Dom always said the moon was like a mirror, showing us what Earth used to be—and what it might never be again. While waiting for his friend Dominic, Kai watched the ancient satellite overtake the towers far to the east, topping those ancient spires and spreading light across the mosaic of forest and savannah stretching in all directions below his perch.
For Kai, exploring the ruins at night proved exhilarating, the most exciting time. There was little to see and everything to be felt. The winds in the heights both sang and subsided, making the building beneath him vibrate slightly. To his ears it seemed a kind of music, at once improvisational and yet as regular as a man’s breath.
Above, the moon was nearly full, its great lakes shining blue and silver where the sun caught them beneath scudding clouds. Within a small, unlit crescent of darkness, city lights were just becoming visible up there, twinkling in the rilles and craters of the lunar night.
The moon was not the only place he expected to see lights this evening.
At a creak of metal hinges, he turned back.
“Over here, Dom,” Kai said gently, letting the breeze take his voice across the short span of the ancient terrace.
They had found this balcony the previous day. As hands hauling gear for the first scouting party to breach the city, they’d had precious few moments to themselves, but Kai was determined to prove what he’d seen. When the officers of the Furious were busy, he and Dom had done a little scouting of their own. This was the perfect spot.
“There you are,” a familiar voice whispered from the shaft Kai had ascended earlier, its door held open by a loose stone. “Sure it was me, huh?”
Both voices were young, conspiratorial, and electric—all at once.
“You glow in the moonlight, bruv. Face like a witch moth.” Canting his head and making a ‘come here’ gesture with his right hand, Kai returned his attention to the scene below.
“We could be sent back to the ship for this,” Dom mused. “Under guard.”
“Nah. Captain likes initiative.”
“Quartermaster doesn’t.” Dom’s voice was strained with undertones of worry.
“You brought it?”
The newcomer to the roof grunted as he hefted a cloth covered object and brought it over to Kai. Together, smooth white hands and tattooed black ones pulled away the coverings to reveal the ship’s spyglass.
Kai smiled. “Nah worries. We’ll get it back in old Gilly’s ruck pack before dawn catches the highest tower here.”
Laughing gently, Dom helped Kai as they worked in the darkness, opening the brass telescope to its full length and carefully settling it across Dom’s jacket, sacrificed to the cooling air so that it could cushion the scope as it lay across the stonework of the tower.
“Hey, how’d you get up here in the dark, anyway?” There was still light coming in the tower windows when Kai had made his climb.
Reaching to his belt, Dom turned a crank on the side of a small metal box. Something within whined as the crank made a full circle and a spark of light soon filled a lens near the top of one side. As Dom cranked, the light grew brighter.
“Nice,” Kai said. “Now you’re definitely going to the brig.”
“Shut’p!”
Before the light, which never grew more than a candle or two in brightness, faded, Dom used it to safely approach the balcony’s edge.
They were perilously close to a place where a section of the parapet had fallen away, long ago.
“You really think there’s another city out there?” Dom asked.
“Not another city,” Kai ventured. “This city. Before it got too dark, I could see grassland and trees below. Greener than anything we’ve seen since we came ashore. Maybe ten or fifteen kilometers straight across. Half that wide.”
“You mean a park? Like Centralia Park in Yorkhaven? That’s a big park.”
“Never been there,” Kai said of the capitol city’s pleasure grounds. He lay on his stomach on the cold roof, closing one eye while he peered with the other through the pristine lenses of the spyglass. “This would be the first Eternal City the Navy can credit with a living park. The first with power too.”
“First Mate Fitsroy didn’t believe you, neither did the captain.”
“Well, neither of them was up on the mast with me, were they?” Kai’s voice was edged with irritation but filled with confidence. Smug satisfaction, actually.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing yet.”
For a while, there were no more words to be said. It was as if they were looking from that ship’s mast where Kai had stood his watch, down across a shadowed, moonlit sea. Then, slowly and only after their patience had all but vanished, lights began to flicker to life along the eastern horizon.
“Hey,” Dom whispered, tapping his friends shoulder with the back of his hand.
“I see it. I told you.”
Kai shifted and steadied the spyglass. The rough stone worried his elbows and knees. Without saying a word, Dom crouched down beside him.
