The light from the end of the shaft was a pale blue, light and delicate. As Fern fell through the shaft, she didn’t have time to look around because she smacked right into a surface, her back hitting hard. She laid there for a moment, stunned. It had hurt, but clearly it wasn’t enough of a fall to kill her. She sucked in breaths, trying to calm her pounding heart while she stared blankly at the dark shaft opening above her. When she had gotten control of her breathing enough, she slowly sat up.

She was on a stone deck of sorts. There were high fences with on all sides around her, made of a silvery metal. The only exit she could see was a flight of stairs going down, surrounded by more of that tall silver railing. She shakily stood up, rubbing her sore back as she crossed over to a fence to peer out.

She was in a massive cave, so big there were some sides she couldn’t see. And the ones she could see were so far away she could only just make out the shapes of them. The cave’s ceiling was pitted with dozens of black shafts like the one she’d fallen through, all of them dropping off onto an observation deck like the one she was standing on. The decks were all very high off the ground, clearly meant to catch anyone who fell through a shaft before they splattered on the ground. And below it all, was a massive city.

Fern could only stare with her jaw agape. The city below was sprawling, a monolithic stone monument to the previous inhabitants, somehow even more impressive than the Blue Moon Palace above. Although all the windows were dark, the entire cavern was illuminated by pale blue crystals that seemed to be artfully imbedded into everything. The lampposts, the buildings themselves, decorations, they were all over the place.

Fern tore her eyes off the city to look behind her. There was a sign bolted to the fencing. She walked over to it, squinting. The writing was all gobbledygook, clearly from the prior residents. Thankfully, it wasn’t all writing. Most of the large paper was what Fern could recognize as a map. For a moment she was relieved, before she got frustrated all over again. This map looked like the kind she’d seen in movies; like a bus or subway route map. Although Fern did live not too far from a large city back on Earth, she had never actually been there. Not to mention that she was certain there were no subways anywhere where she lived. Her dad said if they had subways, there would be regular mass drownings with the amount of rain they got.

So, the colored lines and markings on the map made about as much sense as the writing. Fern sighed and stared hard at the map. She spotted a distinct looking marker, the only one on the map. She surmised that it was probably a ‘you are here’ marker and looked for others. There was a single marker shaped like a blue circle, lining the edge of the map and was quite large. There were other, similar markers, but they were a different color and slightly smaller. Fern hummed and reached up to feel around the edges of the case the map was displayed in. To her luck, there was no barrier or locks preventing her from pulling the map out. She slipped it out and moved back to the bars to try and get her bearings.

Judging by her location, the map’s large blue marking indicated the very large door on the wall that she could see the best. She had to squint, but from what she could see it was a large open arch with stairs leading up. Looking around more carefully, she could see that the other walls had similar arches. However, these arches had stairs that led down to them, and opened to more blue lit parts of the city. From what Fern could tell, the blue marked path leads outside, while the others lead deeper into the city.

She shuddered a bit. As neat as this city was, there was no way she was going to explore it. Lord only knew how deeply into the Moon these caves burrowed, or how labyrinthine the tunnels were. She was lucky she had fallen in the same cavern as an exit. If she had fallen deeper, she may have ended up wandering around down here forever.

She rolled up the map and tucked it under her arm, just in case. Then she turned to the stairs and started down them. She had better head back as soon as she could. Claralell was probably already giving up looking for her.

The stairs spiraled downwards, wide enough so that Fern didn’t feel claustrophobic. However, she hadn’t been going down them for long when suddenly, her steps didn’t fall as heavily as they should. Fern took a sharp breath and froze, not sure what had happened. Then, she took another step. Her leg came up higher than it should have, and came down lightly. Fern bounced in place slightly, finding the same to be true of the rest of her body. She looked through the tall bars towards the exit she was traveling for, catching a glimpse of the barren moonscape beyond, and her confusion cleared. Claralell had said that the castle kept gravity to Earth-like levels. She must’ve been far away enough for whatever barrier for it not to affect her.

