This story was originally published at Reedsy.com, with the title “Ground Beneath My Feet vs. Ground up in the Sky” as part of the Contest #52 on July 30th 2020. The prompt that inspired this story was “Every year, one person is sent to the moon. This year, though you hid in terror, it is your turn to enter the rocket.”

Ground Beneath My Feet, Ground up in the Sky

By Jayde Holmes

At first, I was fascinated by the little blueish-white ball in the sky, not afraid. My first memory was of my mother teaching me that ground beneath my feet was called ‘earth’ and that ground in the sky was called ‘moon’. Through the glass of the bio-dome we would look up at the moon, and Mum would tell me stories about the two million people that had gone to sleep in technological coffins just before the meteorite hit and destroyed the Old Societies. Then Dad would tell me stories about the brave scouts that had flown to the moon to see if it was safe to wake the sleepers in the coffins.

We have big skyhooks in the sky, and twice a year they are lined up with the skyhooks around the moon whilst our fuel supplies are in surplus. Every year for the past two thousand years we’ve sent one person to the moon in the stasis shuttle, and later that year the previous scout returned. Unless something went wrong.

Things did go wrong sometimes.

I didn’t care about that back then. The moon was just a magical faraway place where we kept everything from the Old Societies and if I looked closely enough after window cleaning day, I could maybe make out land masses. It was only when I was told that I would be the next person to go to the moon that I thought about all the things that could go wrong and got scared of it.

I should have known they’d want to send me because the year I was born was also the year that the scout said we could wake the sleepers. The moon was ‘ready for life and civilisation’ and we didn’t need scouts anymore. First, they sent the scientists. My parents were both scientists, so they went to the moon and never came back. I got letters off the teletype every week, about how different things were up there and how strange the people they were waking up were. Once every year, my grandparents were even allowed to take me into the ancient Comms Module where the last videophone was kept. I got to see my parents once a year, and every time I saw them, they looked more and more like strange moon people and less like the parents I remembered.

Last year, my grandparents asked if I wanted to live with my parents again and I said yes. But I didn’t know I was saying yes to going up in the stasis shuttle.

My cousin Lexie told me after. “What? You thought they’d be coming back?” She’d said. “They’re busy waking the sleepers. They can’t come back. Ever.”

My grandparents didn’t get why I was so sad. It was very rare for someone to go to the moon. It showed what a good job my parents were doing and how well life and civilisation was going that they could spare a trip for me. They asked wasn’t I proud of what my parents were doing? Wasn’t I excited to go to the moon? I was proud of them, and I wanted to see them, but I didn’t want to go to the moon. Why was that so hard to understand?

Whenever we went to any appointments related to the trip, I cried and ran away to hide. During my first physical I ran to the nutrient vats and gorged myself. After that, Lexie decided to share a new ‘fun fact’ she’d learnt about the moon with me.

“They don’t eat like normal on the moon” she told me. “You’ll have to get surgery and learn to eat in a completely different way. Also, you’ll never get normal food again.”

“Now that’s not true” Grandma said. “It’s not a surgery, and there’ll be enough earth food for you to eat until you’re used to moon food.”

I didn’t want to get used to moon food. When they got me back to the doctor and asked about feeding, I cried for the rest of the appointment.

“Couldn’t we wait a few years?” Grandpa asked the doctor. “Until she’s old enough to understand?”

“If we wait any longer, she won’t be able to adapt to the difference in gravity” the Doctor explained. “We don’t want to force her to choose between never seeing her parents again or being crippled on the moon.”

That just made me more scared. I was old enough to know what gravity was and I didn’t want it to change.

The next appointment I hid in the park. Lexie found me and told me how on the moon I’d be fully exposed to the sun, and how it would burn so much brighter.

“And do you want to hear about night on the moon?” She asked. “People die of exposure all the time if they’re outside at night.”

I told her I didn’t want to hear any more of her ‘fun facts’.

I kept hiding from everything related to the stasis shuttle and the moon until the month before I was due to leave. Our class received letters from the first class of children to be awakened on the moon. They had a lot of questions for us. Especially for me, since they thought I’d be going to school with them soon.
It was weird hearing from them.

They thought our food was disgusting and weird. They thought we were too exposed to the sun. They thought our gravity was funny. They thought our animals –

I’d never even thought about animals on the moon. They’d all have been artificially created. I hoped they weren’t scary.

I didn’t talk to my family about the lesson. For some reason, I liked thinking that my regular life was as scary to the moon-children as theirs was to me, and I didn’t want Lexie to tell me a ‘fun fact’ about moon-children to make me scared again.

In the end, it was one of the scouts that did that. Grandpa had asked her to tell me about her trip to the moon. It was meant to comfort me, but when she mentioned how the very atmosphere of the moon made her shuttle burn up, I screamed and ran away.

My family found me later in the rabbit farm, crying alongside an affectionate angora rabbit. The launch was so close, and I really just did not want to go. I buried my face into Grandma’s hug and asked why I had to go to the moon.