Together they watched as a wall of buildings to the west slowly caught fire. For Dom, it was a cool white glow, spreading at first below the horizon and then rising up the walls of towers too dark to see. For Kai, through the spyglass, blocks of windows could be seen to light up in a rough sequence, until the question of a city still powered by the eternal forces was no longer in doubt.
“This City isn’t dead,” Kai crowed with excitement. “Not yet anyway.”
“The part I’m standing in looks worse for wear,” Dom said, knocking a piece of rubble aside with the toe of his boot. “I wonder how much is still running?”
“Well, you can see not all the buildings are lighting up and in some of the blocks they are dim or flickering. I’d say it’s been dying for ages. Hey, don’t just stand there, make some official notes in your shore log.”
“I can’t see to write.”
“Use the crank.”
“Hey, let me look through that.”
Reluctantly, Kai shifted into a sitting position and made room for Dom to take the spyglass.
“I wonder if they can see those lights from camp?” Dom asked as he adjusted the focal lens. “Bet not. Moon’s bright. These buildings behind us are shield walls. Now, we need to think. How do we report this and come out with some credit? Maybe a share of the profits.”
“Do you think this place might be inhabited?” Kai asked.
“No more than the lights on the moon,” Dom answered, glancing upward. He turned his attention back to the spyglass, but no sooner had he done so than he seemed to stop breathing.
“By fire! It can’t... I mean, Kai. It’s. It’s!” Dom was obviously too excited to speak.
Attending to his friend, Kai scowled at first. “What are you looking down for; there’s nothing down there.” He reached for the brass shaft of the glass, but Dom pulled it away and refocused on whatever had caught his attention.
“Woah Ho! There’s more than you know. Either I’m dreaming or mad, but this is—”
“Just give me the scope!” Kai lunged for Dom and wrestled the gleaming metal tube away.
Crawling closer to the edge, he pointed the spyglass down where he had seen Dom looking. At first, there was nothing, only the shadows of trees and the dark green of the moonlit sward.
For a moment, Kai wondered if this was a tease, for Dom was not above a gentle joke when he felt his friend was in a serious mood. But Dom’s breath still came in ragged gulps behind him. Something had shocked him.
Through the dim circle of the spyglass, Kai saw trees, some tens of meters high with thick, widely spread branches. Others stood on short trunks, their leaves feathery in the moonlight, small elongated pods hanging from the branches—unlike any fruit he knew from the ship’s stores or his native island.
The spyglass caught structures—arbors for shade, a retaining wall near a stream, and in the direction Dom had been looking, a small building resembling the Quartermaster’s deckhouse aboard the Furious.
He moved the scope to the right of the building.
“Monsters!” he shouted, turning to Dom, suddenly aware his voice might carry the distance. All ears within a standard kilom would have heard him. His hands shook, and the scope’s view blurred.
“No, stupid, they’re not monsters,” Dom responded, his voice carefully suppressed.
Turning back to the night below, Kai steadied his trembling fingers and refocused on what had startled him. Two creatures came into view, one half again as big as the first, but either would have cut an imposing figure next to a human.
Their heads were massive with huge, fan-shaped ears and a long, serpentine limb where a nose should be, swaying with graceful dexterity. At the sight of them, his thoughts felt like windblown sails. These creatures had legs like the trunk of a full-grown Tree of Life. Was it a snake and a whale and a tree, comingled by some witchery still present in this Eternal City?
“They’re elephants,” Dom announced confidently.
Kai realized he too had stopped breathing and slowly exhaled. “That’s a word?”
“Haven’t you ever seen? By fire, island boy, give me the scope back!”
“No. I want to see the jacking ephalents.” He gripped the brass tube tighter. “What are you afraid of them for, anyway?”
“It’s ‘elephants’ not ‘ephalents,’ Kai. I’m not afraid of them. Look at what they’re doing. Just look!”
Kai focused his gaze even more intently through the spyglass, forcing his hands to steady. The elephants—two of them, though more might lurk in shadows—stood on either side of a tall tripod.
Upon the tripod was mounted a long, cylindrical device canted skyward. In the moonlight, it shone like polished bone, with a funnel-shaped section mounted to the lower half of the cylinder. A spark of light floated across a glassy surface, a lens.
“That damned thing is a telescope!” Kai shouted once more into the night.
As he watched, the elephants swayed their bodies and trunks together in harmony. Those serpentine limbs moved seamlessly, each trunk curling around opposite sides of a knob that jutted from the telescope’s midsection. With a small, carefully timed twist, the assembly tilted upward, its wide lens now pointed—he was sure of it—to the moon.
