RAY NEUTRINO: COSMIC PIZZA HERO Part 4

 

RAY NEUTRINO: COSMIC PIZZA HERO Part 4

The dock was cold beneath her thighs, but Luna didn't move.

She'd been here since three, when the moons were highest and Tiny Koa had rolled onto his back and started snoring like a rusty engine. The water lapped at her ankles, warm where the tide pooled against the pilings, cold where it pulled away. She'd lost feeling in her toes an hour ago. She didn't care.

The space rock sat against her chest, warm and heavy, pulsing with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. Or maybe her heartbeat matched it. She couldn't tell anymore.

Ray's hand.

She kept thinking about Ray's hand.

Not the way it looked—though she'd memorized that too, the calluses she didn't expect, the way his fingers curled around hers like he was holding something precious. No, she kept thinking about the way it felt. The rush. The stars.

He'd taken her hand on the beach yesterday, just for a second, and the world had opened.

She'd felt the cosmos rushing through her like a river she'd always known was there but never been allowed to touch. Stars singing. Galaxies spinning. And underneath it all, a loneliness so vast it made her chest ache—the terrifying aloneness of moving faster than anyone can follow, of being the only one who hears the music, of running so fast that everyone else is just standing still.

She'd gasped. He'd let go. She'd been back on the beach, sand between her toes, the smell of pizza in the air.

But she hadn't been the same.

"You're doing it again," she whispered to herself. "You're thinking about his hand."

Tiny Koa snorted in his sleep. A bubble rose from somewhere beneath him and popped on the surface of the water. Hamlet, curled in a ball beside her, oinked once and went back to dreaming about whatever pigs dreamed about. Mangoes, probably.

Luna pulled her knees to her chest. The space rock pressed warm against her sternum.

She'd been awake all night. Not because she couldn't sleep—she'd been exhausted when she finally crawled into bed, her legs sore from running after Ray, her lungs full of salt air and laughter. But sleep hadn't come. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw stars. Every time she drifted off, she felt the rush.

What are you? she'd asked him.

He'd just smiled.

That smile. That stupid, beautiful smile that didn't know how to be anything but honest. That smile that had seen the birth of galaxies and the death of stars and still lit up like sunrise every time she walked into the room.

She was in trouble.

The sky was turning from black to gray to the soft pink that came before the gold. The moons were setting, their song fading into the morning quiet. Somewhere in town, a rooster crowed. Madame Flamingo would be opening her bar soon.

Luna should go inside. Should sleep. Should stop sitting on this dock like a character in one of her mother's old romance novels, staring at the water and pining.

She didn't move.

The space rock pulsed. Warm. Heavy. Real.

He gave this to me, she thought. He fell out of the sky and the first thing he did was give me a rock.

It didn't mean anything. He didn't know what rocks were. He probably picked it up because it was shiny and he liked the way it felt. It wasn't a gift. It wasn't a declaration. It was just... a rock.

But he'd pressed it into her hands so carefully. So deliberately. Like he knew, somehow, that she needed something to hold onto.

She was still thinking about it when the water moved.

Not the tide. Not a fish. Something else. Something that made the surface of the bay shimmer and shift, like heat rising off asphalt, like the air before a storm.

Luna looked down.

The moonlight was still on the water—pale and silver, even though the moons were almost gone. It lay across the surface like a blanket, soft and shimmering, and in the middle of it, something was forming.

A shape. A figure.

She blinked.

Ray stepped out of the reflection.

Not from the water. From the light on the water. He rose up like he'd been lying just beneath the surface, like the moonlight had been holding him and had decided to let go. His jacket was dry. His sunglasses were clean. His hair floated around his face like he was still underwater, even though he wasn't.

He stepped onto the dock.

Water dripped from nowhere. Light pooled at his feet. He looked at her—really looked, the way he always looked, like she was the only thing in the universe worth seeing—and then he sat down beside her.

His feet went in the water.

He didn't say anything. He never said anything.

But he took her hand.

The rush came again. The stars. The cosmos. The terrifying, beautiful aloneness of moving faster than anyone can follow. But this time, there was something else underneath it. Something warmer. Something that felt like—

Home.

Luna's breath caught.

Ray squeezed her hand. Once. Gentle.

He didn't understand what he was doing. She knew that. He didn't know that holding hands meant something, that staying up all night meant something, that giving someone a rock from space meant something. He was just... being. Being near her. Being with her.

But maybe that was enough.

Maybe that was everything.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. He didn't move. He never moved unless he wanted to, and right now, he wanted to stay still.

They sat there together, feet in the water, as the sun rose over Moony Bay Beach.

Tiny Koa snored on. Hamlet dreamed of mangoes.

And Luna let herself feel it.

The wanting. The waiting. The terrible, wonderful ache of caring about someone who might never understand what caring meant.

•••

Footsteps on the dock.

Heavy. Slow. The kind of footsteps that belonged to a man who'd been awake almost as long as she had, lying in bed with his own thoughts, listening to the moons sing and wondering if his daughter was ever coming inside.

Captain Koa sat down on her other side.

He didn't say anything at first. Just sat there, his massive frame folded onto the weathered wood, his Hawaiian shirt untucked and his hair a mess. He smelled like coffee and coconut rum and the particular sadness of a man who had learned to wake up alone.

Ray looked at him. Nodded once. Went back to watching the sunrise.

The Captain watched Ray for a long moment. Then he looked at Luna—at the space rock around her neck, at the way her hand was still tangled with the boy's, at the dark circles under her eyes that said she hadn't slept.

"You're up early," he said.

"Couldn't sleep."

"Mm." He took a drink from his mug. His hands were shaking. Not from the cold. "I used to find your mother out here. Before dawn. Sitting on this same dock, feet in the water."

Luna's chest tightened.

"She said the water helped her think. Helped her feel... connected. To something bigger." He stared out at the bay, at the light spreading across the surface like honey. "She was always looking for something bigger."

"What happened to her?" The words came out before Luna could stop them. She'd asked before. A hundred times. A thousand. He'd never answered.

The Captain was quiet for a long time.

"The same thing that's going to happen to him," he said finally, nodding at Ray. "She found something she couldn't let go of. Something that didn't belong here. And one day, it took her with it."

Ray's head turned. Slowly. His sunglasses reflected the Captain's face back at him—a big man, a tired man, a man who had loved someone and lost her to the vast and hungry dark.

"She used to talk about the stars like they were calling to her," the Captain continued. "Like she could hear them singing. Like there was something out there that needed her more than we did." His voice cracked. "More than I did. More than you did."

Luna felt tears burning behind her eyes. She didn't wipe them away.

