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Heart yawned as Soul dragged them out of the house, a tender hand leading the pair through the serpentine path to the telescope set-up that Soul had put together a few days prior. Soul let go to adjust the equipment, muttering under his breath.
The scene was bathed in a beautiful silver light. Moonlight softened the features of Soul's worrying face, and Heart found themselves smiling quite fondly as he fussied and toyed with the thing that he seemingly dug out of someone else's garage.
Heart reluctantly looked up at the sky, wondering what it was Soul intended to show them. He hadn't said anything of substance, just woke them up and blabbered that it was important. To Soul, a lot of things were important. To Heart, at this point in time, it was mostly just Soul.
Though…
Heart squinted to try to get a better view of the darkness, maybe they'd just missed it. They'd thought, for a moment, that there didn't appear to be a moon at all in the sky. But it must be full, surely, for all this light down here on the ground…
Ah, Heart's smile returned as they saw a faint glow emerge from behind a thick cloud that lazily rolled across the sky. It had simply been hidden for a moment.
Heart's gaze returned to the Earth, watching Soul make his final adjustments, face pressed too close to the eyepiece before finally stepping away and gesturing for Heart to approach.
"See, here, look," Soul guided Heart's face to the eyepiece. "Do you see that?"
Heart took a few genuine seconds to try to understand what they saw through the lens. It was mostly darkness, of course, but they saw the vague wisps of some of the clouds. They hummed, "I will be so honest, I don't think I do."
Soul made some kind of noise, impatiently craning over Heart to look through the finderscope afixed to the body of the telescope.
"Okay, well— It'd certainly be helpful if I actually— Hold on." Soul shooed Heart away, making a larger adjustment before inviting them back. "Okay you're looking at—Oh, God, I think that's Betelgeuse? In Orion?"
Heart looked through the eyepiece, now focused on a cluster of stars. The brightest star, in what seemed to be a reddish-orange, was visible on the left. "Yeah, so?" Heart turned back to face Soul.
Soul fished through his pockets, patting through every one before pulling out a book—a pocket star chart, so it seemed—and rapidly flipped through the pages.
"So!" Soul flipped through the book's contents to show Heart, who only saw the text as a map with illustrations and punched holes, "Orion is a summer constellation. It's winter."
Soul has a stupid sort of smile he makes when he says something that makes sense only to himself, usually due to poor explanation or misunderstanding. Heart stared back at him dully while he exuded this sort of smile.
Heart looked back to the page to at least try to understand or care about his point.
"Is that Argo Navis? What the fuck, man, how old is this thing?"
"Old," Soul kept his expression visibly unchanged as his snapped the pocketbook shut, but Heart could tell by the way his eyes flashed that he was making considerable effort to remain unfazed. "That's beside the point."
"I don't think I exactly know the point you're trying to make here." Heart should really put more effort to the practice of keeping their tongue under control, but they tried to tell themselves that it was just because they were tired. After all, Soul did wake them up in the middle of the night with no real explanation. They thought they deserved it, just a little bit. As a treat.
Soul drew his lips up into a tight line. Sometimes they were so difficult to deal with. Instead, Soul decided to ask: "Did you see the moon when you came out here?"
"Yes." Heart moved away from the telescope a bit, to get at least a smidge more comfortable.
Soul twisted his head to look at them with one eye, raising an eyebrow and pursing his lips in comical overexpression.
"Well, not at first," Heart took it as a sign to elaborate. "It was hidden by the clouds, but I could see the moonlight everywhere, so I j'st figured…" After all, what more detail could he want?
"You thought there was a moon because there's moonlight out here?"
Heart bared their teeth in confusion. "Yeah, why else would it be so bloody bright out here, are you mad?"
Soul smiled and nodded. "I'm testing a theory here. I want you to look back in the telescope and tell me what you see."
Heart rolled their eyes, but did as they were told. To their dismay, the image seemed to have changed. Maybe they knocked it when they turned back to argue with Soul. Heart gently grabbed the body of the telescope to adjust the view, but found no luck in seeing the constellation Soul had originally set them up with. The sea of stars gazed back at them.
"Shit," Heart pulled away from the eyepiece. "I think I lost th—"
Soul placed a gentle hand on Heart's shoulder, leaning in to look through the telescope beside them. "You didn't lose anything, the sky changed."
Heart frowned. This frown deepened as they saw Soul reach for the pocket chart again. An unfortunate smile edged his words as he continued:
"I've been thinking about this for a while, actually. How everything is here, that is. Like, why things look the way they do."
"Because we're, what, 'not real'?"
"Precisely!" Soul gave Heart a warm look that was not reciprocated. "What you saw, what you should have seen just now was Argo Navis—rather, what remains of Argo Navis. It doesn't really matter what you call it. The stars are there, it's just that some people felt that over 140 stars in a single constellation was too many, so they split it into three." He paused for a laugh to himself, what seemed to an outsider to merely be a break to get his next thoughts in order. "Though, there really isn't any reason to be seeing Argo Navis, especially because we were just looking at Orion. But, you were thinking about Argo Navis, and the stars that make it up still very much exist in the sky."
Heart's frustration melted a little. They liked Soul's explanations (especially after having been deprived of this one for quite some time) (though, they mostly liked his voice in the moments where he actually sounded excited), but it wasn't like they weren't going to try to hang this moment over his head some time in the future.
"When you saw the moonlight out here, you figured that there just had to be a moon. It is the, uh, nautral order?—or, I suppose, the 'natural occurrance' may be more accurate here. You see moonlight and just expect there to be a moon reflecting that light, and so the moon appears."
Seeing Soul's good expressions were a rarity Heart had learned to cherish. He took understanding the world around them very seriously, probably the most seriously out of the three of them. Being able to explain his discoveries, to actually be able to talk to his halves, generally meant the world to him. Heart tried their best to listen to the words that came out of his mouth, but they were very distracted.
"What is a bright, moonlit sky without a moon, after all? Why would that— happen?" Soul stopped fidgeting with his hands and instead began to pace a ways away from the set-up, talking now to no one in particular. "But you wouldn't know unless you looked! And when you look, you see that something is wrong, out of place, so the mind just— fills in the gaps."
He stopped a moment on the side of the clearing that faced the house. Behind him, the glow of the front door silhouetted him like a halo. He seemed to be chewing his tongue before he coughed dismissively and spoke:
"Maybe we should go back inside."
Heart hummed but stood up and walked towards Soul, letting him guide the two out of the clearing and back to the house. His expression was back to being indiscernable as usual. Heart must've done something wrong. The night felt a little bit colder.
Inside, Soul helped Heart take off their shoes, notably keeping his own on. "I think I'll go back out," he'd said, more of a stock line than a specific phrase. He regained his senses for a moment when he smiled and wished Heart to bed, but then turned around and drifted into the darkened kitchen to sit down. Heart watched after him, deciding instead to go back to their own room.
Heart had trouble sleeping. Something about the previous few hours had bothered them. They rolled over in bed to look out the window at the sky.
The moon shone coldly above, almost in the same exact place as it was when they saw it earlier. The sky, previously empty, was now filled with millions of dazzling stars. It was peaceful and pretty, but Heart could find little comfort in them after what Soul had told them earlier.
Heart could hear shuffling, presumably Soul moving about. They heard him open the door, letting the fly screen slam behind him. Heart sat up to eye him better through the window. Soul lingered on the porch a moment before walking back down the path to his telescope, fiddling with it and on occasion looking through.
From this distance, he looked rather small. He'd fit with all of those other stars up in the sky. Heart tapped thoughtfully on the windowsill, before deciding to simply roll over and try to get back to sleep again.