Grandma and Grandpa comforted me, and then led me to the Comms Module. I was so confused; we’d already had our one call for the year. The fact that we even got a yearly call was huge, since it took so much processing power to send a video message to the moon that it was only used for the most important occasions.

“Are we allowed to have a video chat again so soon?” I asked.

“Of course” Grandpa said. “This is very important.”

I entered the communications room and saw my parents on the screen. I hid behind Grandma. My parents had grown fatter and their skin more burnt since the last time I saw them, and I’d never liked the metal braces they had to wear.

Grandma didn’t force me to go near them. She just patted me on the back as I listened to my parents tell me it was alright to be scared and that they’d missed me so much.

“We’d really like to see how you’ve grown” Mum said. “Why don’t you sit down in front of the screen and talk to us?”

“We can’t bite you from there” Dad added. “No matter how scary the moon has made us.

I inched forward. Grandma squeezed my shoulder and then backed away. I sat in the chair and looked my parents over. They were moon-people now, but they still had big smiles, and they were still my parents. I found myself relaxing.

“You’re moon-people now” I said.

“That’s what the moon-people say about us” Dad said with a laugh. “We were too old to adjust to the gravity, so we’ll always be moon-people to them.”

“They call our ground the moon” Mum explained. “Since it’s in their sky. In our sky now.”

“It can be your sky soon too” Dad said. “If you’re able to be brave and go on the stasis shuttle.”

“Everyone says I have to” I said. “But I don’t want to be a moon-person.”

“You don’t have to” Mum said, her voice cracking. “But if you don’t come this year, then you’ll grow too much to adjust to the gravity here. Then if you do come later, you’ll need support braces like these. And… and I miss you so much. I wish you hadn’t been too little to come on the big ship. Or that they’d just delayed the awakening for a few more damn years.”

Mum was crying now, and Dad was hugging her, tears on his face. I sniffled.

“Is it so bad being a moon-person?” Dad asked me.

“I dunno” I said. “The moon is so far away and everything is so different and scary.”

“Different doesn’t have to be scary” Dad said. “It’ll be strange at first, but it isn’t bad here. Remember; moon is just ground in the sky, and earth is ground beneath your feet. It’s all the same ground and once you’re here you’ll still be the same little girl. All the scary weird things that happen here are normal to the people here.”

“From here, it looks like your life is strange and scary” Mum said. “See? You’ve already been doing weird moon stuff without even knowing it. Haven’t you precious?”

I nodded, trying to find the hole in their logic.

“All that matters is whether or not you have people who love you looking after you” Mum said. “And you have that wherever you go.”

The screen beeped, warning that they were almost out of time. I didn’t want the call to end. I’d been scared of how Mum and Dad looked at first, but now they just looked like my Mum and Dad. They’d stopped being scary.

“We have to go” Mum said. “we’ll send you a letter right after this call. And remember, you don’t have to make up your mind right now. Think about it and then make up your mind on launch day. We love you no matter which ground you’re on.”

“But if you come here, Grandma, Grandpa and Lexie will be the moon-people” Dad said.

I laughed at how silly the thought was, but I found myself thinking about what my parents said a lot the following week. It was hard to imagine my everyday life being strange and scary to other people. Maybe that meant that strange and scary wasn’t that bad. Maybe I could learn to live with a new strange and scary.

Which ground I stood on, and which ground was far away in the sky, all depended entirely on my point of view.

I told Lexie this, and she laughed at me.

“Well actually” she explained “the word ‘moon’ used to mean a small planet orbiting a big one. Not just a ball in the sky. So, you can’t really say either planet is the moon and either is the earth. One has to be The Moon.”

“Which one is the true moon then?” I asked.

“That one of course” Lexie said, pointing to the glowing ball visible through the dome. Her face looked uncertain, but I found that I didn’t really care. I liked the other meaning for the words and the picture they gave me better.

The only question was whether I wanted to live my parents or my grandparents.

“Visits will become easier once the awakening is further along” Grandpa said when I asked him if going to the moon would mean I never see him again. “But if you grow there, it’ll be easier for you to visit here. We’ll always be here waiting for you and sending you letters.”

The thought of getting on the stasis shuttle and going to the moon still terrified me, but I kept repeating what I had learnt over and over again.

What was strange and scary depended on how I saw things.

And I had people who loved me and would help me no matter where I lived.

The day of the launch arrived, and I didn’t hide. I hugged my grandparents, then turned and hugged Lexie, even though she said going to the moon would turn me into a freaky moon-person.
We were all crying.

I let the tech lead me up the rocket scaffold to the shuttle at the top. It was big enough to hold one adult-sized bed built into the wall, surrounded by all the tubes and tanks and straps needed to keep me sleeping for the trip.

I tried not to be scared.

Not scared by how my feeding tube would be removed and I’d have to learn how to eat unprocessed animals and plants with my mouth.

Not scared that I would be standing under the sun with nothing but the thin atmosphere to protect from its deadly rays.

Not scared about the heavier gravity, or the animals that had gone extinct from the meteorite and been recreated by the scientists.

It was all normal to the people living there. Soon, that would be my earth, and I will look up to the moon and think fondly about the strange life I’d been living before.

THE END