"I see the way you look at him," her father said. "The same way she used to look at the sky. Like he's the answer to a question you've been asking your whole life."

"Dad—"

"I'm not telling you to stop." He set down his mug. His big hand covered hers—the one that wasn't holding Ray's—and squeezed. Gentle. The way he used to squeeze when she was little and scared of the dark. "I'm telling you to be careful. Because whatever he is, wherever he came from... it's not here. And people who fall in love with things that don't belong here..." He looked at the horizon. At the place where the sun was climbing over the edge of the world. "They have a way of disappearing."

Luna was crying now. Quietly. The way she'd learned to cry when she was twelve and her mother didn't come home.

Ray let go of her hand.

For a moment, she thought he was leaving. Thought he'd heard enough, understood enough, decided to phase away into the morning light and never come back.

But he didn't leave.

He reached up. Slow. Careful. And took off his sunglasses.

His eyes were the color of the space between stars. Deep. Ancient. Full of light that had been traveling for millions of years just to reach her. He looked at the Captain—not challenging, not defensive. Just... present. Here. Solid in a way that had nothing to do with physics.

Then he looked at Luna.

And he smiled.

Not the big grin he gave mangoes and seagulls and successful pizza deliveries. Something smaller. Something softer. Something that looked like it hurt a little, like he was learning a new expression and wasn't sure he was doing it right.

He put his sunglasses back on.

Then he took her hand again.

The Captain watched all of this. His jaw worked. His eyes were wet. He picked up his mug and took a long drink, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough.

"He doesn't talk much, does he?"

Luna shook her head.

"Your mother would've liked that." A sad smile tugged at his mouth. "She always said I talked too much. Said the quiet ones were the ones you had to watch out for. The ones who felt things too big for words."

He stood up. His knees cracked. He was getting old—older than he should be, worn down by grief and rum and the weight of running a business that was failing and a household that was half-empty.

"Just... promise me something," he said.

Luna looked up at him.

"Don't disappear. Whatever happens with this boy—don't you disappear on me too."

She wanted to promise. She opened her mouth to promise.

But the words wouldn't come.

Because somewhere deep in her chest, in the place where the space rock pulsed against her heart, she already knew: this wasn't a promise she could keep.

The Captain nodded. Like he understood. Like he'd known all along.

He walked back up the dock toward the house, his shadow long in the morning light. At the door, he paused. Looked back at his daughter—barefoot on the dock, holding hands with a boy who had stepped out of moonlight, wearing a rock from space around her neck.

"Be careful," he said again.

Then he went inside.

•••

The sun was fully up now. The bay was gold and blue and green, the way it always was, the way it would be long after they were all gone. Seagulls cried overhead. Somewhere, Professor Chitter was already making dough, his old monkey hands kneading something that tasted like starlight.

Ray squeezed her hand.

Luna squeezed back.

She didn't know what was coming. She didn't know about the Galaxions, or the game, or the asteroid that was already turning toward them in the deep dark. She didn't know that the volcano was waking up, or that the moons were singing a warning no one had bothered to translate.

She just knew that a boy had fallen out of the sky, and she was falling too.

•••

The Festival of Moons transformed Moony Bay Beach overnight.

Luna woke to streamers—thousands of them, strung between every building, every palm tree, every available surface. They caught the morning light and threw it back in ribbons of silver and gold and the deep purple of the space between stars. Banners hung from the tiki bar, from the Cosmic Crust, from the Glimmer Grannies' porch. Seven languages, Professor Chitter had told her once. Nobody on the island spoke all seven. Nobody needed to. The message was the same in every tongue:

Dance. Eat. Be together.

The two moons hung low in the sky, fuller than Luna had ever seen them, their song rising and falling like a heartbeat. Even Hamlet seemed to feel it—he'd been pacing the porch since dawn, oinking at intervals, his existential dread temporarily replaced by something that looked suspiciously like excitement.

"It's the shells," Luna explained, pulling Ray through the crowded streets. "Every year, at the Festival of Moons, there's a competition. The Festival Seashell Selection. Whoever finds the most beautiful shell—the one that captures the spirit of the festival—gets crowned king and queen."

Ray tilted his head. He was wearing a lei. Someone had put it on him—Luna hadn't seen who, but the Glimmer Grannies had been nearby, knitting at a speed that suggested they'd been preparing for this moment for weeks. The flowers were yellow and pink, and they made him look like a very confused god of spring.

"King and queen," Luna continued, "they lead the dance. They cut the cake. They stand on the big float and wave at everyone. It's supposed to be about love, but really it's about who finds the prettiest shell."

She pulled him past Madame Flamingo's bar, where a sign announced "FESTIVAL SPECIALS: 2 FOR 1 COCONUTS (WHILE SUPPLIES LAST)." Past the Coconut Crabs, who had arranged their shells into a massive spiral that spelled out "THE SHELL IS A LIE" in what might have been ancient runes or might have been a typo. Past the Sunburn Syndicate, who had finally turned around—just for the festival—and were staring at the ocean with expressions of profound confusion.

"The competition starts at noon," Luna said. "Everyone brings their best shell. The mayor judges. Well, Mayor Clawdius judges, which means he picks the shiniest one and calls it a day. But it's tradition."

Ray was looking at the banner again. His lips moved silently, tracing the seven languages. Luna wondered how many he understood. She wondered if he understood any of them, or if he was just enjoying the shapes.

"Are you listening?" she asked.

He looked at her. Smiled. Tilted his head.

"You're not listening."

He tilted his head the other way.

She sighed. But she was smiling. She was always smiling around him. "Fine. We have three hours. Let's find shells."

•••

The tide pools were crowded.

Every family on the island had descended on them—parents with buckets, children with nets, teenagers pretending they weren't looking for shells while definitely looking for shells. The Singing Stones hummed their geothermal song, and the tourists who'd gathered around them looked appropriately mystical, and the locals who knew better just smiled and kept wading.

Luna had a system.

"Don't just pick the first shell you see," she told Ray, who was crouched at the edge of a pool, staring at a hermit crab like it had personally offended him. "You have to look for—"

Ray reached into the water.

His hand came up holding a shell. Not just any shell. It was the color of the two moons together—pale silver shot through with red, like the bigger moon had kissed the smaller one and left a mark. It spiraled in a way that seemed to pull the light toward its center. It hummed. Not loudly, but definitely. Luna could feel it in her teeth.

"Where did you—"

Ray handed it to her.

She held it. It was warm. Warmer than the water, warmer than the sun. The hum traveled up her arm and settled in her chest, and for a moment she understood something she couldn't put into words—something about depth and time and the way light moved when no one was watching.

