They stood there in front of the Gate, Claralell grinning and chattering away. The moon was…big. And white. But aside from marble columns, there wasn’t much around. Fern’s head snapped around as she heard an almost splashing sound behind her. Instead of the depths of the portal, the archway had a view of the cratered moonscape.

“…ern? Fern!”

Her head spun around, “What?”

Claralell’s check puffed out, “Where you even listening to me?”

“Um…no, sorry. I was just thinking-”

“About how amazing and magical the Gate is, right? Well,” She started pulling Fern along, arm still around her shoulder, “fear not dear Fern. The palace is by far the most amazing thing you’ll ever see in your lifetime.”

Fern’s eyebrows raised, “Palace?”

“But of course. Nothing could be a more fitting home for yours truly.”

Fern hummed, not bothering to comment. Instead she looked around, beyond the marble columns and towards the horizon and stars. Before long, she started to see more than just flat land. There were outcroppings of jutting rocks, and patches of glassy, highly polished rock. After a time, the crops of rock started to become less shapeless.

Fern squinted at them. The farther they went, the more the rocks became carved, and the irregular patches of polished floor became widespread, as though the landscape was becoming less natural. Even further, the rocks began to take shape. There were rocks shaped into walls or more intricate sculptures with carefully constructed designs etched into them. There were also sculptures of animals, though Fern couldn’t guess what kind of animals they were supposed to be. There was one of something that looked like a cross between an octopus and a hamster, another like reindeer and a panda, and still other odd creatures.

And the words ‘something like’ were being used very loosely here. As hard as Fern tried, she couldn’t come up with anything on Earth that more accurately described the creatures being depicted. The rein-panda, for instance, was particularly hard to come up with a mental image. It was stout and round and sat on its rump like a panda bear. But instead of paws, it had hooves that were split down the middle like a pig or deer, and a big tail that was bushy on the topside and naked save for jutting spikes on the bottom side. It had a flat and chubby face with massive eyes and a set of majestic antlers sprouting from its head.

The octo-hamster was a funny creature that was clinging to the background of one of the scenes, it’s ten tentacle-like arms ended with tiny little paws. It had one beady little eye atop a small, finch-like beak that was hanging open to let a long tongue curl out. Fern supposed she got the hamster part from the paws and the big round ears protruding off the creature, bigger than the main mass of it’s body.

There was no shortage of odd beasts here. Every one was equally detailed and carefully crafted, like even the ugliest of these beasts had been the artist's magnum opus.

Along with the higher frequency of artworks, the surrounding became far more organized as well. The structures were becoming less scattered and coming together, as though they were pieces in some sort of scene. And the scenes were getting more elaborate as they continued, with bigger and fancier statues, carved walls serving as backdrops, and the patches of sand beneath the scene becoming patterned and manicured like a delicate sand garden.

“…Hey, Clara?”

“Don’t call me Clara. What?”

“Oh, sorry.” Fern pointed to a scene they were passing of a menagerie of strange beasts surrounding one she’d seen often; something that looked like a vaguely humanoid raccoon standing on the hind legs of a goat. “What’s with all these statues?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“…You don’t? Isn’t all of this yours?”

“Well, it is now. But I didn’t make all this. It was already here when I came to live here.”

“Then who did make it?”

“I said I don’t know.” Claralell waved her hand absently towards another one of the raccoon-man statues, “One of them, I’d guess. They’re the only ones that seem to have thumbs or clothes in these statues.”

Fern turned to look at another one or the raccoon-men. This one actually had something kind of clothes on. It was draped in fabrics and holding a jewel encrusted chalice over a snake-parrot that was bowing its head in reverence.

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. By the time I got here, they were all long gone, animals and all. All except…neverminded.”

“They didn’t leave anything behind? Something that talks about what happened to them?”

Claralell huffed, “Oh, they probably did. They left their books and junk all over the place, but that doesn’t help much when you can’t read any of it. It’s all in some weird language that’s nothing like anything on Earth.” She paused at another scene.

This scene depicted that same satyr creature draped in robes standing above a crowd of more statues, like it was talking to them about something. It had one of its paws jutting out towards the sky, pointing upwards. The stone wall behind the scene was a carving of a massive circle, thin lines flaring out from it in every direction, engulfing everything.

Claralell started walking again, “I don’t really care why they left though. As long as they didn’t start dropping of a plague and leaving their bodies all over the place, I’m fine.” She reached back and took hold of Fern’s hand again, “In any case, let’s hurry up! The palace is just up ahead!”

Claralell started to pull Fern along, bringing them up to a light jog. Fern suspected that they weren’t going slow because Claralell was being considerate, but rather because this was as fast as she could run. Fern frowned a little seeing that just a little bit of light running had caused Claralell’s face to start to turn red and her breathing to become labored. Fern decided not to try and race her. She was worried she’d end up having to carry Claralell the rest of the way to this so called palace.

