Tapping. A wave of violent tapping echoes through the IgapĂł as dusk spreads its wings over the tapestry of trees above. As we tap the trunks, we scurry towards the understory and into our craft. We all know which entrance we should take into the craft, we all learned as larva what we had to do to survive the night. The craft was a strange, cold thing, impossibly shining as it began to hum and turn in the tangled branches. Once each hatch was closed behind us, the craft sprung out of the canopy and thrust us into the safety above. There was where we would wait until dawn, most of us sleeping soundly as the heavens turned.
Further above the craft, a single Moky was sat in a curious structure, kept company only by a single wheel. Her mandibles gripped its handle firmly, the steady movement of her head spinning the stars above. Whatever mechanism demanded the wheel to be turned did so without a sound, and so the silence of the vacuum outside was echoed within the structure. The Sun rolled in a spiral away from the structure, while the Moon mirrored its path throughout the night.
I’m the servant of the structure. I’ve been entrusted with its mechanisms. My place is at the wheel, alone, holding the skies in balance. In many ways this night was like every other, the heavenly path remaining the same, a familiar lack of company while I turn the handle. But not quite. I’ve kept track. Tonight, the Moon will shine at its brightest over the tundra lake for the tenth and final time this cycle. Three down, two to go. I don’t remember who I was ten phases ago, but that isn’t the point. The point is I’ll be back in the forest in less time than I’ve been up here. I’ll be back with the knowledge of why the wheel is worth turning, why my silent duty matters, and what lies beyond the sky.
The meteor showers over the furthest reaches of the tundra showed me where this wheel sits in this quiet world, in the endless skies beyond this one. Other worlds bled through those showers. Last cycle, the showers brought the charred remnants of a war waged by false gods. The cycle before that brought fragments of a shattered space station, split by a falling moon so long ago.
Tonight’s shower will bring something new, a new understanding of what lies beyond the confluence of worlds the forest sits below. Twinkling, twirling, tumbling fires streak across the Moon’s face, some trace of a foreign ritual.
i originally published this to my now-disused medium account on new year’s day, 2020. it’s the only thing i ever published to that account.
i wrote new year over christmas during my first year at university - i’d found my first term unbearably difficult and spent a lot of time imagining the “quiet world” of this story. over that break i considered switching degrees from linguistics & sociology to zoology, and the Moky were one of a few species ideas i came up with at the time that never made it into any other writing. in the end i dropped sociology instead.
the photo was taken the summer before i started university, from a hotel on the lower east side. i didn’t take many photos back then.