Then the moment passed.

"Ray, this is—this is a winning shell. This is the kind of shell people fight over. This is—"

He was already walking away, toward the next tide pool.

She followed him, the shell warm in her hands, and tried not to think about what it meant that he'd found it in two seconds.

•••

The shell rested in Luna's palm like a secret she wasn't ready to tell.

She'd found it that morning—buried beneath the seaweed where the tide had left it, its spiral pulled tight as a held breath, its color the deep purple of the space between the two moons when they overlapped at dawn. It was the kind of shell that won festivals. The kind that made mayors forget about fishing licenses and liability shells and just stare.

"You’re queen," Ray said.

Luna nearly dropped the shell.

She turned. Ray was standing behind her—when had he gotten there? He was wearing his festival lei, the yellow and pink flowers already wilting in the afternoon heat, and he was looking at the shell like it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"You spoke," she said.

He tilted his head.

"You said 'queen.' That's—that's a word. You said a word."

Ray considered this. His mouth moved silently, testing the shape of it. "Queen," he said again. Then: "Ray." Then: "Luna."

Her name. He'd said her name.

The shell slipped from her fingers. Ray caught it—of course he caught it, he caught everything—and pressed it back into her hands with that careful, deliberate gentleness that made her chest ache.

"You're learning to talk," she said.

He smiled. "Talking."

It wasn't a word. It was an echo. But it was his echo, and Luna felt something crack open inside her—something she'd been trying to keep closed since the beach, since the dock, since the moment she'd looked up and seen a boy falling from the sky.

"Ray," she said. "I need to tell you something."

He waited.

"I like you. I mean—I like you. Like, I think about you when you're not there. I stay up at night thinking about your hand. Your stupid hand. And the way you look at mangoes. And the way you sat with that fisherman yesterday, the one whose wife died, and you didn't say anything but you stayed, and that's—" She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. "That's not nothing. That's everything."

Ray's head was very still.

"And I know you don't understand. I know you're from space or wherever and you don't know what any of this means. But I needed to say it because Chad asked me to the festival and I said no and he called me a weird beach girl with a weird pet pig and I almost cried, Ray. I almost cried in front of him. And then I thought about you. And I didn't cry anymore."

She stopped. She was out of breath. Her face was hot. The shell was warm against her palms.

Ray reached out and touched her cheek.

His hand was warm. It was always warm.

"Luna," he said. Then: "Pretty."

She blinked. "Pretty? Did you just—did you just call me pretty?"

He tilted his head. "Luna pretty. Shell pretty. Ray..." He paused, searching for the word. "Ray... happy."

Happy.

He'd learned that word. Probably from Professor Chitter, or from the tourists who said it when their pizza arrived, or from Sal when he was drunk and remembering better days. But he was using it now. For her.

"Ray," she whispered.

He smiled. That smile. The one that made her forget to breathe.

Behind them, someone cleared their throat.

Chad.

He was standing at the edge of the tide pools, flanked by his raptor friends, his chest doing that involuntary flexing thing that was supposed to be intimidating. His hair was freshly gelled. His tank top was very tight. He looked like a man who had spent the morning practicing his mean face in the mirror.

"Well, well," he said. "The weird beach girl and her mute boyfriend."

Ray tilted his head. He didn't understand the word mute. He didn't understand the word boyfriend. He just saw a large person standing between him and the pizza shop, and that was inconvenient.

"Chad," Luna said. "Go away."

"I'm just saying what everyone's thinking. He doesn't talk. He doesn't have papers. He fell out of the sky, probably illegal, and you're walking around with him like he's—"

"Chad."

"—like he's actually somebody. But he's nobody. He's a delivery boy. He delivers pizza. That's not a life, Luna. That's not—"

Ray moved.

Not fast. Not phased. Just stepped. He stepped between Chad and Luna, close enough that Chad had to look down to see him. He wasn't aggressive. He wasn't defensive. He was just... there.

"Ray," Luna said. "Don't."

Chad laughed. It was a mean laugh, the kind that came from a place of smallness and insecurity and too many protein shakes. "What's he going to do? Not talk at me? I'm terrified."

Ray looked at Chad. Really looked. The way he looked at the moons when they sang. The way he looked at the volcano when it smoked.

Then he reached up and took off his sunglasses.

Chad's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Ray's eyes were the color of the space between stars—deep and ancient and full of light that had been traveling for millions of years just to reach this moment. They weren't angry. They weren't threatening. They were just... old. Older than Chad. Older than the island. Older than the concept of protein shakes.

Ray put his sunglasses back on.

He stepped aside.

Chad was still standing there, his mouth still open, his brain apparently trying to process something it wasn't equipped to handle. His friends were shifting uncomfortably behind him, looking at the sky, looking at the sand, looking anywhere but at the boy who had just shown them something they couldn't explain.

"You should go," Luna said.

The bodybuilders emerged from the surf like nightmares sculpted from wet sand and bad decisions.

There were seven of them. Seven reptilian towers of muscle and malice, their scales glistening with seawater, their sunglasses reflecting the horrified faces of tourists who had just realized their vacation was about to take a very sharp turn. Each one carried a weight bar across his shoulders—thick steel rods loaded with hundred-pound dumbbells on either end, the kind of weights that normal humans needed spotter's for but these creatures swung like toothpicks.

Chad pointed at Ray.

"You," he hissed.

Ray, who had been mid-bite into a mango, paused. He looked at the reptile. He looked at his mango. He looked back at the reptile.

He took another bite.

Chad’s jaw tightened. "You think this is funny, pizza boy? You think you can deliver to our beach? Our territory? We own this stretch of sand. Every grain. Every wave. Every—"

Ray swallowed. "Mango good."

The reptile's eye twitched.

"Kill him," he said.

The first weight bar came flying—spinning end over end, the hundred-pound dumbbells whistling through the air like angry moons. It hit Ray square in the chest.

And bounced off.

Ray didn't move. Didn't flinch. The weight clattered to the sand, and Ray looked down at it with mild curiosity, as if a butterfly had landed on him and flown away.

The reptiles exchanged glances.

"Again," Chad snarled.

The second bar flew. Then the third. Then the fourth and fifth together, a double helix of iron and rage. They struck Ray—his shoulder, his hip, his forehead—and each one rebounded like it had hit a wall made of something harder than steel.

Ray finished his mango.

"Okay," he said.

Then he moved.

