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Zoe nodded. In a way, it was. But it was also surreal in its own way to see Abyllan from the moon. Pictures of her home planet were so ingrained in her head, photos taken from satellites or unmanned missions to space. Or even the odd manned mission where somebody took a picture with their phone.
And the image of her planet was so familiar, so recognizable. The blue planet, covered in somewhat opaque white clouds and floating through the pitch blackness of space. Any hope of the stars shining through from behind lost to the sheer amount of light radiating off the planet’s surface.
But here? Standing on the moon herself and looking back at Abyllan, it was so different. She’d flown to space before, and looked down at the dry planet. But it almost looked wrong from the moon, a firm reminder that she wasn’t truly home. Something that happened less and less often with each year that passed, and she considered herself more a part of this world than her home.
It was beautiful in its own way. And so very lonely. Nothing around for hundreds of thousands of kilometers, possibly even millions. Being stranded in the ocean with no land in sight was already a terrifying experience. Out here, there was land in sight but it was so far away it may as well not exist.
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Emma nodded. “I already stored away a bunch of moon rock. Cat toys and some gifts. Maybe we could bring back a whole bunch and sell it to people. I bet we could get the statue remade in moon rock. That would be pretty cool.”
Zoe laughed. “No, no statues. We already have one and I hate it. I just want to live a quiet life, alright?"
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Emma nodded. “I kinda figured. Was it fun at least?"
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Emma nodded. “Well you gave it a shot and learned something at least, right?"
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Emma nodded. “And if we’re stupid and it takes way longer than we though, we just head back earlier. I don’t wanna leave the cats alone for too long. Joe said he’d take care of them, but I kinda expected this to be a day trip, to be honest.”
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Zoe laughed. “Yeah I didn’t think so. Maybe if we had a powerful gravity mage who could enchant the moon so it had a larger gravitational field and then somebody like myself to fill that field with breathable air. But then Abyllan would probably be destroyed by the moon’s gravitational field being disrupted anyway.”
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Emma took some very deliberate, careful steps with a grin on her face. “Understood. Be super careful.”
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Emma laughed. “I beg your pardon? I am Emmlord, destroyer of moons! One wrong step and this flimsy rock will crumble under my immense power!”
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“This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Zoe smiled, and the two walked around for the next few hours. Were it not for the excitement of them being on the moon, it would have been one of the most boring walks Zoe had ever taken. Gray stone all around them for as far as the eye could see, covered in tiny little holes from other space rocks impacting the moon over thousands or millions of years. None of which had ever been touched by a person or wind.
The hours passed and the only new thing they saw was a particularly large crater with a large rock set in the middle of it. An asteroid perhaps, that landed on the moon some number of years prior. They walked up to it and checked it out, but it seemed to be mostly made up of iron to the best of Zoe’s ability to tell.
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Zoe looked around at the crater they were in, covered in even more tiny holes. This mass of iron landed long enough ago for more rocks to slam into the moon since it arrived, but not so long that it had itself been completely ripped apart by the barrage.
Thousands of years? Hundreds? How often did rocks impact the moon anyway? Somebody smarter than her could probably look at this and say with confidence the impact happened six thousand four hundred years ago.
But to Zoe, it was little more than a cool novelty. A shame, she supposed. Maybe she should start up some space program and hire some smarter people to come investigate the moon with her. Try and learn all of its deepest secrets. Maybe she could convince somebody else to do it for her. Maybe Jeffrey would be interested in some space alchemy.
Emma glanced over at Abyllan then back at the asteroid. “I’m surprised at how different it is up here. The dust doesn’t just settle, it doesn’t move. And it keeps clinging to me, too. I feel like every step I take I knock up more of this dusty crap to get stuck to my legs and arms. And it doesn’t wanna come off no matter what I do, either.”
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They wandered around on the moon for a few more hours, stumbling into more craters. Most didn’t have the asteroid remaining in the center, though they did find another two that did. Both were made up of similar ferrous minerals as the first, which made some sense to Zoe. Iron was a pretty common resource for just that reason, after all.
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Zoe teleported them forward a few hundred meters again and then paused to look at a mark on the ground. It wasn’t a hole, it wasn’t a crater left by an asteroid. It was a track, left by some creature Zoe couldn’t recognize. She got an image of some misshapen minotaur kraken hybrid, perhaps? Her Vampyric Senses wasn’t very clear on what it was.
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Zoe pointed down at the track she noticed. “That.”
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The asteroids had avoided this one print for the most part, but there were two deep holes carved into the track near the center of the print. Zoe assumed they were asteroids carving their way into the surface, but maybe whatever left these tracks had two extrusions under their feet for some reason?
Emma knelt down next to the imprint and rubbed her finger through the inside of the track. A thin layer of loose dust peeled away, clinging to her index finger. “It’s old. Really old. Covered in dust again, but not old enough to be destroyed by all these asteroid impacts.”
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Emma nodded. “Maybe we come back in a few years and try to find this again, see how it’s changed.”
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Emma shrugged. “You’re the earth mage. Make a big pillar nearby so we can find it again. It’ll probably be destroyed before we get back though. Maybe make a big pillar nearby and also a valley? But maybe that will damage the moon too much…”
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Emma nodded, and Zoe teleported the two a hundred feet away to create a towering pillar of earth. It looked incredibly out of place, a towering pillar of brown dirt among the sea of lifeless gray rock, with a raised bit of dirt poking out to show the direction of the track they’d found.
Zoe teleported them back to the track. “See if there’s anymore nearby maybe?"
Emma nodded, and the two walked around a bit in search of any other signs. After about a half hour, they still hadn’t found anything new.
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Emma shrugged. “Why not?”
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Emma nodded and held out her hand. “Yeah, lets head home.”
Zoe grabbed Emma’s hand and Cosmic Stepped them away from the moon’s surface. In seconds, they were back in space, drifting along without even the reduced gravity of the moon pulling them back down.
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