He was never a morning person.
Not because of the sleep—he'd long since forgotten what good sleep felt like—but because the light always came too fast. Too loud. Too bright. Mornings asked too many questions. Nights let him be.
So he worked the night shift. Every job that needed quiet hands and silence, he'd taken. Grocery stocker. Graveyard delivery. Overnight warehouse. Nothing that required conversation. Nothing that required being seen.
Except by the sky.
Some people stared at their phones on breaks. Others smoked, or napped, or scrolled. He looked up.
Every night, without fail, he'd find a way to stop somewhere no one else would bother going. The roof. A hill. A side road that dead-ended into nothing.
And there, he'd watch the moon.
It was never the same, not really. Some nights, it hung low and golden like a promise. Others, it floated sharp and white like a blade. But it was always there. And more than once, he'd caught himself whispering to it.
Not prayers. Not wishes. Just… pieces of himself.
Things he couldn't explain to anyone else. The weight of being underestimated. The ache of silence that wasn't peace, but absence. The kind of loneliness that didn't hurt—but hollowed.
The moon didn't answer. It never changed direction. Never flickered or flared.
But it stayed.
And that was enough.
He never told anyone how often he found excuses to take the long way back. To linger beneath the glow of streetlamps just dim enough to reveal the stars. How sometimes he'd park the delivery truck on a ridgeline and sit for ten… fifteen minutes, saying nothing, doing nothing—just being. Just looking.
He said it helped him think. But that wasn't quite it.
It helped him remember.
Though he couldn't have said what.
There was something about the shape of the moon that pulled at the back of his mind. A familiarity too deep to trace. Like he'd seen it before—but not in the sky. In water. In mirrors. In someone's eyes.
He'd always felt it more than understood it. A soft pull toward stillness. A quiet calling that never used words. A presence that asked nothing but never quite left him alone.
And every now and then—on those nights where the wind shifted in the wrong direction or the clouds parted at just the right time—he'd get the sense he wasn't alone out there. Not watched, exactly. Not followed.
Witnessed.
Like something vast and gentle had been waiting for him to notice.
He didn't tell anyone about those nights. Didn't talk about how sometimes, after a long shift, he'd sit in the driver's seat long after the keys were pulled, headlights off, staring up until his neck ached.
Didn't tell them how the moon always looked different when no one else was watching.
There were things he'd never put into words.
How some silences felt warmer than voices. How some shadows felt safer than crowds.
How every time the sun came up, it felt less like a beginning and more like something missing.
He'd tried to build a life, once. A proper one. Family dinners, birthdays, phone calls on Sundays. But the words had never fit right. The gestures always felt borrowed. Like he was reading from someone else's script.
Eventually, they stopped expecting him to show up. Eventually, he stopped pretending it bothered him.
There was a kind of peace in being overlooked.
No one asked questions. No one made demands. The world let him pass by like a quiet gust of wind.
And maybe that's why the night suited him.
It didn't ask him to be anything but present.
And in return, he never reached for more than it gave.
Big or small, full or fractured, it was always there. Watching. Listening. Not judging. Just being.
His family didn't understand that kind of stillness. They offered pity instead of pride. "You're doing your best," they'd say, the way someone says it to a dog who tried to open a door with the wrong paw.
He didn't blame them. But he stopped trying to explain things years ago.
Tonight, though, the sky wasn't still.
The stars above shimmered with a pulse, faint and rhythmic—like something beneath the skin of the sky was moving. He blinked. Sat forward. Rubbed at his eyes. But it didn't stop.
Then something moved.
A shape. Small at first. Then growing—glowing—like it had been hiding behind the moon all this time. He couldn't describe it. Not even to himself. It wasn't a spaceship, or a meteor, or one of those drones he used to deliver parts across state lines.
It was something else.
And then the moths came.
Lunar-white. Silent. Dozens—no, hundreds—fluttering from the sky, their wings catching starlight like falling ash.
He stared, frozen—not in fear, but in awe. The air felt different, thinner, as if holding its breath.
They didn't land. They didn't scatter. They swirled, slow and deliberate, like a dance only he could see.
And in that swirl, he felt it: a pull.
Soft as longing. Sharp as instinct.
Not a call for him to come closer—
A call for him to listen.
A quiet voice without words, whispering we need you.
Before he even realized it, his fingers found the door handle. It clicked open like it had been waiting, too.
He stepped out.
