Ji lay on her back staring at the Moon. She had picked this place because it was high up and away from everyone. It had the majestic desolation and gigantic skeletons of buildings that Estellay had, but without the crowds.
Stories of poisonous mutant reptiles kept the idle curious out of the Empire Desert. Around her sat miles of ruins, once homes and shops a long time ago. Most were just crumbling cement foundations now, most likely harboring a few reptiles. Some were poisonous, she doubted any were actually mutants.
when she heard the news, she headed straight out to her favorite spot in what was once known as Ontreo. The building she climbed had resisted the crumbling and wreckage of time that had taken down so many other of the ruins. Large orange letters from the ancient alphabet still clung to the side. She translated them once but it made no sense to her. House-Train Station? Something had definitely been lost in the translation.
But whatever it had been, it was now a solid steel structure that somehow hadn’t rusted into collapse. She had grabbed a bag of her traditional M&Ms, hit the road and here she lay, staring up into the night sky.
She loved M&M’s. They gave her a sense of history. “Brand names” had been a big thing in the pre-Delian times and though many had fallen int he delian age sophistication and the following collapse, M&M’s somehow had survived. The product had changed much over the centuries. It was odd to her to think that the lightly candied pretzel bits, nuts and cherry balls she enjoyed were not at all what the snack had been like even 100 years ago. She had researched the matter and found a historian who claimed the original M&Ms had been hard candies with a bean paste inside. She wasn’t sure she believed that but she accepted that the brand hadn’t always meant the food she loved now. And yet that was part of the reason she loved them. She felt like she was eating history.
The nostalgia brought back to a poem she learned as a little girl that had always stoked her fascination with the Moon.
Up on the Moon you cannot fall
Up on the Moon to wait in the hall
Up on the Moon untillen we call
Up on the Moon come back to us all
And now they were.