Dom pushed words out from between clenched teeth. “They’re... adjusting it, aren’t they?” The words were barely audible, even to Kai’s ear. Relaxing a bit, Dom continued. “That’s what hit me like a boarding wave.” His voice grew in strength and wonder. “They’ve got to be studying the moon. That’s the angle. By fire, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Kai took a moment to scan the vicinity around the elephants for any sign of more beasts or human masters. All he saw were neat rows of low shrubs, the glimmer of small, artificial streams, and beyond that, moonlit pavilions that might have once sheltered picnics or bandstands. There was no sign of men or other machines. Instead, it looked as if the two enormous creatures alone had decided to undertake this freakish celestial study.
Leaning forward against the edge of the parapet, Kai watched, awestruck, as the elephants continued their deliberate manipulations. One stepped closer to the tripod, its broad shoulder brushing the support beam so gently it might have been a dancer. It raised its trunk to the top of the scope, securing some latch that Kai hadn’t even noticed. The other elephant moved in, curling its trunk to refocus the large lens, rotating a ring with slow, measured care.
“Do you see how their trunks blend together around the controls?” Kai asked. “It’s like they share a single mind.”
“I’d like to see, but you’re hogging the scope.”
“Yeah.” Kai nodded, then steadied the spyglass to take in all the details he could. After another moment, he reluctantly handed it over. “Here, but make it quick.”
Dom grabbed the brass tube eagerly, adjusting the focus. For a long moment he was silent, studying the creatures below. Then his whole body tensed.
“By Zeeza, Kai! Did you notice... they’re tattooed? Like you!”
“I saw that, the big one is anyway. So, all elephants aren’t...”
“No,” Dom shook his head, still peering through the scope. “These patterns, they’re all over their foreheads, down their trunks, inside their ears. Like someone marked them with... I don’t know, geometric patterns.”
“I wonder if that means someone owns them?” Kai asked, leaning forward as if he could see better without the scope.
Dom lowered the spyglass slightly, considering. “That’s not ownership. That’s art. Or they did it to themselves. Look at how precisely they’re working that telescope. These aren’t just trained animals, Kai.”
“I don’t see any owners,” Kai agreed. “Or handlers. Those things are out there by themselves. Trading turns to watch the moon. What do you think they could be looking for?”
Below, the large telescope wobbled momentarily, and the larger elephant braced it with a gentle shoulder. Kai caught sight of the creature’s massive eye reflecting the moon’s brilliance. Around that eye, and spreading across the broad forehead, were patterns unlike anything he’d ever seen—not tattoos exactly, but markings that seemed both ancient and deliberate. Geometric arabesques flowed from the crown of the head down along the trunk, and up around the edges of the ears, tiny interlocking shapes formed borders like the illuminated manuscripts in the captain’s cabin, yet wholly unlike any human artistry. There was no sense of blankness in that decorated face, only intense focus, something he would have expected in a skilled scout or scholar.
If these beings had preserved the art of astronomy, what else thrived in the bones of this city?
Dom’s voice wavered with excitement, with a fear far deeper than stealing the spyglass and lantern from the quartermaster’s care. “This changes everything, doesn’t it?” he asked.
A breeze shifted, sending a hint of night-blooming fragrance across the heights.
“We’ve found a city with lights and power, and more than that... stargazing natives. Well, ephalent... I mean, elephants. We do this right and its epaulets on our shoulders and shiny hats for sure!”
“I’d almost rather pretend we didn’t see it,” Dom admitted.
For a moment, neither spoke. The only sound was the wind’s soft sigh as the stone beneath them grew colder, losing the heat it had gathered from the now long-lost sun. Kai felt a stirring deep within, as if the building beneath him was no longer steady. This discovery was more than either of them could have imagined.
Without warning, lights flared into being all around them, blinding both Kai and Dom. The lights pulsed in a pattern—three quick flashes, then steady—as if the building itself was awakening, taking notice. A soft mechanical whir emanated from somewhere deep within the stone, like gears engaging after a long sleep.
Stunned, the young men sprang to their feet, hands raised to shield their eyes as they struggled to discern the source.
One thing was quite clear. They were surrounded. As they’d been trained for such situations, and as neither Kai nor Dom had been successful in stealing any weapons from their shore party’s encampment, they raised their hands and surrendered.
