300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #22 -- VICTORY TO WRUTER!

[Shyrka]

Small Steps

Papa sits with me, gazing through the porthole. We let her milk-light wash over us.

“She was further away once,” he says. “Before the Closing, before the bastions of the first men were laid low. I can’t imagine what it would be like to look up and not see her filling the sky, can you?”

I shake my head. “Anatoly said the first men walked there. Lived there.”

Papa laughs. “Then Anatoly is a fool. Nothing can live there. It is a lifeless desert, a wasteland.”

I trace the familiar lines of her great craters, her barren seas. “I want to go there one day, Papa. Visit her.”

He looks at me, his brow creasing. “What makes you say that, mishka?” Little mouse.

“She must be lonely.”

______


“How did it go?” Mama wants to know just as much as I.

He looks tired. “They said no. ‘Unnecessarily powerful’, they said.” His cheeks redden like they always do when he’s angry. “Those idiots at the bureau only care about lobbing bombs! With my engines we could do something noble, something worth-”

He stops, wracked with another explosive coughing fit. Mama puts an arm around him.

“Valentina, get your father some water.”

They’re getting worse.

______


I press the photograph against my chest and pull up the jumpsuit’s fastener. Weight is important – every gram counts – but I won’t let him miss this. The transporter rumbles down the strip, throwing ashen dust in its wake.

The rocket is immense. The most powerful vehicle ever built. Papa’s engines sit at the base like great feet, planted, ready to throw me into the void.

I look past it, up at her. She beams down at us; beckoning.

“I’m going there, Papa,” I murmur. “Your little mouse.”

The first person to set foot upon the Earth.

 

[ratsy]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

My first memory of her is clear in my otherwise fuzzy recollection of my childhood. It was a warm summer’s night; mosquitoes buzzed around my ears as I sat at the end of the dock, stubby feet dangling into the algae covered water.

It was as if no one else noticed the behemoth rock sink and sink, slowly toward me, just about close enough to touch. She was beautiful. Glowing softly in the now dark night, she floated just in front of me, huge and powerful. I reached to touch her, but when I stretched out, I slipped off the dock and into the murky water. When I popped my head up, I spit water from my mouth and she was gone.

I saw her again the next summer, and the one after that. I felt her love for me each time she descended. A love that no one else gave me.

We stopped going the summer my parents got divorced. I was twelve and horribly upset. Not because my dad moved out to a stuffy apartment, but that I couldn’t see my love any more.

As teenagers do, I forgot about her as I got tied up in new friends, girls, and football.

I’d almost forgotten her when I go back to the lake in my thirties. When I saw her in the night’s sky elsewhere, she was two dimensional, and her love was gone. Here I feel it again as she lowers once again.

When I reach out, I fall into the water, and this time I don’t struggle. I feel her love and bask in it. Water fills my lungs and I see her infinite glory hanging above me, covering me in her light. Then all is dark.

When I wake we are together.

 

[johnnyjet]

The Spark from a Burning Moon

Aurora leaped out of the water gasping toward the moon. She tried to keep her eyes focused on the moon, but its bright red glow hurt her eyes and she turned her face away. On the shoreline, the silhouettes of her sisters drew a stark contrast against the bright festival lights.

She skirted the surface of Lake Edenfall as she drifted toward her sisters. Between the moon and festival, the night was well lit. No artificial lighting was required on their pilgrimage.

Raylene and Tonya lifted her to her blanket. They helped Aurora stretch her dead legs out and covered her thin naked frame with a towel. Her long blonde hair glistened like spun gold and floated as though it were a living creature.

Her littlest sister, Carrie, said, "What did you feel?"

"The water was cold, but a warmth passed through me, and a calm."

"What did you see?"

Raylene said, "Don't bother your sister, Carrie."

"That's okay. I can talk about it. I saw the burning moon and it hurt my eyes."

"When can I see it?"

Raylene said, "You're not old enough. When you're thirteen." Raylene stripped off her tunic and dove into the water.

"Come here, Carrie," said Aurora.

Carrie came over and snuggled next to her sister.