Not fast—not the way he usually moved, the blur of denim and starlight that left afterimages burned into retinas. This was something else. Something deliberate. He ran at the bodybuilding reptiles, and before they could react, he was on them—his feet finding purchase on their shoulders, their heads, their outstretched arms. He ran across them like a stone skipping across water, and they staggered, grabbed at him, grabbed at each other, their weight bars tangling, their bodies colliding.

Ray reached the end of the line and turned.

The reptiles were in a heap now—a confused, angry pile of scales and metal and very poor life choices. Ray looked at them. He looked at the sand beneath them.

He crouched.

And he folded space.

It looked like he was grabbing a carpet—a carpet made of reality itself. His fingers found the edge of the beach where the reptiles lay, and he pulled. The sand rippled. The air shimmered. The reptiles yelped as the ground beneath them lifted, curled, folded over them like a blanket tucking in a very large, very angry child.

Ray straightened.

He held the folded space in his hands for a moment—a neat square of beach containing seven reptilian bodybuilders, their weight bars, and their dignity—and then he threw it.

The folded square sailed into the sky, spinning end over end, shrinking as it went. The reptiles' screams faded to a distant chorus, then to nothing.

Ray watched them go.

•••

Ray found Luna an hour later, sitting on the dock with her feet in the water, the purple shell still in her hands. Hamlet was beside her, oinking philosophically. Tiny Koa was snoring in the shallows.

She looked up when Ray sat down beside her.

"You didn't have to do that," she said. "The sunglasses thing. You didn't have to show him."

Ray shrugged. He didn't know why he'd done it. He'd just... wanted to.

"He's going to be at the festival," Luna said. "He's a finalist. For king. The shells he found are actually good—his family paid someone to find them, but they're good. And you're a finalist too, because of the shell you found in the tide pool. The silver one."

Ray tilted his head.

"So it's you versus Chad. For king of the festival." Luna laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. "The boy who fell from the sky versus the boy who kicks pigs. And everyone's going to be watching."

Ray looked at the volcano. It wasn't smoking today. But he could feel it—that deep pulse, that waiting. The same waiting he'd felt in his chest since he'd landed in the mud.

He took Luna's hand.

"Ray king," he said.

She stared at him.

"Chad..." He searched for the word. Couldn't find it. Settled for a shrug.

"You're going to beat him."

Ray nodded. Not because he cared about being king. Because Chad had made Luna sad, and Ray didn't like it when Luna was sad.

"Ray king," he said again.

Luna squeezed his hand.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go win a festival."

•••

Grumbles the Sand Pig won the pie-eating contest by not chewing.

It was, Luna reflected, the most Grumbles thing that could possibly happen. The competition had been fierce—three tourists, two locals, and a very determined seagull who'd had to be disqualified for using his beak as a weapon. But Grumbles had simply opened his mouth and let the pies fall in. No chewing. No swallowing, even. Just... absorption.

The crowd went wild.

Ray watched from the back of the crowd, his lei slightly askew, his expression one of pure, uncomplicated delight. He'd never seen a festival before. Luna had realized this halfway through the morning, when he'd stopped dead in the middle of the street to watch a child eat cotton candy. He'd watched for seven minutes. The child had started crying.

"You okay?" Luna asked, coming up beside him with two cups of something pink and fizzy.

Ray pointed at Grumbles, who was now being carried around the crowd on the shoulders of three very drunk fishermen. The sand pig looked neither pleased nor displeased. He looked like a pig who had eaten fifteen pies and was prepared to eat fifteen more.

"The pie-eating contest is every year," Luna said. "He wins every year. No one knows how. No one asks."

Ray accepted the pink drink. He sniffed it. He tilted it. He watched the bubbles rise.

"Just drink it," Luna said.

He drank it. His eyes went wide behind his sunglasses. He looked at the cup. He looked at Luna. He looked at the cup again.

"Yeah," she said. "It's good."

He finished it in one long gulp, then held the cup out for more.

She laughed. "We're going to need a budget just for your festival drinks."

•••

The toddlers found him at the sandcastle competition.

Luna wasn't sure how it happened. One moment Ray was standing at the edge of the competition area, watching a family from the Spiral Arm attempt to build a replica of their home planet. The next, he was surrounded.

Three of them. Maybe four. It was hard to tell—they moved in a pack, like tiny, determined sheep. They grabbed his legs. They pulled on his jacket. One of them, a girl with pigtails and a missing front tooth, climbed him like he was a tree and sat on his shoulders.

Ray didn't move.

He looked down at the toddlers. The toddlers looked up at him. There was a moment of mutual assessment—the kind that happens when two completely different species encounter each other and have to decide whether to fight or be friends.

One of the toddlers handed him a shell.

Ray took it. It was cracked and ordinary and had probably come from someone's sand bucket rather than the actual beach. He held it like it was the most precious thing in the universe.

The toddler beamed.

The others, seeing this, began offering him things. A handful of sand. A half-eaten cracker. A very important rock that had been carried all the way from the parking lot. Ray accepted each gift with the same gravity, the same careful attention, the same sense that this was the most important moment of his life.

Luna watched from the sidelines.

"He's good with them," said a voice beside her.

She turned. One of the suntan girls—the ones who'd been at the beach all week, the ones who'd looked at Luna's bare feet and sun-bleached hair and decided she wasn't worth talking to—was standing there, watching Ray with an expression Luna didn't like.

"He's fine," Luna said.

"I'm Tiffany," the girl said. She flicked her hair. It was very shiny. "Is he your boyfriend?"

Luna's face heated. "He's—no. He's just—he's a delivery boy. He works at the pizza shop."

Tiffany's smile sharpened. "So you're not together."

"No."

"Good." Tiffany smoothed her sundress. It was very white. Very clean. Very much not beach-appropriate. "Because I was thinking I might ask him to the festival dance. He's cute. In a weird, silent way."

Luna's stomach did something unpleasant.

"He doesn't dance," she said.

"Everyone dances."

"He doesn't talk."

"Even better." Tiffany was already walking toward him, her friends giggling behind her. "Quiet guys are mysterious."

Luna watched her go. Watched her approach Ray with the confidence of someone who had never been rejected in her life. Watched her touch his arm and lean in close and say something Luna couldn't hear.

Ray looked at her.

Then he looked at Luna.

Then he phased.

Not dramatically. Not even intentionally, Luna suspected. He just... flickered. One moment he was solid, standing there with a toddler on his shoulders and three more attached to his legs. The next, he was slightly less solid—a blur of light and motion that Tiffany's hand passed through like it wasn't there.

Tiffany stumbled.

Her foot caught on a sandcastle. Her arms windmilled. Her very white, very clean sundress met the remains of the Spiral Arm family's replica home planet, which had been built largely of wet sand and seashells and was now mostly wet sand.

