“Mother,” Ganymede had said, “do you like going to church?”
Her mother set her soup spoon back in the bowl and looked at her daughter. “Mary, we’re not having this conversation again. You have to go to church.”
“I’m not talking about me,” Ganymede said. “I’m asking if you like to.”
Silence.
“You just never seem happy there,” Ganymede said.
Her mother took a deep breath and clasped her paws together. “Mary,” she said, “Church is a place to show our veneration for the Alpha–”
“But do you enjoy it?” Ganymede asked. “I just want to know what you’re feeling.”
Her mother raised her paws to her own snout, contemplating.
“It’s important that we be there,” she said.
“Those other ladies said some mean things to you today.”
Hey mother raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What do you mean? We were just chatting.”
“What they said about your hair,” Ganymede said. “I think they were making fun of you.” Ganymede wasn’t sure, but she recognized the tone people took when they made fun of her.
Her mother opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, and brought her paws back to her chin, looking at her soup in thought. It was another minute before she spoke again.
“Mary, there’s something important you need to understand,” she said quietly. “Church isn’t always fun, but it’s still important to go, because it’s a source of protection.”
Ganymede tried to think of what her mother might mean. “What, from demons?” she asked.
“No, from people.”
Ganymede stared at her. “Huh?”
“Let me rephrase that,” her mother said. “This town has certain expectations of its people. It doesn’t ask a lot. For the most part, it’s enough just to do your job and avoid causing trouble. But one of the things it does expect of us is to go to church regularly.”
“To protect us from people?”
“No, it’s… if we don’t go, we lose any protection that the town is willing to afford us.”
Ganymede still didn’t understand. “What?”
“We are offered a certain level of security from maintaining a good standing within the town,” her mother said. “Not just security, actually. Your father benefits from having a respectable reputation as a businessman. This helps him bring in more money so that you and I can be more comfortable.”
“But you don’t seem comfortable,” Ganymede said.
“I am comfortable,” her mother said sternly. “I’m more comfortable than I would be if we didn’t maintain that respectability. If we didn’t go to church, the town wouldn’t trust us anymore, and we’d lose out on a lot of the things that depend on that trust. Your father would lose his job, we might not be allowed into certain stores, or allowed to use certain services… we might be more at risk for being put in jail for one reason or another.”
“So the church is holding us hostage?”
“No, Mary, what an awful thing to say. The town is being very generous to provide us with all the things it provides, and going to church is a small price to pay for all of it.”
“But I feel like you’re not even happy to be here, in the church or in town. It still feels like you’re doing stuff for people who don’t even like you, just so they won’t hurt you. Or at least, it feels like they don’t like you–”
Her mother slammed her paws on the table and stood up. “Well, Mary, you know the whole reason they don’t like me is because–”
Her mother stopped herself, gritting her teeth and pulling her head back, almost as if she was choking on her own words. She held her paws up in front of herself, her pads facing Ganymede, as though she was telling Ganymede to slow down–or maybe she was telling herself that. She took a deep breath and sat back down in her chair.
“They like me just fine,” she said, returning to her soup. “Sometimes friends tease each other. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
The room was quiet for a minute, with an air as though the discussion had concluded, even though Ganymede felt as though the underlying problem remained unaddressed.
“If we moved to a place where they cared about you more,” Ganymede said, “would you want to do that, even if we had less money?”
Her mother glanced at her, but only briefly. “That place doesn’t exist,” she said, blowing on her soup. “We were born here, so the people care about us here. We wouldn’t have that anyplace else.”
Ganymede shook herself out of her thoughts. The memories hurt; she must have been reminded of them because of her recent conversations.
She was tired, too, since her companions had opted to skip the final night of sleep before they reached their destination. Martim had said ze didn’t trust Dal-Sun not to run off when they were so close, but the truth was that all of them were getting increasingly anxious as they approached, and Ganymede doubted that she would have been able to sleep through the night, either.
But Ganymede must have been lost in her head longer than she had thought; dawn was breaking, and they were now less than a mile away from the mining town at the base of the mountain, a place known as Dinrock. Looking at it now, Ganymede realized that the town was in bad shape: a few of the buildings had caved in on themselves, most likely due to the aftershock of whatever had landed in the mountains.
Ganymede felt tension in her chest, she was sure everyone did–and yet none of them were speeding their pace, not even Dal-Sun. None of them were speaking, either, an eerie quiet falling over the group.
Instinctively, Ganymede looked upwards to seek out the moon, but it had already disappeared from sight. Maybe it was for the best, because lately she hadn’t felt the same kind of comfort looking at the moon as she usually did. Maybe it was just the sheer stress of the current situation, but something within her was certain that the moon was somehow different from before.