"The healing waters strengthened my legs so I could kick and feel. And the waters enhanced my vision so I could clearly see the details of the moon. I saw the hills and valleys and the colonies of settlers. For a moment I saw what has been reduced to ashes from the slow reactor meltdown and what still remains."

Aurora stared long and hard at the moon, tearing up from the relentless burning.

"So sad," she whispered. "So sad our parents can't get back."

 

[StilLearning]

Vehicular Offence

Officer Crooker mentally repeated an old coppers’ saying, 'My feelings affect my actions, which affects other's feelings, which affects other's actions , which affects my feelings*’, because the Man in the Moon was being difficult and actually arresting the idiot would create unthinkable paperwork piles.

“…what’s the damn problem? I just wanted to… um… buy a magazine,“ sulked the Man.

Crooker raised an eyebrow at the bags of ‘adult literature’ next to the grounded Moon. The Man blushed. “Sir, I realise it must get… very lonely... in your line of work. But you’ve parked in St Abbes Tesco’s car park. That’s caused no amount of panic in St Abbes, not to mention the havoc it’ll be wreaking with the tides.”

“No, it’s fine, I put the dimensional reduction thingy lever down! That’s why the Moon’s so small right now, it won’t cause any tides at all!”

There was a quite creaking noise from the Moon, such as might be caused by an overstressed lever shifting slightly.

“Y…eeees,” said Crooker, with the glass eyed calm of someone imagining trillions of tons of lunar rock suddenly expanding to full size less than twenty feet from his face. "But it is over four billion years old. When was it last serviced?

“…um... when was the last big asteroid…?”

“Got the certificate?”

The Man shuffled his feet.

Sensing victory, Crooker pushed: “Look… no harm’s been done…yet. Just get it back into orbit. We’ll leave it at a verbal caution, ok?”

A few minutes later the Moon was on its way skywards, and Crooker congratulated himself on stopping a porn triggered Armageddon.

Until he found out how much paperwork giving the man in the Moon a verbal caution generated.


*This is a real bit of police training, called ‘Betari’s Box’.

 

[Dan Jones]

Crying For The Moon

I reel in another carp and toss it onto the deck of my rickety rowboat. It lands with a splat next to the mountainous coil of fishing line I’ve sewn together from the carp skins. Remarkably tough, carp skin. You can cut and dry and stretch it like leather, and it’ll do a very good job. The huge line now coils at least fourteen feet high, teetering aft of my little boat, so heavy the gunwale kisses the lake’s surface, sending ripples out to the reeds gently glistening in the starlight.

It won’t be long, now, Celena.

The stars catch my gaze, and a lump prods at my throat. Celena and I used to make love in the heavens, but our families pronounced our love illegitimate, impure. As punishment, they banished me to this watery stone in human form, and imprisoned Celena in the form of a beautiful, dead rock that shines each night.

They have a branch of knowledge on this world called “science”. These scientists claim that, should Celena fall from the sky and collide with us, it’d be catastrophic.

I hold no truck with science.

This distant dance of eternity we do each night kills me. My old bones ache without her warmth held tight against me. I prepare the final carp skin and sew it to the end of the mountainous line, attach a silver hook, and cast it far up into the heavens.

The line uncoils, faster and faster, until somewhere in the darkness I feel it hook something. My heart soars and tears of hopeful joy well inside.

I reel it in, my human hands burning with the effort. Come back to me, Celena. We’ll dance like we used to, my love, and never be parted again.

 

[mosaix]

An Offer They Can't Refuse...

“...and that, ladies and gentlemen of the press corps, concludes our tour of the new Deep Emergency Operations Bunker. Please be seated. They'll be around with coffee soon. Shortly you'll be rejoining your families who have been on their own tour. Now I have about ten minutes for questions. Anyone? Yes – Peter Barclay.”

“Jane, it seems much bigger than the old facility. Any reason for that?”

“The old bunker, built in the fifties, was primarily intended as shelter for the President, his aides, White House staff and the heads of the armed services whilst they responded to a nuclear attack. This place has been designed to survive an extinction-level event. It is, in fact, much bigger than you could possibly imagine, Peter. You have seen less than five percent of the complex.”

“Five percent! Just how many people are you intending should be holed up here?”