She went down hard.

The toddlers, who had been clinging to Ray when he phased, were now sitting on the sand in a confused pile. They weren't hurt—Ray had somehow managed to lower them gently, even while flickering—but they were bewildered, and bewildered toddlers are loud toddlers.

The crying started.

The parents rushed over. Tiffany's friends rushed over. The Spiral Arm family stared at the ruins of their sandcastle with expressions of profound cosmic horror.

And Ray stood in the middle of it all, solid again, his lei still perfect, his sunglasses still clean, looking like he had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

Luna grabbed his arm.

"Run," she said.

They ran.

•••

Mayor Clawdius announced the winners at sunset.

The crowd had gathered in the main square, where a stage had been built from driftwood and old fishing nets. Lanterns hung from everything. The seven-language banner flapped in the evening breeze. Madame Flamingo had set up a bar in the corner, and the Glimmer Grannies were selling knitted festival hats that nobody had asked for but everyone was buying.

"The Festival Seashell Selection," Mayor Clawdius clicked, his tiny top hat perched at a jaunty angle, "has been decided. The judges—that is, me—have reviewed all submissions—that is, I looked at them—and reached a unanimous decision—that is, my decision."

The crowd waited.

"The king of the festival—the one who found the most beautiful shell, the one who captured the spirit of the moons, the one who shall lead the dance and cut the cake and wave at everyone—is..."

He paused for effect. A hermit crab never passed up an opportunity for drama.

"RAY!"

The crowd cheered. Ray, who had been standing at the back eating a mango, looked up with the expression of someone who had just been addressed in a language he didn't speak.

Luna pushed him forward. "Go. That's you. You won."

He walked to the stage. Slowly. The way he always walked when he was trying not to be fast. The crowd parted for him like water around a stone.

Mayor Clawdius placed a crown on his head. It was made of shells—the ones the crabs had been arranging on the beach, Luna realized. The spiral pattern. The impossible colors. The crabs themselves had gathered at the base of the stage, watching with their tiny eyes, their claws clicking in what might have been applause.

Ray touched the crown. He looked at the shells. He looked at the crabs.

One of them—the hermit crab who had given Luna the pink shell on the beach, the one who had started all of this—scuttled forward and clicked its claws three times.

Ray nodded. Like he understood.

"And the queen!" Mayor Clawdius continued. "The one who found the shell that complements the king's, the one whose beauty matches his, the one who shall stand beside him and wave—"

He unrolled a scroll. His antennae twitched.

"LUNA!"

Luna's heart stopped.

She hadn't entered. She hadn't found a shell. She hadn't—

But Ray was holding something out to her. The shell. The silver-and-red spiral. The one he'd found in the tide pool that morning.

He pressed it into her hands.

The crowd cheered.

Mayor Clawdius placed a crown on her head—smaller than Ray's, made of the same impossible shells, humming with the same low song. The crabs clicked their approval. The moons overhead seemed to burn brighter.

Luna looked at Ray.

He was smiling. That smile. The one that made her forget to breathe.

"Did you do this?" she whispered.

He tilted his head.

"The crabs. The shell. Did you—"

He reached out and took her hand.

The crowd cheered again. Someone started playing music—a fiddle, a drum, something that sounded like the waves and the wind and the two moons singing. The dance was starting.

Ray didn't know how to dance. Luna knew this. He didn't know what dancing was, didn't know the steps, didn't understand why people moved in time to music when they could just stand still and listen.

But he took her hand, and he led her to the center of the square, and he put his other hand on her waist like he'd been doing it his whole life.

"Ray," she said. "I don't—we don't have to—"

He started moving.

Not fast. Not the way he ran. Slowly. Gently. In time with the music, in time with the moons, in time with something deeper than either of them understood. He moved like light on water, like wind through leaves, like he'd been waiting his whole existence for this moment and finally, finally, it had arrived.

Luna stopped worrying.

She let him lead. She let him hold her. She let herself feel the warmth of his hand on her waist, the strength of his fingers intertwined with hers, the impossible reality of dancing with a boy who had fallen from the sky.

The crowd watched. The moons sang. The crabs clicked in time with the music.

And somewhere, in a dimension beyond dimensions, a Galaxion leaned closer to the board and smiled.

•••

The dock was cold, but Luna didn't notice.

She'd been sitting there for three hours, ever since Ray's last delivery, her feet dangling in water that had gone from warm to cool to the temperature of forgetting. Tiny Koa snored beside her, a mountain of blubber and contentment, occasionally farting bubbles that rose to the surface and popped with small, wet sounds.

Hamlet was curled in her lap, oinking softly in his sleep, dreaming whatever pigs dreamed about. Mangoes, probably. Or the existential void. With Hamlet, it was hard to tell.

Luna traced the edge of the space rock around her neck—the one Ray had given her, the one that was still warm, still pulsing, still making her heart do things she didn't have words for.

She missed him.

He'd been gone for three hours. Three hours since he'd delivered her pizza—the one she'd ordered, the one she'd eaten alone on the dock, the one that had tasted like cardboard because he wasn't there to share it with.

Three hours.

She was losing her mind.

"This is ridiculous," she told Hamlet. "I am being ridiculous. He's a delivery boy. He delivers pizza. That's his job. I can't just sit here missing him every time he leaves."

Hamlet oinked. This one meant: And yet, here you are.

Luna sighed.

She'd been ordering pizza all week. At first it had been normal—one pizza, once a day, the way normal people ordered pizza. But then Ray had smiled at her when he delivered it, that stupid beautiful smile that made her forget how to breathe, and she'd ordered another one.

Just to see him again.

Just to see that smile again.

Now she was ordering three, four, five pizzas a day. Different addresses. Different times. She'd invented a grandmother who lived on the north beach, a cousin who was visiting from out of town, a book club that met in increasingly unlikely locations.

She was running across the island to meet him.

Every time.

She'd run through the market, past the Glimmer Grannies (who had started taking notes), past Madame Flamingo's bar (where the tall pink bird had started offering her water), past the Coconut Crabs (who had started placing bets on how many pizzas she could order before someone stopped her).

She'd run until her legs burned and her lungs screamed and she was standing in front of Ray, out of breath, pretending she just happened to be there.

And he'd smile.

And she'd forget why she was pretending.

•••

Professor Chitter had been amused at first.

"A girl in love," he'd said to Mabel, who had turned a knowing pink. "It is the oldest story. Older than pizza. Older than the universe itself."

He'd watched through the kitchen window as Luna ran past for the third time that day, her hair streaming behind her, her face flushed, her eyes fixed on something only she could see.

