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Every Friday night, the souls of the universe gather together in their local bars to enjoy a pint of black matter and catch up on the latest galaxy implosion.
For the past 4.603 billion years, Solar has been the one behind the worn counter in the Solar System, watching the souls trickle in as slow as syrup as she polishes glasses, recognizing regulars with the familiarity of old age—taking orders and serving drinks with the quiet observation so commonplace with stars. Like the back of her hands she knows them all; the complexity of their eyes; how they order their drinks, rosebud lips pursed or gnarly fingers like the tick of a clock; who gravitates into the pull of someone else and never leaves it, ironbound.
Being the mother of the Solar System has its perks on quiet nights like these, when the noise in the bar is like diving into the deep end of a summer pool, nebulae flickering off the windows like the shallow reflection of water.
Pluto softly nurses a drink Solar serves him. “Look at the other planets,” Pluto says, cynically. “So wrapped up in their own orbits.”
Solar smiles, biting her tongue. Pluto’s inadequacy as a true planet makes him an entertaining patron, watching the proceedings from a stool at the bar with an eye that is as removed as his heart. “I like them. They’re all entertaining characters.”
Pluto snorts into his drink and has to wipe his nose. “Of course you do, oh great Sun , light of lives , mother of a thousand days .”
“Just for that, dear, I’m cutting you off for tonight.” Solar bats him with a soggy dish-towel for using her official title, the one carefully written on the lease for the Solar System. “Go find another bar on Milky street to hang out in. I’m pretty sure Andromeda road would love to have your frozen ass.”
“I wish I could get rid of these people and their trivial busy-goings, but alas, yours is the strongest gravitational pull that attracts me.” Pluto winks. If it weren’t followed by a minute of frantic blinking as he accidentally looks her in the eye, Solar might be a little flattered. Objectively, of course.
“Don’t exaggerate, honey. Even Jupiter is bearable.”
Across the bar, past tiles the size of lightyears, Jupiter holds court in one of the slotted booths. They detach themselves from the mouth of Ganymede to throw an arm around Europa and crush her to their chest. Io and Callisto lean in, inevitably pulled into their orbit, with expectant eyes like puppies. A gaggle of smaller moons hang around them, giggling.
“Oh, come on,” Pluto sighs. “Did you know Jupiter’s had an argument with Terra that lasted over three-hundred and fifty years? Terra calls it the Great Red Spat.”
“Sweetie, it’s in Terra’s nature to exaggerate.”
“She’s not wrong.” Pluto takes a sip as dark as the night. “Speaking of arguments, did I tell you what Neptune said to me yesterday, the blue bastard?”
Solar hums attentively—from experience she knows that, no matter what she says, Pluto will ignore it anyway—and refills the glass of a bypassing comet with fizzling dust. She dutifully hands over a tray of drinks to Mercury, watching the wandering Oort cloud crowd settle into the cracked plastic chairs outside. It’s not a busy night inside, but Solar expects a few more regulars to pop in soon. Meanwhile, she tunes out Pluto’s old-crone gossip.
“–and then I told Uranus, that asshole, where he could, you know, stick it. Up—”
“—I wish you wouldn’t fight so much with the other planets, darling,” Solar interrupts him sagely, because her tolerance for crude profanity has a limit. It’s only because she’s a nice star who doesn’t enjoy discord and wishes to see her satellites orbit in harmony, that Solar avoids commenting on Pluto’s peculiar size complex. It’s also, quite frankly, none of her business. As long as the world keeps turning, the Solar System survives.
Pluto glances backward, perhaps to cast another bitchy eye on Jupiter, but he stills when the door slides open with a melodious ring of a bell. “Oh man,” Pluto says, dramatically downing the remaining part of his drink in one go, “they’re here.”
Solar laughs, low and burning. “I was worried that they wouldn’t make it.”
“Of course you were,” Pluto mutters disapprovingly. He slams the empty glass on the bar with a thunk . “I can’t deal with them tonight. I’m outta here. Tell Charon I said hello.”
“Tell her hello yourself,” Solar tells him, but Pluto’s already waltzing out of the door. He makes sure to hip-check one of the newcomers on the way out, and she glares at him, deeply affronted.
“Watch where you’re going, dickface,” Venus says.
Mars gently lays a hand on her padded leather shoulder, herding her over to one of the nearer tables like cattle. “Ignore him, babe. He’s just bitter.”
There’s a smacking pop behind them. “I think that the correct term is salty , these days.”
“No gum,” Solar announces. Her voice echoes through the bar like a melody, slightly chiding. Terra’s eyes flicker over, disinterested, and Solar smells the ghost of fresh rain, and a sour undercurrent of the toxic fumes of pollution.
Terra pops out the pink gum—with an obnoxious wet sound, of course—and folds it into a napkin. Hypothetically, Solar is supposed to be equally loving of each one of her patrons. But, hypothetically, Terra takes up a special unpleasant place in her heart.
Mars whispers into Venus’ ear, who stands up and walks over to Solar. There’s a blistering heat coming off her tonight. Mars watches her go with big, brown cow-eyes, then primly crosses her legs.
“Two black matters, and one stardust martini for the hot one,” Venus says.
