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The Moon has long since forgotten his name.
Once, long ago, he had one. Back when the first lights blinked into existence, when he found himself sitting on a rock and decided he would call it his home. It’s been centuries since then, when a voice whispering among the stars told him— asked him what he would call it. This ball of rock that he claimed where no other soul in the Universe can find him. The moon, he’d said; he remembers it clearly. He’d call the rock the moon.
Millennia upon millennia passed, speckled with existence—drifting through emptiness and observing. The Moon saw the Universe change a moment at a time, build up her planetary empire and breathe life into it, and for thousands and thousands of years, he waited.
Until the disease.
It started on Earth, the one who smiled, who moulded colour and creation, and who welcomed it with open arms. The disease hadn’t been bad: it brought light and life, it explored and wandered, and after all those lonely years in darkness, it was a cure. Then it changed. It developed and crushed and destroyed. It choked Earth, the very planet who had given it a home, and the Moon remembers watching helplessly through tears. He had done nothing but wish, done nothing but pray that the disease died too.
It didn’t.
Mars came first, then Jupiter, then Venus, then Saturn, and Uranus and Neptune and Pluto and Mercury. The last alignment—the only time in existence where they are free to talk and touch one another—the Moon was sick with the feeling of seeing his brothers and sisters so gaunt and lifeless. He remembers the look in their eyes, the panic, the fear, the silent plea across the stars for help that never came.
He’d known the outcome, even then. They will die and he will not because the moon wasn’t born like the others. The moon is just a lump of rock and he will drift through eternity alone with nothing but distant memories of laughter.
And it terrifies him.
“You’re still here? Lame.”
It sounds through the silence, so sweet and unexpected that the Moon stumbles to his feet. He recognises that voice, that tone, and he looks across space to mars, eyes burning with relief. Of course, it’s the Martian cycle; a handful of days where Earth and Mars are at their closest. Lost in grief he’d forgotten, and now that he can pick out Mars between the rusted red rocks of his planet, the Moon’s smile splits his face so widely it hurts.
“I’m here,” he answers, frantic with consolation, “I’m—I’m still here. It’s good to see you.”
He watches the annoyed crease of Mars’ eyebrows, fascinated. “Yeah, yeah, likewise, shorty. Get here.”
It’s the reconnection of two lost souls that brings the Moon and Mars together at barely an arm’s length away. Their orbits are that little bit too far for the Moon to touch him—card through those spikes of blond hair, marvel at the carmine in his eyes—but it’s enough. When he reaches forward Mars does the same, and the bare brush of their fingertips makes the relief spill over the Moon’s cheeks and fade into space.
“I thought I was alone.”
“Ain’t gonna get rid of me that easy.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
The Moon smiles when Mars rolls his eyes but there’s something equally eased in them, solace from being near another for the first time in who knows how long. But the Moon can see it. His cheeks are too hollow, too dim, his robes are torn and stained. Mars is here because of determination, ruled hollowly by spite, but the disease hasn’t left him. It will stay until he’s been destroyed too.
“Stop staring, idiot.”
The Moon doesn’t miss the lilt to his thoughts, nor the deeper crease to his frown. “Ain’t dead yet, still alive enough to kick your ass.”
“Like you could, looking so rough.” It’s easy to tease but, if the empty threat meant contact, the Moon will gladly let him. “Is it—um. Is it just us?”
Mars’ teeth grind and his hand drops to his side. There’s a sudden weight to him that leaves the Moon breathless. “Saturn and Pluto are still floatin’ about.”
Joy jumps into his chest like a jackrabbit. They’re far away enough for the Moon to miss their thoughts—their planets are near uninhabitable, no place for the disease to thrive. “Does that mean—?”
“No,” Mars’ eyes drop ruefully. “The disease is still alive.”
“Oh.”
The Moon’s heart sinks with his hand, each wave of comfort disappearing like ripples of a skipping stone. It changed again, developed— somehow it found a way, and this time he can’t swallow down his fear. “Then—”
The words remain unspoken, but the Moon can feel that Mars knows it too. They’re too old to pretend, too old to dream, not like when the Universe first began where they had millennia in front of them to imagine and dream. The future is inevitable.
The planets are going to die.