She lifted both her legs off the ground, holding onto the fence and finding that she was easily able to hold herself up, almost like she was floating. She pushed forward, easily propelling herself forward. She wasn’t too sure how physics and stuff worked, but she was pretty sure this meant that she’d be able to reach the exit easier than at normal gravity. She didn’t need to use as much energy to move a good distance. Which was really good, because it looked pretty far away.

It didn’t take much time for Fern to bounce down the stairs, ending up on the corner of a street. The street she ended up on was lined with what looked like a shopping district. The buildings were tall boxes, with flat roofs. The fronts were almost entirely glass, the boarders frosted with a delicate pattern. Signs and posters covered in more jibberish were plastered and dangling everywhere. The blue crystals that lit the underground were embedded into everything, even the ground itself. They were arranged with the bricks to make an intricate, luminous pattern.

She looked around, frowning. Now that she was on the ground level, the tall structures around her were obscuring the exit. She was liable to get lost like this. She huffed and looked around for a solution before one struck her. She turned around and when right back up the stairs, bouncing along. When she got to the right height, she gripped the bars of fence and peered through them. Sure enough, she could see the flat roofs of the buildings a little below and away from her.

She started pulling herself up the fence, marveling at how easy it was when she couldn’t even do a pull up on Earth. Thankfully, the top of the fence was capped with a smooth bar, no spikes or barbed wire here. She pulled herself on top and balanced a bit precariously. She looked down at the ground, and then back up towards the shaft she’d come from. The fall that brought her here was at normal gravity, but she hadn’t fallen far enough to get hurt. Surely, she could make this shorter jump with weakened gravity?

At the very least, Fern was fairly confident that she wasn’t high up enough to seriously hurt herself if she missed the roof. She took a deep breath and kicked off the fence as hard as she could. She could feel herself arcing upwards slowly from the force of the kick, going much higher and farther than she would have on Earth. At the top of her arc she started to slowly come back down, the angle a little shorter than she’d like.

She reached out and grabbed the ledge of the building, pulling herself up. The roof was almost totally flat, with some of what looked like vent systems sticking up. She had made the jump fairly easily and, more importantly, she could see the exit again. She stood and started bounding for it, floating over gaps in the buildings and bounding over streets. Several times she fell short of a roof across a wide street and had to grab onto a street lamp or sign and haul herself up. But nonetheless, she was making good time.

She was fairly near the arc when she checked the silver pocket watch. According to the position of the hands, she was over an hour late! She was sure Claralell was worried about her. She shoved the watch back into her pocket and started jogging.

When she finally made it to the stairs, she sighed at just how many there were. The creatures that built this place liked stairs way too much. Thankfully, it wasn’t too much of an issue. She bounded up them, going six at a time, all the way to the top. Fern overshot the last few steps and bounced right out the arc. Which would’ve been fine, had the arc not immediately lead to a steep fall.

Fern shrieked as she scrambled at the nearby wall, trying to stop her fall, but she just slid down the rocky embankment. Thankfully, her fall was broken when she landed on something surprisingly squishy. Squishy and warm.

Opening her eyes, Fern’s first instinct was to look back up where she’d fallen. She was in a deep crater, the sides steep and bowled. It would be difficult to climb out on her own, even with the Moon’s gravity.

Only then did she look down to see what she’d landed on. It was…skin? No, not skin. Scales. She had landed on a massive bed of scales, each individual plate so tiny and smooth, it gave the impression of soft skin. It was a pale pinkish color, and very warm. Fern gulped, the realization that if it was warm, it was probably alive just dawning on her when the heap suddenly moved, nearly throwing her off it. She let out a small shriek before she clamped her mouth shut, hoping that whatever it was hadn’t woken up.

It had. The creature, for it was a creature, started shifting beneath her and she could feel it’s breathing grow quicker as it woke up. She clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming when a long, looming neck was suddenly stretched over her, with bright blue eyes looking drowsy.

It stared at her blankly for a moment, blinking lazily, when the sleep cleared from its eyes. Then it smiled.