A short solarpunk story about life on the moon.
It had never rained on the moon when Rose de la Luna Kowalski felt raindrops for the first time. Back on the silent earth, her mothers bought into the promise of such a possibility, but Rose never expected to see the day. That first generation born on the moon was promised much, and though much of it came true, this was something Rose had always believed was for once-upon-a-times that she told to her granddaughters.
On the moon, there had only ever been one sky. One sky for all of Rose’s life. A permanent emptiness speckled with myriad stars lit up by the lonesome, silent earth. From the west, a vast grey blanket approached to seize the sky, blotting out the earth and stars. “Clouds.” She breathed the words, unbelieving, and laughed as children ran screaming from the shroud choking out the sunlight.
In the distance, the fungal city bloomed with light. Smiling, letting her hair down, she hiked up her skirt and danced towards the towering, living walls.
Bioluminescent mushrooms grown to make a city. A city of light in the blackness of space. A light to shine into the future, into a way forward for humanity. A safe space for woman, for children, and all who came after.
The sky burbled above, threatening the people of the moon in ways they’d never experienced. A roar from nowhere, from everywhere, shook the moon itself, or so it seemed to Rose. People screamed and ran for the towering fungal gates.
Rose had seen the movies. Many of them had. Movies of life on earth that seemed as much a fantasy as any errant daydream. The many different skies of earth always stuck out to Rose. The way it could shine so bright or cloud so fully, the way wind could blow or storms could bellow.
As she danced towards the glowing walls, she remembered the words of her mothers. Both of them born on silent earth, as everyone was in those days. “I’ll miss the sun,” her mother said.
Her mother responded, “Same sun.”
“I know,” she smiled sadly, “but it’s different.”
Rose understood, finally. Squinting up at that blank grey sky that growled restlessly, she cried even as she kept dancing. Her hips ached, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but that sensation in her chest. Like the fist of her mother reaching up from the mushroom bed to squeeze her lungs, her heart.
A crack like the sky splitting open that shuddered through her bones caused her to gasp. And then all at once, the rain came.
Standing there in the downpour, Rose smiled up at the dark sky, seventy years dripping off her bones. She laughed as children ran screaming that the sky had broken and was falling all around them. Wiping the rain and tears from her face, she squinted through the gates to the square where a voice called out over the rain, the thunder.
Dancing through the gates, kicking her feet, swishing her skirt heavy with rain as the moon’s soil turned to mud beneath her boots, she saw other old women like her entering the streets. They would not hide away. They rushed to meet this newness. An experience that, finally, tied them back to silent earth, the home of their mothers, the world that had become only a secondhand memory.
They howled when they saw her. Rose smiled harder, feeling light on her feet for the first time in decades. She kept dancing and soon others danced with her, all on their way to Tarr Square where dozens upon dozens gathered around the de Beauvoir Pavilion to hear the Witch speak of this new day.
The old women dancing their way to the de Beauvoir Pavilion caused the Witch to stop and take notice. Rose smiled and waved, fulfilling a promise made by her mother’s generation. Crow, the Witch, smiled back and spread her arms wide in welcome, howling into the falling sky, the heavy humid air that filled Rose’s lungs in a way so unfamiliar it nearly made her choke. But she sucked it in, tasting the rain as it rolled down her face and into her lips.
Howling surrounded her and she stopped, filled her old lungs full, and howled with the rest of them.
Crow, draped in the black feathers of long extinct birds, waved her arms through the air. It reminded Rose of those old nature films her mothers cried over. Orphans of the silent earth, they drenched themselves in memories of the gone away world in hopes that their children or grandchildren or someday-hence children would find a way to bring them all back.
The rain battered against the chitinous de Beauvoir Pavilion. Another structure grown from the fungus that took root in the dusty lunar soil to terraform humanity’s temple of time to their shared past. An eternal vigil for the lonesome, silent earth.
Crow’s voice boomed then over the quaking sky, the lightning snaking momentarily against the grey. She said, “Sisters! Come, rejoice! You there,” she pointed to a group of younger women, “go grab your mothers and aunties. Today, we are born new!” Turning to take in the rest of us, she flapped her wings like some great bird ripped from time and nature to guide them through the stars, “Bring everyone!”
Rose kept dancing to the rhythm of the rain as the crowd dispersed to quadruple in size. As she and the rest of the first generation danced, Crow danced with them. As she waved her arms, the lunar dust seemed to take notice. Crow twisted and rotated her hands and arms covered in extinction, pulling the lunar dust into the thick, wet air. The dust formed like a galaxy in the air all around, slowly taking orbit around Crow as she spun and stomped, laughed and waved her arms, her smile full of black teeth causing Rose to gasp, to catch her breath even as she pushed on dancing, feeling young and bright and light. The dust swirled first slowly but then faster and faster as the square filled with the people of the moon.
Young girls reached up towards the dust, slashing their hands through the ephemeral constellations that seemed to ignore the falling rain drenching everyone, turning the soil to mud. But the dust kept rising. Rose saw it rise from her own skin. As if Crow gathered the dust from the people themselves, pulling them all into a singularity with her as the pulsing heart, the supermassive blackhole.
Crow, dancing blackly, spinning wildly, her black feathers fluttering as if preparing to take flight beneath the Pavilion. Then Crow stopped spinning, stopped dancing, and only reached both hands forward. The lunar dust, as if under her spell, dove towards her hands and pooled there in the air before her.
All eyes on Crow, all the dancing slowed and then stopped. Rose held her breath, afraid to look away even as she felt her daughters come stand beside her, her granddaughters quiet for once in their mother’s arms, at their mother’s breasts.
In that moment, Rose only begged her body to keep on living. This was why she lived. This was what she held out for even after burning her lover so long ago. She knew not what Crow did, but she felt deep in her shrinking bones that the future was being born right before her eyes.
As the lunar dust pooled and pooled, sucking in all the swirling dust rising from the crowd, Crow’s face became one of fierce determination, baring her black teeth. Then a lightning cutting through the sky, a thunderclap right overhead, and Crow lunged her hands forward to grip the gathered dust. As the rain crashed down all around them, Crow’s mouth opened in a silent cry.
Rose blinked. Then blinked again, unsure of what she witnessed. She felt almost as if she blacked out for a moment, as if she missed something. Releasing the breath she held, she stared at the bouquet of mushrooms in Crow’s hands. Those bioluminescent mushrooms that created their world, their soil, their homes, and even their clothes.
Crow held the bouquet high above her head. “Thank you, ancestors. We will not forget. We will stand forever here in the light of the silent earth, and we will remember.”
Then as if this ritual had been done a hundred times, Rose walked up the steps to stand before Crow. Smiling blackly, Crow dug her black fingernails into the flowering caps and pulled out a teaspoon’s worth of flesh. Rose opened her mouth and closed her eyes, felt Crow’s gritty finger smear the fungal flesh against her tongue. Without a word, Rose stepped away, returned to the square, to the muddy soil, to the rain, as woman after woman received the mushroom on their tongues.
A flutter. Inside, it felt as if a touch of wind reached beneath her skin. Then another fluttering breeze rolling beneath her skin. Then the flutters became a gust and then a true wind roiling through her blood. Rose gasped, blinked, and stared up into the falling grey sky as lightning tore overhead, as thunder howled in her own lungs.
Raising her fist with a thousand other women, she howled into the rain, into the grey skies hiding, for the first time, the lonesome, silent earth that she would never forget; the shine of that gone away world would spread over countless generations of her descendants.
Crying, seeing so much, feeling so full, she and all those gathered turned their gaze to Crow who danced as the lunar dust swirled all around her, her teeth shining blackly.
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