It’s dark inside the cathedral, and Rho is afraid.

It’s been so long since she cared about the moon that she’s forgotten the contours of his face. Now, no moonlight crests the oculus, no shaft of brilliant white washes the ornately-carved dome.

She recognises her friends’ footsteps without looking away, Darla’s soft flats, Tectite’s claws clicking against time-worn tile. And then a familiar susurrus, silk-on-silk.

“You promised,” Rho says.

Darla stands beside her and peers up at the dark through heavy-rimmed spectacles.

“It’s important,” she says.

They first met through a shared obsession with the moon, though Rho’s fascination waned even then. Darla’s is more academic, grounded; she views the moon from afar, observes him through a telescope’s lens.

Rho hears the rustle of her wings - a sound she hasn’t heard since she turned her face from the heavens - and wants nothing more but to flee.

Tectite is carrying her wings, folded carefully in a tote bag with a geometric design.

“It should be a full moon,” he rumbles, apologetic. “Maybe he chose to leave orbit.”

His skin glistens like granite, his hairless head and broad-carved batwings reassuring to her; unlike Darla, he knows what it means to soar through the night, to weather the moon’s glory and the moon’s disregard.

He knows what Rho gave up when she bound herself to the earth.

“He’s actually gone,” Rho asks, “not just desperate for attention?” She spent long enough in his orbit that his moods no longer phase her.

“Without a trace,” says Darla. The rings under her eyes speak to sleepless nights hunting the moon across the sky. “It’s been three days. The ocean sends her love, but she’s got her hands full holding back the tides.”

“You know him, Rho,” Tectite says, “better than anyone. We wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.”

She lifts her wings like a diaphanous veil, unfolds them with shaking fingers.

Once she loved the moon. He loved her back, cold and distant. She can’t go back to who she was, but his absence will wreak devastation on her new home.

Her wings settle around her shoulders. Her legs grow chitinous, her vision blurs into abstract geometries. She wants nothing more than the moon.

“I’m coming with you,” says Tectite. “Once we bring him back, I’ll help you remember.”