One moth landed on his chest. Another on his cheek. Their wings beat soft as breath, warm with something that felt almost like... hope.
The wind didn't blow. The world didn't move.
And then everything disappeared.
There was no pain. No light.
Just stillness.
Like floating in the space between thoughts—
not awake, not asleep.
Not gone.
But no longer home.
He didn't remember closing his eyes. Only that when he opened them, he wasn't in the truck. He wasn't anywhere.
And yet… the moon was there.
Suspended above him. Around him. Beneath him.
It didn't glow. It didn't hum. It simply was—and it was the same.
The same face. The same silver craters he used to trace from behind dusty windshields and broken coffee cups.
The same silent companion that had watched him from behind clouds and cities and glass.
He wasn't standing on it, but he was near. Cradled in its presence. As if the moon itself had caught him mid-fall and said, it's okay now.
Beneath him stretched a world he didn't recognize—deep oceans with impossible colors, jagged continents rimmed with violet mist, and constellations that swam across the sky instead of standing still.
It should've frightened him.
But it didn't.
Because the moon hadn't changed. And somehow, he knew:
It had always been here.
A ripple stirred through the stillness. Not a sound. Not a light. Just a shift—like something ancient had exhaled.
And then she was there.
She didn't descend or emerge. She appeared—as if the stars had parted just long enough to let her step through.
Her form shimmered, robed in threads of cloudlight and quiet. Hair like river silk framed a face that didn't glow—it reflected. Not beauty, but familiarity. As though he'd seen her in every moonlit puddle, every pane of glass touched by night.
"You are far from where you were," she said, her voice a hush across the skin. "But not so far that you cannot return."
He stared, still floating in that strange weightless calm, heart barely remembering to beat. "Is this… the moon?"
"In part," she said. "But not the one your world knew. That world lies behind you now." She turned her eyes toward the planet below—vast, unfamiliar, ringed in violet haze. "This is not your Earth."
He followed her gaze, his breath catching. "Then where—"
"Somewhere that needs you," she said gently. "Though it does not yet know it."
He looked at her again. "Why me?"
Her expression softened, like morning dew on marble. "Because you listened. Because when the rest of your world forgot how to look up, you remembered."
He didn't answer. He wasn't sure he could.
"You've stood in silence with me longer than you realize," she went on. "You asked for nothing. You only saw me—and sometimes, that is more powerful than worship."
He swallowed, voice low. "You've been watching me?"
"I've been waiting," she said. "And now that time has grown thin, I ask you only this—go to the world below. Live within its flow. Learn what it means to walk beside the moon."
He hesitated, questions still blooming. But her presence—the steady pulse of it—wrapped around him like dusk on tired shoulders.
"I don't know what you expect me to do."
"I expect only that you begin," she said. "The tides will carry the rest."
Then she reached toward him, fingertips brushing air just above his cheek—gentle as a breeze through half-open windows.
"You are not alone," she whispered. "You never were."
And then he fell—not downward, but forward—drawn toward the world below like a tide returning to shore.
One moment he was with her—beneath a sky that didn't belong to Earth—and the next, he was somewhere else entirely.
No flash. No sound. Just placement.
The air changed first—cool and sharp, laced with salt and woodsmoke. He stood at the edge of a forest unlike any he'd ever known. The trees rose around him—tall, pale and twisting, their leaves laced in silver veins that caught the moonlight.
Beneath his boots, the ground was soft with moss and sand, as if the land couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
He didn't know which direction to go—until he caught the scent of the ocean and followed it.
It didn't take long. The trees began to thin. The wind picked up. A low hush rolled in from somewhere ahead, constant and rhythmic.
And then he saw it.
The sea.
Sprawled out beneath a violet-tinted sky, the water stretched as far as he could see. Moonlight rippled across its surface in quiet pulses. It wasn't like Earth's oceans—it shimmered too dark, too clear. But somehow… it felt familiar.
He stepped closer.
And then—behind him—branches cracked.
He turned.
A shape stalked out of the forest line, low to the ground, its limbs taut and ready.
It moved like a predator. Fire curled along its back and shoulders—faint at first, then growing with every breath. Embers danced around its body, lighting its fur with shifting waves of orange and red. Its eyes burned with wild energy.
It let out a low sound—somewhere between a growl and a hiss.
He didn't move. He barely breathed.
The beast crouched.
Muscles tensed.
And then it lunged.