“About 35,000, Martin. Included in that figure, obviously, are the people I mentioned before plus scientists, engineers, biologists, educators, farmers, medical staff, people from all walks of life – including journalists – and all their families.”

“Not that I'm ungrateful, Jane, but why journalists?”

“We'll need good communicators, persuaders, people adept at getting the message across – people like you.”

“But why now?”

“Now is exactly the right time. Eight years ago an asteroid, the size of a small mountain, was observed to be on a collision course with Earth. It's much too large to deflect or destroy – it will impact Earth.”

“When? Where?”

“In about six minutes – the Namibian coast or maybe slightly inland. Either way it won't make much difference. That slight popping in the ears we all felt a few moments ago was caused by the blast doors being closed. They won't be opened again for at least twelve years.”

 

[Phyrebrat]

Conscientious Deserter

Last night I dreamt of Nok that was: of burnished seas and golden leaves, where honey sap runs down the trees and sweetens the earth, even the locals friendly to us from … overseas.

I woke in my sweat-drenched cot, sick of the sight of the new satellite that lately looms over Earth. I turned my back on the hopeless battle, on my comrades, and pulled the sheet over my head; today, I wouldn't leave my bed.

‘Dance with me,’ she hums, and takes my hand in the lily-white porcelain of her own; a feather-light touch so careful with my dressings I feel the sting of salt in my eyes.
‘Forget the ones you left, my love, of sons not born, of troops above.’

With thieves’ steps, slow and stealthy we gyre and trot; her body like smoke whilst mine like rock. My bandages a healing glue as we dance; fishes in a shoal of only two.

‘Dance with me; forget the war, our childless love, that moon above.
Don’t pray for it to disappear; His eye is on the sparrow, dear.’

And beyond my London flat the orbital strikes still thunder down, needle lasers tear up the ground, whilst junta and guerrilla crews beetle around behind fortifications. Cries of muster and cries of loss mingle, and all the clamour combines like the Philharmonic warming up - a banshee's composition; the fiddler warring with a foghorn, marshalled by a timpani's tattoo.

She unwinds the bandages from my head, my flesh is new, I leave my bed.
Outside the new moon sheds its skin, I behold a colossal eye within.

It blinks twice. ‘Dance for me,’ it says.

She hums a tune and sways and turns;
One final dance as London burns.

 

[Ashleyne]

The Call of the Moon

Since he was 12, Melwozy heard the moon speaking to him from above: "Let me down from this wretched sky. We can enjoy my magic together." Since then, he'd aspired to be an astronaut; however, he never grasped the concept of maths.

He contemplated suicide at 18, but more then that, he contemplated different ways to make the moon hear his voice. He prayed to it, sent smoke signals, and regularly yelled at it in drunken slurs.

Age 29, a letter came through his door, addressed to 'The Yelling Drunk'. It read: We will gather near the Grand Canyon on the night of Nov 16th, 3057. Join me. Yours Hopefully, The Moon.

That was two years ago, and now he stood on the Grand Canyon's edge, amongst 20 odd others. Their arms are raised towards the Moon, whose voice is bellowing: "I'm coming; can you feel me. Pull with your minds and will me down."

A smile fills Melwozy's face as the Moon falls through the clouds. Gravity pulls him and his fellow worshippers to their knees.

He tilts his head upwards, the Moon's rush filling his ears, and there he waits to embrace the Moon and all of its magic.

He doesn't remember the collision. The Moon's voice speaks no more, but he can feel its love in his heart. Flames smother all he sees, but he knows this isn't hell. No pain is caused by the flames. Green electricity surrounds him like armour. He'll keep walking through the flames until he emerges from the crash zone, where he'll meet a revamped version of Earth, filled with the magic of the Moon. He can't wait to reunite with his fellow Moon worshippers, but for now, he's enjoying his walk through the roaring abyss.

 

[Moonbat]

Saviour Moon​

The party was ending when I was woken by her singing. The melody was that strange mix of familiar and new, her voice was delicate yet powerful. The night had turned cold but was still muggy.


Red moon, dead moon

hanging out in the afternoon,

We all know that you’ll soon be falling through.

Picking myself up off the damp grass I followed the voice, stumbling my way through the crowd, flowing erratically downhill like a reluctant drop of water on a window pane. When I reached the meadow the trees blocked out the moon and I almost forgot how close we’d come. Still the dull ache nagged my bones.