He notices Mars looking past him and the Moon turns his head, out through space to the tattered remains of earth. Once, it had been beautiful; lush green and brilliant blue, teeming with life that the Moon can only hope to have. Creatures had crawled out of the ocean, each millennium brought something new, and eventually he listened to those quiet voices talk about the stars like they weren’t just a hair’s breadth away.
“I miss him.” The Moon sighs and turns away. “Earth, I mean.”
Planet Earth is no more than dried seas and mounds of brown and grey. The last remnants of life, the last of the disease dying—after all, who can live on a dead planet?
“Have you been down there?”
The Moon shakes his head. He’s thought about it many a time, but nothing can bring him to. Not when it reminds him of someone he cared for so deeply, loved as a teacher, a mentor, now gone. He can’t do it, not alone.
“Come with me.”
“As if.”
Mars’ snort is cruel, like a man who has no feeling of pain, of nothing at all, but the Moon knows it not to be true. Mars is his brother, his neighbour, his hardened friend; he cares unconditionally. It’s just easier to pretend, to seal his emotions away.
“I was s’posed to be the next Earth.”
The Moon looks to Mars. He’s still staring at earth, the red of his eyes shining like a dying star, and then meets the Moon’s eyes with such an abruptness he blinks. “I should’ve done more. I could’a—it could’ve stopped.”
“Don’t think that,” the Moon answers gently, reaching out and wiggling his fingers until Mars joins them again in loose unity. “None of us could’ve known. It’s not your fault.”
“You sound like Earth.”
Mars quietens but he doesn’t believe him. Maybe it is some fault of Mars, but if that’s so, then the Moon has to share it equally. They all accepted the disease, they all saw the harm, and they let each other suffer. He makes sure to tell him that before the cycle ends and the last sound he hears is a scoff and hushed crybaby.
The next time the Martian Cycle brings them close enough to speak, the Moon waits three days before realising Mars will never come.
The lights blink out one by one.
It starts in the distance, the furthest regions of the Milky Way; remote cousins that used to twinkle in greeting. They fade into dusk, into black; become one with the silence that swallows up the Galaxy whole.
The Moon cries until there are no more tears left to cry. For his brothers and sisters, for his cousins, for Mars, Earth, life that will never be; he cries for them all. He can do nothing but watch the everlasting nighttime, wait as the darkness creeps closer. Then, when the remains of the sun are the last brightness in the Universe, the Moon decides to walk on earth one last time.
The air is thick with dust when his feet touch the soil, memories long forgotten between headstone rocks and skeletal structures. Houses, buildings, roads that once melded through the landscape, all burrowed beneath a layer of ash and dirt. Those rich forests and sweet rivers, the ghosts of tiny children splashing in the shallows, everything the Moon used to love watching—
Gone.
There’s no life here. The disease has long since died, maybe a thousand years ago when he could still count the years with a heavy heart, but all that’s left are echoes. The Moon finds himself too overwhelmed to do anything but sit, perched on the tin carcass of a vehicle, and for the first time since he saw the fading light of Earth’s smile, he looks.
There’s a storm rolling in over the mountains of metal, brown against the backdrop of grey. It’s strange to see, strange to know that the weather stays the same when nothing else does—still waters the earth where no green grows, fossilised in dead soil.
Clothed in silken grey—just like the sky, the tips of the mountains—the Moon lifts a hand and catches the ash drifting through the air. Is the future of his own rock—his home— this? Will it be reduced to metal and rust if the disease flees? Will he bear false witness to these carcasses, die with a tear in his eye and a smile on his lips, just like Earth? Just like Mars?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know.
“But would I know, even if I wanted to?” He murmurs to himself, thumb stroking rust the colour of Mars’ eyes. The Moon laughs quietly because he’s speaking to nothing at all—there’s no ears left to hear him, no life left to know. It’s the loneliest feeling in the Universe.
When he lifts his head again, his tears melt into the rain.
“How did this happen, Earth? Why did you go?”
And, as every other time he’s whispered those words, they’re met with the wind whistling a melancholic melody.
Earth would never have let this happen if he saw the future, the pain. He would never have welcomed the disease, or given it a name like humanity , or something equally as affectionate as the gentle animals that used to roam the surface. It’s all lost to memories that slightest bit out of reach.
The Moon has long since forgotten his name, and now that he’s alone in the Universe, he’s not sure he needs one anymore.