As they approached the town, they saw someone working on repairing one of the buildings, a bear. Martim waved at them. “Ahoy there,” ze said. “Could you tell us about what happened here?”
The bear turned around and grunted. “Travelers, eh?” they said. “It’s dangerous around here, you’d best be on your way. We’ve got our paws full enough as it is.”
“We saw the light hit the mountain,” Martim said. “Felt it, too. We came to investigate what it was. Would you be able to tell us more about it?”
“We’ve already got our boys looking into it, we don’t need any outside help or lookie-loos,” the bear said. “I can assure you it’s nothing that would benefit you to see. I really suggest you get out of here before you get yourselves or anyone else into trouble.”
Martim scratched the side of zis head. “Well, actually I think it would help us to at least know what it was. See, we’re part of the Lunites, an organization that–”
“Lunites!?” the bear snarled, suddenly growing fierce and grabbing their hammer. “It’s because of you lot that we’re in this mess in the first place!”
“What?” Martim said, eyes growing wide.
“Get out!” the bear yelled, lifting their hammer and walking towards them. “GET OUT!!”
Instinctively, Ganymede and the rest of her group made a retreat away from the bear, away from town, until they made it far enough that they saw the bear turn around and return to their work.
Dal-Sun scanned the area. “Let’s walk around and find a different way into town, and try that again with someone else, before rumors start spreading about us,” she said. “And let’s not mention who we are, next time.”
“Okay, so here’s what I’ve heard,” said the goat behind the counter. “So the light hit, there was a blast and an earthquake, some rocks fell from the mountain and crushed some buildings too, all that stuff. So after things calmed down a bit, some of the guards gathered together in order to go up the mountain to investigate, right? But there was more to it than that.”
“Yeah?” Martim said, taking the drink that the goat handed to zim.
“So apparently we’d already had someone staying at the inn. Just a random traveler, we get them from time to time, of course. But then this traveler went up to the guards and insisted on being part of the investigation team. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The guards thought he was just some thrillseeker, but they took him along anyway, maybe just so they could at least keep an eye on him, I dunno.”
“Okay.”
“So they went up the mountain to where the light hit. And it’s really obvious where it landed, there’s this big ol’ hole where it landed, and it goes in deep, like a cave. So they go in there, and they don’t know what to expect, right?” The goat leaned over across the counter. “You know what they found in there?”
“What?” Dal-Sun asked.
The goat tipped their head forward and raised their eyebrows. “A dragon.”
“WHAT?” Dal-Sun said.
“Yep. Just like in the old legends. Giant, scaly, big claws, big wings, the works.”
“NO!” Arya yelled.
“It’s true. We have proof, which I’ll get to in a bit. Anyway, so the–”
“NO!” Arya screamed again. “The dragons were a LIE! They were brought into our religion to CONTROL US!” She was starting to cry. “There was NOTHING about dragons in our original scriptures, NOTHING! This isn’t REAL! It CAN’T be real! It CAN’T!”
“Arya, what–get ahold of yourself!” Martim said as ze put zis arms around her to stop her sudden flailing.
“IT’S NOT REAL!” Arya kept screaming. “IT’S NOT REAL!”
“Arya, shut the fuck up, we need to hear the rest of what this guy says!” Dal-Sun said.
“Is she all right?” the bartender asked.
Ganymede decided to join Martim in attempting to comfort Arya, even though there seemed to be no way to do this. The best they could do was hold her still until she stopped struggling and simply fell limp, not even using her own arms to try to steady herself. She was sobbing uncontrollably at this point.
“Don’t worry about her,” Dal-Sun told the bartender. “It’s important for us to know what we’re dealing with here, for our own protection, you know? Please, tell us the rest of the story.”
“NO!” Arya said, suddenly pushing herself out of Ganymede’s grasp. “NO, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!”
Before anyone could stop her, Arya ran out of the bar, still crying. Martim stepped forward as if to follow her, then stopped, looking back and forth between the door and the bartender.
“Please, continue,” Dal-Sun said.
“Is she gonna be okay?” the bartender asked.
“She can take care of herself,” Dal-Sun said. “She probably just needs some time to process some stuff.”
The bartender hesitated, but upon seeing Martim turn and sit back down at the bar, they decided it was okay to continue. Ganymede was worried about Arya, herself, but she had no idea how she would help her even if she went after her, and she felt she couldn’t risk missing whatever the bartender had to say.