Night skies, dead eyes,

we know the government told us lies,

but these days we can’t tell the lies from truth.

Skirting the crowd I saw her sitting atop an old rust-bucket, strumming and singing. Everyone was transfixed they wanted to hear her story. I too needed those words that were somehow revealing something unknown but whispering a secret I already knew.

Some say that you’re a saviour,

others say that your behaviour

has lead us down this path towards our doom.

The sounds of the night; the cicadas, the hum of pylons and the river were her band. I smiled but walked past. My moon, her moon, they were the same, I just don’t care any more. My headache is gone but the knot in the pit of my stomach tightens as I joined the old abandoned highway and keep moving south.

But I have felt that more than twice

we owe our lives to your sacrifice

we owe it all to you our saviour moon.

Her last note hung in the air just like the saviour moon, forever caught in a vortex somewhere between memory and melody.

 

[The Judge]

The Bulrush Child


Long ago, when the world was young, every month the silvery moon left the heavens to swim in a mountain lake.

A fisherman lived beside the lake. He lusted after the moon’s silver, so every month tried to catch him. But despite nets and hooks, lines and traps, he was never strong enough to hold the moon, who always rose laughing into the sky again.

“Wife,” said the fisherman, “I need a son. Give me one by tomorrow, or I’ll bury you and get me another wife.”

The fisherman’s wife ran to the lake in tears and told the moon of the fisherman’s threat.

“Open that bulrush flower,” said the moon.

The fisherman’s wife peeled open the bulrush. Within the brown velvet lay a boy child, only three inches tall, but whole and perfect.

“Mother,” said the child, holding out his arms to her.

Filled with love, the fisherman’s wife gently cupped the bulrush child in her hands, then she dashed back to the cottage where the fisherman sat outside mending nets.

“Husband,” she cried. “I have a son.”

The fisherman beat her. “Stupid jade. I need a son who is strong, so together we can hold the moon.”

“Oh, but I am strong, Father,” said the bulrush child. He leapt down, and with one hand ripped the cottage from its foundations and lifted it high above his head.

“Follow me,” shouted the bully fisherman, rushing to the lake.

But the bulrush child didn’t follow. He tossed the cottage into the air. It landed on the fisherman, and buried him.


The bulrush child and his mother lived happily ever after. And if the moon still visits and swims in the mountain lake, who knows. But once a month, look for the moon in the heavens. You’ll find him gone.

 

[Ursa major]

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Can You Have Emotion Without Motion?​

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Do you sometimes forget about the most obvious problems? I do. So while I knew my adventure might cause some minor issues, I was sure I could fix them.

This overconfidence is why the moon is on a crash course with the Earth. Just as well it isn’t my moon or my Earth. Let me explain.

You’ll have heard theories about parallel universes. Some theories concern universes with different physical laws. Others concern universes where one or more – perhaps zillions of – chance events ended differently. You may have heard of another theory, with complete but static universes that, together, represent the non-static universe you inhabit. Think of a how a movie’s made up of lots of images played one after the other. It turns out that this is more than theoretical: it’s how time plays out… for you.

“But hang on,” you might say. “What’s driving the film projector?”

‘Entropy’ is the answer. Each static universe is immediately “followed” by one with the nearest, but lower, entropy. This takes a hell of a time to calculate, but as it’s time you don’t – can’t – experience, why should you care?

I wanted to experience your kind of “time” – yes I come from yet another universe, one orthogonal to yours – so I injected myself into a series of your static universes. I forgot about the rules of conservation and uncertainty. Who wouldn’t? They’re small scale stuff. And when things, inevitably, went wrong – I had ‘appeared’ from nowhere – I fixed them. Shame my repairs couldn’t keep up with their consequences.

So I’m sorry. It’s my fault that your moon will crash into your Earth. But at least back in my universe, your pain and suffering will mean nothing. After all, from my perspective, it isn’t ‘happening’ at all….

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[Fitzchiv]

Cake & Wotsits

Dan settled down on the river bank with his dog to watch the Moon fall. A sharer bag of Wotsits and a quiet spot; all they needed for these final few sticky summer minutes.