"Youth," he'd said, shaking his head. "It is wasted on the young."

But then the orders kept coming.

And coming.

And coming.

The tenth pizza was delivered to the old lighthouse. The eleventh to a fishing boat that had already left the harbor. The twelfth to a sandbar that only existed at low tide, where Luna had stood ankle-deep in water, pretending to be surprised when Ray arrived.

"Lovely girl," Chitter had muttered, watching through his spyglass. "Completely unhinged. Lovely, but unhinged."

By the twentieth pizza, Mabel had turned purple.

Not her usual pink. Not the soft lavender of mild annoyance. A deep, furious purple that pulsed across her tentacles like a storm warning. She was slamming pots. She was throwing dough. She was communicating entirely through aggressive color changes and the occasional splat of sauce against the wall.

Sal, perched on the counter, watched her with the expression of someone who had seen this before and knew better than to get involved.

"She's going to kill someone," he said.

Mabel turned a shade of purple that had no name.

"Not me," Sal added quickly. "Not me. Someone else. A tourist, maybe. That would be fine. Tourists are replaceable."

Mabel threw a rolling pin at his head. He ducked. The rolling pin embedded itself in the wall, exactly where his head had been.

"See?" Sal said. "This is what I'm talking about."

•••

The Glimmer Grannies had the best view.

Their porch faced the beach, the dock, and the spot where Luna had been meeting Ray for the past week. They'd watched the whole thing—the first pizza, the tenth, the thirtieth—with the kind of attention that only came from having nothing better to do and everything to gain from other people's romantic disasters.

"She's got it bad," said Pearl.

"—worse than her mother," agreed Opal.

"—much worse," finished Ruby. "Her mother at least had the sense to be subtle about it. This one's ordering thirty pizzas in a single day."

They clicked their knitting needles in unison.

"The boy doesn't notice," Pearl said.

"—doesn't notice anything," Opal said.

"—doesn't even know what's happening," Ruby said. "Poor thing. Both of them. Poor, poor things."

They knitted in silence for a moment.

"Should we say something?" Pearl asked.

"—to who?" Opal asked.

"—to either of them?" Ruby asked.

Another silence.

"No," they said together.

They kept knitting.

•••

Madame Flamingo watched from her bar.

She'd seen Luna run past thirty-seven times in the past week—she'd counted, because counting was the only thing keeping her from going down to the beach and shaking some sense into the girl. Thirty-seven times, each time more desperate than the last, each time with that look on her face that said I'm fine, everything's fine, I'm just running across the island for the fifteenth time today to meet a boy who doesn't talk.

"Le denial," Madame Flamingo said, polishing a glass. "It is not just a river in Egypt."

The Coconut Crabs, who had set up a betting pool on the porch, nodded sagely.

"Thirty-two to one," said Clawd, "that she breaks before he does."

"Fifty to one," said Pinch, "that he never breaks because he doesn't know what breaking is."

Madame Flamingo set down the glass. "I'll take those odds."

She put a bottle cap on the table.

The game was on.

•••

Hamlet the pig had opinions.

He was lying on the beach, pretending to be a rock, watching Luna stare at the spot where Ray had vanished for the thirtieth time. He'd seen this before—not with Luna, but with other humans, on other beaches, in other lifetimes he might have lived if he'd been paying attention.

Humans fell in love.

It was what they did. They fell in love with each other, with animals, with rocks (Doug was proof of that), with places and things and ideas that couldn't love them back. They fell in love like it was the only thing keeping them from falling apart.

Hamlet didn't understand it.

But he understood Luna.

He'd been with her since she was small, since her mother had disappeared and her father had started drinking and the world had become a smaller, sadder place. He'd watched her grow up, watched her laugh and cry and pretend to be fine when she wasn't. He'd eaten through a door when she left him alone, not because he was hungry, but because he didn't want to be left.

He understood her.

And he understood that this boy—this silent, smiling, impossible boy—was the first thing that had made her eyes light up in years.

Hamlet oinked.

It meant: Be careful. But also... be happy.

Luna didn't hear him.

She was too busy staring at the sky.

•••

The pizza shop exploded ten minutes later.

Not literally. But close.

Professor Chitter stormed out of the kitchen, his apron covered in flour, his spectacles askew, his left eye glowing that faint, furious blue that only appeared when he was truly, deeply upset.

"Moooore pizzas?!"

His voice cracked the air. A seagull that had been perched on the roof took off in alarm. The Coconut Crabs, who had gathered to watch the drama, scuttled backward in unison.

Chitter stood in the middle of the shop, his small monkey body trembling with rage, his beard bristling.

"Thirty pizzas! Thirty! In one day! We have gone through more cheese than the entire island consumes in a month! Mabel has turned a color I did not know octopuses could turn! Sal has started drinking before noon! And for what? For what?!"

He threw his hands in the air.

"For a girl! A girl who cannot simply walk up to a boy and say, 'Hello, I like you, would you like to share a mango?' No! Instead she orders pizza! Pizza after pizza after pizza! As if the solution to every problem is more dough! More sauce! More mozzarella!"

He was pacing now, his small feet slapping against the floor.

"I have studied the fundamental forces of the universe! I have charted the movements of stars that no longer exist! I have seen civilizations rise and fall, galaxies spin and die, the great cosmic dance of matter and energy that has been playing for fourteen billion years! And now—NOW—I am being asked to make a thirty-first pizza because a teenage girl cannot process her emotions!"

He stopped.

He looked at the ceiling.

He took a deep breath.

"I am too old for this," he said quietly. "I am far too old for this."

Mabel, still purple, patted his shoulder with a tentacle. It was meant to be comforting. It came across as threatening.

Sal cleared his throat. "So... no more pizzas?"

Chitter's eye glowed.

"No more pizzas," he said. "Not for Luna. Not for her invented grandmother. Not for the sea turtles or the hermit crab convention or whatever other fictional entity she conjures to get that boy to show up at her door."

He pointed a gnarled finger at the door.

"If she wants to see him, she can come here. Like a normal person. And eat her pizza. In the shop. With the rest of us."

Sal nodded slowly. "And if she doesn't?"

Chitter's hand dropped.

"Then she doesn't," he said. And something in his voice changed—the anger fading into something softer, something sadder.

He walked to the window and looked out at the beach. Luna was still there, sitting on the sand, the pizza box open beside her. She wasn't eating. She was just sitting, staring at the spot where Ray had vanished.