“We mean no harm!” Dom assured their captors at about the same Kai figured out that they might yet be alone on the balcony.
“Those lights are on the buildings,” Kai assured his friend. “See, they’re fixed in the stonework.”
“Well... someone lit them! Should we just stand here?”
“No, there,” Kai pointed to the stairwell and its broken door, the dark shaft they had found in their explorations which had led them to this vantage point. “Let’s get out of here.”
They sprinted across a space filled with ankle twisting rubble, thankful at least that they could see the debris as they ran. Dom stopped halfway, hesitated, and turned back to their perch at the edge. His jacket and the spyglass had been left behind. Losing those would be too much for an able seaman to explain, no matter their find.
“Kai, Kai!” he yelled as he made his way back toward the stairwell. While in his right arm he held the goods he had risked going back for, with his left he flung out a hand toward something new. A figure, at first hidden in the brilliance of the light, was moving toward them from the far edge of the balcony. It could have been a man, or a ghost, with a triangular chest and thin legs, hobbling toward them across the rubble.
As Dom made it back to the doorway, Kai pulled him into darkness, and they both reached for the railing they had followed on the way up.
“Your light, crank it up!” Kai ordered, and at once Dom spun the handle round while the small device on his belt whined and, with much exertion, brought forth a candle’s worth of illumination.
Because beggars have no business being choosey, they took what light Dom could manage to squeeze from his box and descended the stairs at a dangerous pace, fear pounding in their ears.
After two flights, Dom’s panicked cranking had an unforeseen effect; the crank handle broke off in his hand and a cotter pin went flying.
“No,” Kai said.
“Just keep your hand on the rail and go,” Dom instructed.
Another flight and Kai’s boot slipped on unseen debris, sending him tumbling to the landing seven steps below.
“By fire! Kai, are you hurt?” Dom cried, descending with newfound caution, though his panic nearly betrayed him as he stumbled over Kai’s prone form. He knelt, reaching for the source of a few familiar groans, when suddenly, the lights flared to life again.
The stairwell was as bright as day.
Footfalls echoed on the stair above them and neither said a word as Kai recovered his senses and they redoubled their efforts at descent.
When they hit the landing where Kai had tied a clove hitch in the railing using a lanyard, they knew they were on the same level where a rusted man door had provided ingress through an ancient cargo bulkhead in the side of the building. The only question was, in their panic and in the dark, could they find their way back.
Whatever was chasing them made the decision easy. As they exited the stairwell into the main floor of the building, one side of the massive structure lit up, and the other stayed dark.
They headed into the darkness.
“We can’t run forever,” Dom said. He had taken on a limp after twisting his ankle at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well, I don’t have to outrun them,” Kai replied, nearly breathless. “I only have to outrun you.” Nodding toward an open archway shadowed by the lights from the other side of the building, Kai offered his friend a hand. “Come on, that’s the way.”
Reaching the arch, they scurried through like rats into a hole. As if by magic, some unseen and silent panel shifted at their approach, and before they knew it, they were breathing fresh air.
All the lights above and behind them winked out.
Dom and Kai were outside now, doubled over and each nursing the injuries of their flight.
For a moment, relief washed over them.
Dom buttoned his naval jacket with trembling fingers while Kai held the brass scope close and squinted into the moonlit landscape, trying to get his bearings. Something was wrong. The ground sloped away differently here, and those trees ahead—
“Dom,” Kai whispered, his stomach dropping. “This isn’t the way we came.”
Dom’s head snapped around, scanning the unfamiliar terrain. Where there should have been the rubble field they’d crossed to reach the tower and the trunk of a giant tree, there was instead a gentle rise covered in grass. The distinctive outline of their camp’s watchfire, which should have been visible to the east, was nowhere to be seen.
“We came out the wrong bloody side,” Dom breathed.
A trumpeting call echoed from somewhere beyond the next rise—unmistakably the elephants they’d been watching. They’d fled blindly through the tower and emerged not back toward safety, but deeper into unknown territory, closer to those impossible creatures with their telescope.
The soft sound of footsteps came from the building behind them.
Without another word, they took off at the same time, running toward whatever lay ahead, for it seemed the lesser danger. And Kai could not help thinking that somewhere in the moonlit expanse before them, enormous eyes might already be watching.