Warnings had been coming for years, and heard too late; the Moon was going to get smashed into the Earth in a galactic “re-set” on behalf of a race polite enough to serve notice, and that time was up.


His wife had left him years ago anyway, so he’d skipped a few steps on stages of grief. As he sat feeding the Wotsits by the handful to his dog, Jasper, he toyed that he was in “Acceptance”. Deep down, he knew the reality was somewhere between “Bargaining” and “Depression”, a kind of miserable haggling for hope.


The way Dan saw it, the race doing the smashing were making a cake. Whoever it was, cracking the moon and earth together like eggs into the mix, hadn’t said there wasn’t a slice of cake available afterwards; they’d just ignored the pleading.


Humanity had assumed mercilessness. Dan reckoned it was a bit more like a busy mother ignoring a toddler whilst she finished baking. He hoped.


Dan’s theory was that if he sat quietly, waiting for whatever happened to happen, he had to get a slice of cake. So, he’d brought the dog to the park and both now sat quietly - like good boys.


He gave Jasper a friendly nudge as he slipped him more crisps, the sky dimming reddish dark, only minutes left. He was shaking hard, only noticing the tears streaming down his face once he had it pressed into his best friend's fur to share more than just final crisps.


Don’t worry mate, he thought as he squeezed his eyes shut. Cake soon.

 

[Mad Alice]

Why Do Rabbits Dance in the Moonlight?


Once, there were no rabbits, dancing or otherwise. But then the Moon's True Pearl was found, and so there were rabbits. All because of the Miller.
He wasn't a Miller then. Just a young man, looking for his heart.
Now some find their hearts no further then the fall of their shadow. But the crone read his signs and told him he must journey far, and when he found a girl dancing upon the water, there he should find his heart. Then the crone gave him seven league boots, and he ventured out.
Nights were dark then, because there weren't stars as now, and the Moon was a fickle thing, forever wandering away.
The miller came upon a lake where a maiden danced among the reeds. The moon danced with her, seeming to laugh itself into rainbows as they circled the lake. The Miller hid among the reeds and then caught the maidens hand as she passed.
He held her until she agreed to stay with him but then told him she could not leave the lake. So they stayed, he building the mill. Moon hid his rabbit ears and asked the miller if he could be the mill's dog.
The Miller agreed. Moon gave sweet milky pearls to his lady, telling her with enough she would climb to heaven with him.
Finding his bride bedecked with moon pearls, the miller grew enraged. Putting on the seven league boots, he kicked the hapless rabbit back to the sky. The pearls he threw out onto the fabric of night, making stars. Swiftly she swallowed up scattered pearls, her belly rounding with Moon's rabbits. The rabbits danced away, and to this day, when they see their skyfather, dance, showing their ball of white moontail from their father.

 

[BigJ]

Not with a whimper . . .

No-one had ever figured out where they had come from, or why, just that they had. Their ship had come undetected and unannounced, landing in the middle of a football game. Then they walked out, furry little fellows, like overgrown teddy bears wandering around. You better believe the world panicked; scientists, politicians, generals, everybody wanted a piece of the foreigners. But for all the talking we did they never answered, they only listened. A few days later, they got back in their ship and left. The moon disappeared the next night. You better believe there was a panic about that, too.

But then, nothing. Life went on. Oh sure, everyone wondered what had happened. The moon hadn’t exploded or shattered; there were no pieces. It was just gone, like the visitors who evidently took it with them. Sure, the tides changed to match the sun, the days got a little shorter, some of the wildlife seemed to take notice, but besides that, well, life went on.

I kept selling cars, more and more of them hybrids. My father passed; we buried him next to mom. I got to walk Anna down the aisle and hand her off to her husband. My wife grew some exceptional tomatoes.

Then the scientists were panicking again. It had been a year since the moon disappeared, and many of us had forgotten about it and moved on. Turns out it had been sitting in space that whole time, waiting for us to come back. Theories were abound, but with only a few hours’ notice of the collision, none of them really mattered.

I sat on the porch with my wife, wine in hand, waiting for the end to come. And I laughed.

Turns out it ends with a bang, after all.

 

[Ursa major]

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