They arrived at the palace before Fern even realized it. The path they were on veered to go around a high ledge, blocking her visibility of the land beyond. But even here the landscape was carefully crafted. It had been carved out into a series of archways and pillars, each archway holding not statues, but mosaics. Despite the fact they must be quite old, each scene was pristine, and almost sterile with how clean they were.

At first they were made out of brightly colored tile, but the further around the ledge they got, the more impressive and detailed the mosaics became. The tiles were replaced with glittering glass, and the glass with gems and crystals, all shimmering in the light as they told more scenes. Each of these exquisite mosaics were framed by more intricate carvings and separated by smooth pillars.

As they rounded the ledge, they were met with a sprawling sand garden that was interrupted by stepping stone paths and little rock pillars. Further down, they found that the path they were on met up with two others to converge into a larger road. The road had tall, ornate lampposts lining the sides every so often, but their light seemed not yet be needed. Every so often there would be a small path leading off the road to an elegantly built gazebo, each one equipped with a telescope for star gazing.

Further they went, until the sand gardens became stone gardens. But not in sense that there were merely some rocks strewn about on the sand, or even in the sense of there being statues like before. This was truly a stone garden.

Every where you turned, the roadside was littered with bushes, vines, trees, flowers, ferns and fronds, even ponds of ice littered with what looked like lily pads. And yet, there wasn’t a single speck of green to be found, for every leaf of every plant was formed solely out of stone. Fern had grown up in a hot and humid climate, the kind that snow is rarely found in. But the stillness, the whiteness of the stone courtyard reminded her of the day just after a sudden blizzard. When all the plants hadn’t had a chance to drop their leaves before being blanketed in ice.

Fern stopped to get a closer look at one of the leaves on a nearby bush. She was a bit surprised to find that they weren’t very detailed. They were very thin and delicate pieces of stone, but they didn’t mimic plants on Earth with veins and pores. She wondered why, considering every statue in the scenes from earlier had been so detailed that they included every whisker on the satyr creatures’ faces.

She knelt down to observe a flower. It was also very pretty and delicate, but not at all like a real flower on Earth. It looked like something imaginary; like someone had tried to come up with a new kind of flower without understanding or taking into account how a plant should look.

“Hey, get up!”

Fern stood, brushing some white dust off her knee, “Sorry. Hey, do you think they made all this by hand? The aliens, I mean.”

Claralell looked around, looking incredulous, “…Well, I guess they’d have had to. Rock doesn’t just turn into a tree on its own. But honestly, I’ll never know how they did all this. What kind of creatures have the time and patience to do this kind of nonsense? Not to mention making an entire garden full of them….” She turned around and started moving again, “I don’t care how much time you have on your hands. Just the though of trying to make something like this bores me to tears.” She glanced over at a bush full of rose-like flowers, “I suppose I should be happy though. They made me a very pretty garden.”

Eventually they moved past the stone garden and to a courtyard covered in marble tiles. There was a magnificent statue in the center, a twenty foot depiction of that same satyr beast in robes carved from a light purple crystal. The courtyard was surrounded to either side by ledges that lead up to walls and, on the far side, a marble staircase that led up to the doors of a castle.

Fern started to tilt her head back, her jaw falling open wider as she looked up at the towering structure. The castle, despite it’s curved elegance, was an intimidating construction. Beyond the doors appeared to be a large domed section that split into three ways. Massive corridors leading off to either side connected to massive wings, curving around them to the end of the courtyard. And behind the dome was a tower that spiraled high into the sky, it’s sharp spike of a head looking as though it meant to pierce the stars, held aloft by buttresses that extended downward like great stone legs. The entirety of the castle was covered in ridges, columns, tall broken arc windows filled with stained glass, and thin spikes. It was like an old church that Fern had seen in books and on postcards, but now she was seeing its majesty in person. It had weight, it had mass, she could reach out and touch it if she wanted, feel the cool marble underneath her fingers.

Fern felt a rush of vertigo as the realization came crashing down on her. This castle was real. Those stone gardens, the statues, they were real. The sheer enormity of what Fern was seeing wasn’t something that she could dream of. The details that riddled every corner of the architecture wasn’t something the human brain was capable of within the slur of half baked insanity of a dream. Or at least hers wasn’t. She had never before had a dream so detailed, so exact, so real. It was impossible.

Fern grasped at her arm and pinched herself, hard. She hissed at the pain as she stared up at the doors to the castle, the vertigo fading into a cauldron of confusion, fear, wonder and excitement. She was awake. Even if she was having a psychotic episode and hallucinating all of this, she was awake.

She jumped as she felt something brush her shoulder, snapping her head around to find Claralell had put her hand on it. The blonde, flesh and blood girl smiled at Fern, “Impressive, right? Welcome to Blue Moon Palace, Fern.”