She became aware of a sudden silence, and a white glow just over the horizon. Slowly, slowly, an edge of a circle appeared, pocked like the moon with blue craters and bone-coloured lines. Like the moon but most definitely not, because as she watched, it grew and swelled, inflating like a balloon until it seemed to take up half the sky. It was impossibly massive, full and fat, a huge ball of stone just … floating.

It was just her, and this thing. She knew then. She knew that everything was different and nothing was the same.

‘Fuck.’ She turned, and called out. ‘You have to see this. You have to come.’

They walked towards her, and saw that she was silhouetted against the glow from the moon. She spread her arms out wide, and even then, her reach wasn’t quite wide enough to encompass it all.

It was a terrifying sight, something that big rising above them. It would rise higher, and at some point in the night, be hanging over them. Their moon was so distant, so small, that it could be covered by a thumb at full stretch. This one, this world’s version, wherever they were, couldn’t be blocked out by both hands together.

‘That’s incredible,’ said Dalip, eventually. ‘That’s,’ and words failed him.

The rest of the sky was turning black as the mountain-tops lost their reflected shine. The last rays of the sun against the high cloud faded, descending through pinks into reds. Only the pearly moonglow remained.

‘Where,’ said Stanislav, ‘are the stars?’

Dalip stepped out further, turned his back on the moon and stared upwards, his head tilted back and his mouth falling open. Mary hadn’t noticed the lack of stars, and would never notice them. Her sky was an orange haze, growing thicker or thinner depending on the weather.

The dome of the night was – apart from the bright moon, which had now crested the mountains completely – utterly dark.

‘There should be stars,’ said Dalip, shivering. ‘There should be thousands of stars.’

And perhaps for the first time, Mary looked up properly.

She knew something about stars – the stars formed pictures in the sky, some of which became star signs, and she was a Virgo. There was nothing. She turned her head to face the sea, then to face the mountains, and there was still nothing.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘The sky should be on fire. No light pollution, no street lights or houses or cars or factories: you should be able to see everything. Stars, planets, nebulae, the Milky Way. Everything.’

‘Maybe they don’t have them here,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is all there is.’