“Right, so… the guards and the traveler come across the dragon,” the bartender said, “and as soon as the guards see it, they want to be careful, right? The thing is huge, five times the size of them combined, enough to swallow any of them in one gulp. But the traveler–that idiot–decides it’s a good idea to just go running up to the dragon.”
“Heh.” Dal-Sun smiled.
“And the traveler starts going off about how he’s a member of some group called the Lunites, and that he’s the one who summoned the dragon here. And… he didn’t say anything about that to any of us, here in town, you know? He didn’t ask us if it was okay to summon a dragon here. What, he’s just some cultist deciding to pop in someplace where no one knows him or what he’s doing, and… anyway.” The goat waved his paw as if to dismiss the idea. “Maybe he could only do it here, I don’t know. But the point is, he’d apparently summoned the dragon in order to take him to the moon, and so he told the dragon that he was here, and he was ready. And then the dragon–this big, ferocious beast–speaks back to him.”
“Uh-huh?” Dal-Sun said, her eyes and grin both widening.
“The dragon speaks to him, and says it has absolutely no intention of taking him to the moon. Says it’s here of its own choice or something, and can do what it wants. Well, the traveler doesn’t like that. Starts arguing with the damn thing about it. Tries to bargain with it. And when bargaining doesn’t work, the idiot starts threatening the dragon.”
“Oh my god,” Martim said.
“And then the lunatic threw a goddamn bomb at it.”
“What?” Dal-Sun said, her look of glee replaced by shock.
“Yeah,” the bartender said, nodding seriously. “At least, we think that’s what happened. Things devolved into chaos after that. The dragon retaliated, one of the guards tried to go in to rescue the guy, another guard got caught in the crossfire… things happened, and uh, in the end, only two guards came back. One of them carrying the other one. And both of them have burns that are unlike anything anyone’s seen before. The burns look wrong, they look all… twisted and melty. That’s how we know they’re telling the truth.”
“So the dragon’s still alive?” Dal-Sun said, clutching her chest.
“Yes, but maybe not for long. When the rest of the guard heard what happened, they decided to send their whole force in to go subdue the dragon. They also accepted several extra volunteers around town who were upset about the boys we’d lost. I don’t know if they’re planning on capturing the dragon, or just killing it, but they don’t want it around here anymore.” The bartender shook their head. “Between you and me, though, our economy hasn’t been doing great lately, and I don’t think it’s lost on the mayor that we could stand to make quite a profit off of this if we manage to keep it alive.”
Dal-Sun now had both paws cupped over her mouth. Ganymede had never seen her look so shocked at anything before. “When are they going to go after the dragon again?” Dal-Sun asked.
“Oh, they already left a couple hours ago. With a crowd of that size, though, it’s probably gonna take them the better part of a day to get there.”
“Oh my god,” Dal-Sun gasped. “Ganymede, Martim, come with me.”
“Huh? What?” Martim said, but ze and Ganymede were already both being pulled outside with Dal-Sun’s unusually strong grip.
“We need to get over to the dragon right now,” Dal-Sun said as soon as they stepped outside.
“What? No,” Martim said, wresting zis arm away. “Dal-Sun, no. What are you planning on doing, exactly?”
“We need to get over to the dragon so we can figure out how to get it to take us to the moon!” Dal-Sun said. “We need to get over there before the army kills it, or worse! This may be our last chance to ever go to the moon!”
“Dal-Sun, you’re just gonna get us killed,” Martim said. “You heard what the bartender said, the guards already left hours ago. On the off-chance we get there a little bit ahead of them, what are you planning on doing that the other Lunite didn’t already do, huh? Offer a bigger prize? Throw a bigger bomb?”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now!? We have to at least fucking try! We’re never gonna get another chance like this again!”
“From what I can see, we already don’t have a chance now. I’m not gonna argue with some monster I’ve never seen before that’s already pissed off and can eat us if it feels like it, and I’m not gonna argue with an entire militia group that they shouldn’t take down a dragon that just destroyed half their town. We’re outdone and outnumbered, Dal-Sun. Suck it up already, and stop being selfish. We need to go back to Nicholas to report all of this to him so we can decide the best path forward from here.”
Dal-Sun was staring at Martim, eyes wide, lips parted, seemingly stunned.
“This is literally the closest we’ve ever gotten to the moon, or will ever get to the moon,” Dal-Sun muttered, “and you want to abandon our ship and hand it over to Nicholas?”
“It’s the most reasonable option,” Martim said. “There’s nothing else the four of us can do here other than potentially make things worse. All we can do is hope the guards do keep the dragon alive, maybe then Nicholas can set up negotiations or something. But either way, we were never gonna be able to keep the dragon to ourselves, Dal-Sun. And you can’t keep it to yourself, either. We’re all in this together, and you should start acting like it.”
