussion! It doesn’t matter what we do after we get to the moon, the point is we do all agree that we want to get to the moon!”
“I never expected it would look like this,” Arya said, shaking her head. “This shouldn’t be a path to the moon. And if it is, it’s not a path I want to take. There’s something very, very wrong with all of this.”
“We all have a desire to reach the moon,” Martim said, “but aside from that, it’s clear we’re not agreeing on our approach, and that is a big problem. Let’s start with something simple. Can we at least agree to pace ourselves, take breaks to eat and sleep as normal, as we head toward the mountain?”
Ganymede and Arya nodded. Dal-Sun kept her glare.
“Dal-Sun, you’re outnumbered on this one. But if it’s such a pain in the ass for you…” Martim rubbed the underside of zis snout. “I don’t know, I’m trying to decide if I trust you enough to just let you go off on your own, if you want it so badly. But you can’t take our supplies with you. I’m not letting you do that.”
Ganymede watched Dal-Sun. Dal-Sun didn’t seem to react to that statement one way or another.
“I would much rather we stay together,” Arya said, her voice quieter now. “I feel like bad things are going to happen, and… I don’t know what we would tell Nicholas if we lost someone.”
“Is it really so bad to take our time?” Ganymede asked Dal-Sun directly. “We’re already going in the direction of the mountain as fast as we reasonably can.”
Dal-Sun’s eyes moved in Ganymede’s direction, then they moved away, and Dal-Sun turned her head away from her as well. “Why don’t you want to go with me?” Dal-Sun said, her voice almost wavering now, much less confident than it was before.
Martim sighed. “Well, I really don’t want to let you go, but I also don’t really want to hold you prisoner, if I’m being honest. I’m not sure it’s worth trying to make it work, anyway, if the goal here is not to lose sleep. So what do you say, Dal-Sun? Would you rather just go off on your own?”
Dal-Sun held her look of anger for another several seconds, before she finally collapsed in defeat, her face taking on a more sorrowful look.
“No,” she whispered. “I’ll stay with you.”
The next day, the group of four resumed traveling as usual. Or at least, Ganymede noticed that this is what appeared to be the case on a surface level, but the context of the situation made everything feel fragile and unsettled.
There was very little conversation, nothing like the chatter that would usually take place. Martim and Dal-Sun were stern and impatient, especially with each other. Arya was sensitive and anxious, almost paranoid. And Ganymede…
Ganymede felt strangely confident.
She considered that part of it may have been that, for the first time, she had the sense that everyone else was just as lost as she was. She normally would have expected this to be an additional source of stress, but instead, it made her feel like she had the most experience of anyone–experience being lost–and so she knew how to get through it, and she knew she could help everyone else get through it, too.
However, that wasn’t the whole of it. Ganymede also felt like she had reached some sort of renewed confidence just before she saw the light on the moon, like she had just rediscovered the moon itself. Up until the previous night, her experiences had made her doubt that she was on the right path to the moon. She had somehow lost her path back in her hometown, and the Lunites had made her feel as though she couldn’t find her way. But last night, she remembered the one thing that mattered more than any of that, the one thing that could help her find her path again: her connection to the moon itself. Not anyone else, not worrying about what anyone else said was her connection to the moon, or what her connection should be. Just her and the moon. No one else.
Which wasn’t to say other people didn’t matter at all, of course. The moon was still lonely, and so was she. They both still needed other people in their life. And those people needed each other, even when they were feeling disconnected from each other, as her companions were now.
They would reach the moon eventually. She was sure of it now. Maybe they were already on their way there, and it was as simple as reaching the mountain. But she was just as sure now that the mountain itself wouldn’t be good enough–they needed to learn how to connect to each other before then.
“If it’s okay,” Ganymede said, “I’d still like to hear more about what everyone’s planning to do when they reach the moon.”
A huff from Dal-Sun. A quizzical look from Martim.
“If not for the sake of planning, then for the sake of conversation,” Ganymede said. “We’ve still got a few days of walking ahead of us, anyway.”
I’ll figure this out during that time, she thought to herself.
I’ll show you the moon is worth loving as a living being, just like all of you are.