"She doesn't understand," Chitter said quietly. "None of them understand. He's not like us. He's not even like anything I've ever seen. He's a neutrino given form—a ghost particle wearing a denim jacket. He moves through the world without touching it, without being touched. And she's falling for him."

He paused.

"Hard."

Mabel's color shifted—from purple to a softer, sadder blue.

"I've seen this before," Chitter continued. "Not often. But enough. A mortal falls in love with something that doesn't know what love is. Something that can't love back. Not because it's cruel, but because it's... different. The capacity isn't there. It's like asking a star to hold your hand. It can't. It burns."

He turned from the window.

"She's going to get hurt," he said. "And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

•••

The thirtieth pizza was the breaking point.

Luna had run out of addresses. She'd invented a family of sea turtles, a floating market that only appeared during the full moon, a hermit crab convention that Mayor Clawdius was definitely hosting (he wasn't). She'd delivered pizzas to the volcano's base, to the tide pools, to the exact spot where she'd first met Ray.

 Luna sat on the beach and tried to figure out when she'd lost control of her life.

Thirty pizzas.

She'd ordered thirty pizzas.

In one day.

She buried her face in her hands.

"I have a problem," she said.

Hamlet, who had followed her to the beach, oinked in agreement.

"A serious problem. The kind of problem that requires intervention. Maybe a support group. 'Hello, my name is Luna, and I'm addicted to ordering pizza from a boy who doesn't talk.'"

Hamlet oinked again. This one meant: At least you're admitting it. That's the first step.

"The first step to what? Complete humiliation? Because I think I passed that around pizza number twelve."

She lay back in the sand and stared at the sky. The two moons were visible now, hanging low and full, singing their endless song. She'd been hearing that song her whole life. She'd never really listened.

Now she couldn't stop.

It sounded like him.

That was the problem. Everything sounded like him. The waves. The wind. The hum of the volcano that everyone pretended not to notice. It all resolved into the same frequency, the same pulse, the same presence that had been living in her chest since the moment he'd fallen out of the sky.

"You're in trouble," she told herself.

The moons sang on.

"You're in so much trouble."

Ray appeared, and so did a dog.

It was a big dog—not the kind of big that meant "large breed" but the kind of big that meant "something went wrong in the genetics." Its fur was patchy and gray. Its eyes were yellow. Its mouth was open, and its teeth were very, very white.

It was running straight at them.

Luna's brain had time to think: That's not a beach dog. That's not anyone's dog. That's a nightmare.

Then Ray moved.

He didn't run away. He ran along the beach, toward the water, and the dog ran after him. They moved together—the boy in blue, the gray blur of teeth and hunger—cutting across the sand like a knife through something soft.

"Ray!" Luna screamed.

He didn't look back. He was laughing. That shriek of joy that meant he was having fun, that meant he didn't understand that the thing chasing him wanted to bite him, that meant he was in danger and had no idea.

The dog lunged.

Ray phased. The dog's jaws closed on empty air, and it tumbled forward, rolling in the sand, coming up snarling. Ray was twenty feet away, still laughing, still running.

Luna ran after them. Her feet pounded the sand. Her lungs burned. She was not fast—she was never fast—but she ran anyway, because the alternative was standing still and watching something terrible happen.

The dog caught up to Ray at the water's edge. It was faster than it looked, faster than any dog should be, its legs pumping, its mouth foaming. It leaped—

And Ray ran onto the water.

He didn't phase. He didn't fly. He ran, feet slapping the surface of the bay, sending up sprays of silver in the moonlight. The dog landed where he'd been and skidded, confused, its claws digging into the wet sand.

Then it saw him on the water.

And it followed.

Luna stopped running. She stood at the edge of the bay, chest heaving, and watched as a boy who had fallen from the sky ran across the water with a vicious dog chasing him. The dog was swimming now—no, not swimming, running, its paws somehow finding purchase on the surface the way Ray's did, as if the water had decided to become solid just for them.

"Ray!" she screamed again.

He looked back. He was still laughing. He didn't understand.

A wave was forming. Not a big wave—not the kind surfers waited for—but a wave nonetheless, rolling across the bay from somewhere Luna couldn't see. It caught Ray from behind and lifted him, and for a moment he was surfing, his arms spread wide, his jacket flapping in the wind of his own motion.

The dog surfed too. It was on the same wave, riding the same curl, its yellow eyes fixed on the boy in front of it. Its mouth was open. Its teeth were still white.

They were coming back toward the beach.

Luna's heart stopped.

Ray was going to hit the sand, and the dog was going to hit him, and she was going to watch a boy she loved—a boy she hadn't even admitted to herself that she loved—get torn apart by something that shouldn't exist on this island.

She started running again.

The wave carried them in. Ray landed on the sand, stumbled, caught himself. The dog landed behind him, its jaws already closing—

And a small hand reached out and touched its neck.

Chitter.

The old monkey was there, between Ray and the dog, his gnarled hand placed gently on the beast's throat. Not gripping. Not hitting. Just... resting. His fingers found a point—a place where the fur was thin, where the pulse was strong—and pressed.

The dog stopped.

Its eyes went from yellow to confused. Its mouth closed. Its legs folded beneath it, and it lay down in the sand like a child being put to bed.

Chitter kept his hand there. He was breathing slowly, deliberately, the way he breathed when he was stretching dough or meditating or remembering things he didn't want to remember.

"The pressure point of the weary beast," he said quietly. "An old technique. From an older world."

The dog's tail wagged once. Twice. Then it closed its eyes and fell asleep.

Chitter removed his hand. He stood up. He looked at Ray, who was standing in the shallows, dripping wet, still wearing that confused smile.

"You cannot outrun everything," Chitter said. "Sometimes you must stand still. Sometimes you must touch."

He walked past Ray, past Luna, up the beach toward the pizza shop. His small monkey feet left prints in the sand that filled with water as soon as he lifted them.

Luna stared after him. Then she looked at Ray. Then at the sleeping dog.

"What just happened?" she whispered.

Ray shrugged. He didn't know either. But he was learning. Slowly. One bite at a time.

He was holding the pizza box—number thirty, pepperoni and extra cheese, the same thing she'd ordered every time because she didn't actually care about the pizza, she just needed a reason to see him.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

He tilted his head.

She didn't explain. She never explained. What was she supposed to say? I've ordered thirty pizzas because I can't stop thinking about your hand? Because I stay up at night replaying the moment you smiled at me? Because every time you leave, the world gets quieter and I forget why I'm supposed to keep going?

She took the pizza.

Their fingers touched.

The rush came again—the stars, the cosmos, the terrifying beautiful aloneness of moving faster than anyone can follow. But underneath it, something warmer. Something that felt like belonging.