Dal-Sun stared at zim for another moment.
Then Dal-Sun punched zim in the throat.
After another series of movements that were too quick for Ganymede to follow, Martim was crumpled in a heap on the ground, unconscious, and Dal-Sun was panting angrily above zim.
Then, Dal-Sun looked at Ganymede, and held out her paw. “Come with me,” Dal-Sun said. “I know you want this as badly as I do.”
Ganymede looked at the paw, then looked at Dal-Sun’s desperate face.
“The only thing you want is power,” Ganymede said.
“What?” Dal-Sun asked.
“The only thing she cares about is power,” Ganymede had said.
“Who, your mom?” Jess asked.
“I’ve thought it over so many times, and I just can’t see it another way.” Ganymede fiddled with her fork. “Or it’s like… it’s not that she doesn’t care about other things, it’s that she doesn’t care about those things as much as she cares about power. Even if she cares about other things, she’s willing to throw those things away so she can have more power.”
“I would’ve expected you to say about your dad, not your mom,” Jess said while chewing. “He’s a businessman, right? I thought your mom just stayed home and cooked.”
“But that’s what I mean. She doesn’t do anything else except what’s expected of her, because all she cares about is comfort and safety. Not being happy. Not loving anything.”
Jess chuckled. “That’s pretty harsh, don’t you think? Maybe your mom just likes having a simple life.”
“She doesn’t.”
Jess set down her own fork. “Is something wrong? You can tell me anything, you know.”
“I’m trying,” Ganymede said.
The two sat in quiet for a moment.
“It’s not just my mother, either,” Ganymede said. “It’s everyone.”
Jess kept watching her. “Go on,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since you gave up on music,” Ganymede said. “And, well, I get it, you had to so you could focus on getting a job, like you said. I can’t say you’re wrong for doing that, you need money. But it’s still an example of what I’m talking about.” Ganymede looked around the lunch room. “Everyone here keeps having to make decisions like that. Money is necessary power, but it’s still power, and everyone chooses that power over what it is they actually want to be doing. Everyone has to give up on love for power. And even outside of jobs, they still have to do that. There’s all these… hidden rules and expectations for being friends and socializing that I still don’t understand, not just that, but just rules for living safely, all these weird prerequisites for just existing, and I see people giving up on so many things they love in order to do that, or hide the things they love, or…”
“Ganymede…”
“And that’s not even the worst part!” Ganymede said, pushing herself up out of her seat suddenly. “It’s bad enough that everyone has to do that, but then, but then, so many people like my mother are convinced that this is a good way to live your life! That it’s good to give up on love for power! Like power is better than love! Jess, you love everyone, right? Don’t you see it, too? Don’t you see the same thing happening? Don’t you think it’s wrong?” Ganymede straightened up. “Please tell me you see what I’m seeing. Please don’t tell me I’m alone in this…”
Jess looked at her, sadly but sweetly, sighed, and stood up as well. “I think I understand what you mean,” she said. “And I do think it’s a little sad, in its own way. But I don’t think there’s a way to change it. Even if we did make a point of getting as much power as we possibly could, I don’t think we could change it. So I think we have to find some way to live with it and be happy. And that means accepting the presence of power in our lives.”
Jess held out her paw to Ganymede. “I struggle with it sometimes, too,” Jess said. “But I think it comes down to accepting just enough power to pursue what you love. You can do that, too, right?”
Ganymede looked at her paw. “But you gave up on music,” Ganymede said.
Jess kept her sad look.
“You’re asking me to accept power so I can have love,” Ganymede said, “but I can’t have the power unless I give up on what I love.”
“Ganymede…”
Ganymede smacked Dal-Sun’s paw away.
“That’s not the way to the moon,” Ganymede said.
Dal-Sun’s expression changed from one of shock to one of pure fury. “What the FUCK are you TALKING about!?” Dal-Sun screamed at her, stomping a hoof on the ground. “This is the ONLY way to the moon! FUCK!”
With that final word, Dal-Sun spun around and started running in the direction of the path up the mountain.
Ganymede knelt down to check Martim’s pulse. She thought she felt something, but she wasn’t sure, and she didn’t know how gecko biology worked. It was also too windy to hear zis breathing.
She stepped back into the bar. “Bartender, my friend here just collapsed, and I don’t have time to look after zim. Could you get zim to a clinic or a hospital or something?”
“Erm,” the bartender said. “I imagine the beds are pretty full right now, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you," Ganymede said, and then she was back out the door, running towards the mountain path, after Dal-Sun.