Solar adjusts the apron around her waist—patterned with little smiling stars, an old gift from her two-billionth birthday—and gets to work. Nevertheless, she keeps an eye on the door, because if Terra is here, then there’s someone missing. An inevitable customer, as dependable as the phases of the, well—
The bell rings, and the door swings open. Startled feet slide over the tiles, and Pluto’s cracked stool creaks only a little under the ghostly weight.
“The usual?”
Luna lets out a low hum, granite eyes blank, and she may seem too entirely flat . But Solar’s been observing her patrons for millions of years, and Luna’s always so quietly entertaining, and Solar loves it. Solar, however, refuses to admit that love stems from guilty pleasure: guilty pleasure of watching the soap opera of pining, the million-year opus magnum of longing-full stares, the uneventful inching closer of the moon to the Earth, barely visible to the naked eye.
But Solar never deemed herself human enough to look with naked eyes; humans themselves go blind if they look at Solar without sunglasses. Therefore, she catches the way that Luna, every Friday night, without fail, slivers her gaze towards Terra’s booth from the haughty perch of the barstools.
Solar follows her line of sight when she leans over to pass a spare dishcloth to Mercury—who shares an acknowledging look, aware of Solar’s fascination with the slowest burn of all time, slower than a star, that makes up the Terra-Luna romcom—and decides that this quiet night, with its trickling customers and the absence of Pluto and his snarky comments, seems like a good night to observe what it’s about.
Solar has her ideas, of course, but they don’t seem particularly appealing to her. Her fire burns too consistently to love the essentially chaotic and unpredictability about Terra’s eyes, the shades of nature and all the shades of the ocean and all the shades of the grey, grey cities all at once.
So Luna, frozen in a permanent, icy stasis, seems like the most unlikely candidate to stare at the literal disaster-planet that is Terra. Luna is a polaroid immobile in the amber of time—but there’s a hummingbird beneath Terra’s skin, buzzing with unprecedented energy. Eternally moving, the flick of hair, the rat-tat-tat of chewed fingernails, and a tongue as cold and as harsh as the shiny metal stud that flashes in it when she opens her mouth. Which is, frankly, way too often.
But Luna looks at Terra like she’s seeing, well, a star, stone eyes dazzled. The light of her life. Softly bright with warm loves that sinks down to her bones, quiet in observation yet nonetheless as sturdy as bedrock.
Solar flushes with happiness—to see such a love. And before Solar knows what she’s done, her fire flares out, casting off Luna’s skin and turning her—glittering and illuminated—into the spotlight on a darkened stage.
“I’m sorry,” Solar mutters, watching Luna shrink away from her, as if she can out-flinch the reflective light. Such lack of control is unbecoming of a wise star, but the emotion lashing out at the thought that, as much as Terra is the apple of Luna’s eye, Terra is never quite the one who—
Looks back.
Terra is looking back.
It’s the hot bubble of hope that does it. Luna has no light of her own, a little moon surrounded by big, big planets, but Solar has spent her lifetime reflecting sunlight off her surfaces. If just a little sharper light is what it takes for Terra to finally notice, if Solar just needs to meddle—
Solar doesn’t debate the disruption of the system-wide balance this could cause; not when Luna has been orbiting Terra for so long, loving longingly from afar, not when Terra is finally ( finally ) looking back, and Solar can read the glint of interest in those steely eyes. Solar is not a meddler.
But Solar loves love . And she decides, there and then, in this dark corner of the universe, she’ll put her sunshine to good use. Light things up a little. Make something grow into a blooming flower, petals alive with adoration. The seed is planted, Terra has oceans of water, and all Solar needs to do is make it grow.
“Go talk to her,” Solar suggests, like an idiot. She tries to sound all motherly and wise.
Luna jolts back, eyes wide, and frantically shakes her head, like she’s shaking off the notion itself.
“I’m sure she’ll love you,” Solar coaxes.
Luna shakes even more, until Solar’s afraid of her falling apart like an earthquake. That’s a no , then.
Mercury whizzes past, and Solar decides an alternative approach, pulling him in over the counter to whisper something in his ear, far from the hearing of any nosy clients. Mercury’s eyes sparkle when he leans back. Solar taps a glass of chaos and hands it over.
It only takes a minute for Mercury to stride across the room, put the glass down right under Terra’s nose, and mutter inaudibly. He points over to the bar where Solar watches expectantly—and Luna, who quickly looks away, but not fast enough.
There’s a whiff of intense curiosity wafting off Terra, the type of unexpected surprise that comes from an equally unexpected action, someone making a move in a way you never expected them to. Solar can smell it from aeons away.
Terra beckons Luna over with a harried hand.
“I told her you wanted to talk to her. Sorry,” Solar says, truly unapologetic.
Luna shoots her a betrayed look that could kill lesser suns, but slides off the stool, because of course; how could Luna not resist Terra’s gravity?
It may not be the natural progression of things. In fact, Solar’s push may well have disrupted the carefully controlled balance of her planets. But Solar also loves her planets, her satellites, like limbs, starry-eyed about their individual beauty, and wants nothing but true happiness for each and every one of them.
Sometimes, Solar ponders, it takes a rather unnatural push for the most beautiful of things to happen. And, watching Luna’s hairline fracture of a smile, cracking under Terra’s burdened enthusiasm, Solar decides that yes .
Out of all the beautiful things in her Solar System, from the collisions and the formations and the heat and the ice and the pure, unrestrained matter that makes up their little corner of the universe, this —this is one of her favorites.