She pulled her hand away.

"Thanks," she said.

Ray smiled.

•••

Professor Chitter couldn't sleep.

He was in his study, surrounded by books and star charts and the scattered remains of a hundred failed experiments. His left eye glowed faintly in the darkness, pulsing in time with something he couldn't name.

He'd been watching Ray for a week now.

Not just watching—studying. Observing. Trying to understand what had fallen out of the sky and into his pizza shop.

Ray was a neutrino. That much was clear. He had the speed, the phasing, the ability to pass through matter like it wasn't there. He absorbed solar radiation, used it to recharge, burned through it when he moved. He was a walking, smiling, pizza-delivering miracle of particle physics.

But he was also something else.

Something Chitter hadn't seen in a long time.

Something that made his eye glow and his hands shake and his heart beat faster than it had in centuries.

"The game," Chitter whispered. "It's starting again."

He looked at his star charts. The patterns had changed. New alignments. New configurations. A volcano that had been dormant for millennia was smoking. Two moons were singing a song that hadn't been heard since—

Since the last time.

Chitter closed his eyes.

He remembered. He remembered the board, the pieces, the players who moved galaxies like chess pieces. He remembered the game that had destroyed worlds, ended civilizations, turned stars into supernovas for sport.

He remembered what happened to the pieces that tried to leave the board.

And he remembered what happened to the ones who fell in love.

"Luna," he whispered. "Oh, Luna. What are you doing?"

He went back to his charts.

He didn't sleep.

•••

The Grannies' porch was dark when Chitter reached it, but he knew they were awake. They were always awake when the moons were full, when the volcano was smoking, when the world was tilting toward something that hadn't happened yet.

They were sitting in their rocking chairs, three pale figures in the moonlight, knitting needles moving in unison. They didn't look up when he climbed the steps. They didn't need to.

"—he's come," said Pearl.

"—finally," said Opal.

"—we were wondering when," said Ruby.

Chitter sat down on the top step. His old monkey legs ached. His left eye was glowing—the blue light pulsing faintly, the way it did when cosmic energy was near.

"The boy is changing," he said. "Faster than I expected."

The Grannies' needles kept moving.

"—the girl?" Pearl asked.

"—she's the one," Opal said.

"—she's always been the one," Ruby finished.

Chitter nodded. He'd known it the moment he saw them together. The way she looked at him. The way he didn't look away. The way the space rock pulsed when they were close.

"The game approaches," he said. "The Galaxions have made their first move. The volcano is waking. The moons are singing a warning no one has bothered to translate."

He looked up at the sky—at the two moons, full and red and silver, their song vibrating through his bones.

"And the boy doesn't know. He doesn't know what he is. What he's for."

The Grannies stopped knitting.

For a moment, the only sound was the moons. The only movement was the tide, pulling in and pulling out, patient and eternal.

"—you'll tell him," Pearl said.

"—when he's ready," Opal said.

"—when it's too late not to," Ruby said.

Chitter stood up. His joints cracked. He was old—older than the island, older than the moons, older than the song they sang. He'd been old when the Galaxions started their game, and he'd be old when it ended, and he'd seen too many pieces fall to pretend this one would be different.

But Luna was on the beach with Ray, and the dog was sleeping, and the pizza was getting cold.

He walked inside.

•••

Ray didn't understand.

He stood on the roof of the Cosmic Crust, watching the sun rise, and tried to process the past week.

Pizzas. So many pizzas. Every time he turned around, there was another order, another address, another reason to run across the island with a warm box in his hands. And every time, Luna was there.

Waiting.

Smiling.

Taking the pizza like it was the most important thing in the world.

But it wasn't the pizza. He'd figured that out by the third delivery. She didn't care about the pizza. She barely ate it. The boxes piled up around her—on the dock, on the beach, in the places she'd invented just to see him—and the pizza went cold while she looked at him.

Why?

He didn't understand why.

He didn't understand why she smiled that particular smile, the one that made her eyes go soft and her cheeks go pink. He didn't understand why she ran to meet him, why her heart beat faster when he arrived, why her hand always found his when they stood close.

He didn't understand why he kept coming back.

But he did.

Every time. Every order. Every invented address and impossible location. He kept coming back because—

Because—

He didn't have a word for it.

He didn't have words for most things. But he had feelings. He had a chest that felt tight when she smiled. He had hands that wanted to reach for hers. He had a heart—if he had a heart, if neutrinos could have hearts—that beat faster when she was near.

He didn't know what it meant.

But he kept coming back.

•••

That morning, Luna woke up determined.

No more pizzas.

She was done. She was in control. She was a normal person with normal feelings who didn't order thirty pizzas in a single day just to see a boy's smile.

She walked to the pizza shop like a normal person. She ordered one pizza. One. Like a normal person. She sat at a table. Like a normal person.

And then Ray walked out of the kitchen, holding a pizza box, and she forgot how to breathe.

"Hi," she said.

He tilted his head.

"I mean—good morning. I mean—" She took a breath. "Pizza. I ordered a pizza. For here. To eat. In the shop."

Ray put the pizza on the table.

He didn't leave.

He stood there, looking at her, his head still tilted, his sunglasses reflecting her face back at her. She could see herself in them—flushed, nervous, completely incapable of acting normal.

"Do you want to sit?" she asked.

He sat.

Across from her. At the table. Like a person.

Luna's heart did something complicated.

She opened the pizza box. The smell rose up—cheese and sauce and that secret ingredient, the one that tasted like starlight. She took a slice. She ate it.

Ray watched her.

She ate another slice.

He kept watching.

"Do you want some?" she asked, holding out a slice.

He took it. He didn't eat it. He just held it, turning it over in his hands, looking at it like it was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

"Ray," she said.

He looked at her.

"Why do you keep coming back?"

He tilted his head.

"To the deliveries. To me. Why do you keep coming back?"

He was quiet for a long time. His mouth moved, silently, trying to form words that didn't want to come.

Then he reached across the table and took her hand.

The rush came. The stars. The cosmos. The terrifying beautiful aloneness of moving faster than anyone can follow.

And underneath it, something else.

Something that felt like—

I don't know why. But I want to be here. With you.

Luna's eyes filled with tears.

"That's enough," she whispered. "That's enough."

Ray smiled.

And somewhere, in the kitchen, Professor Chitter watched through the window and felt his heart break a little.

He'd been right.

She was falling.

And he couldn't stop it.

The volcano smoked.

The moons sang.

And on a small island at the edge of nowhere, a girl and a boy sat across from each other, holding hands over a pizza, not knowing that the game had already begun.

ATILA