(Photo by Alex Andrews)

It was a quiet night, which was not the norm. Usually there were sounds of traffic or insects but tonight, it seemed, everyone and everything had decided to keep to themselves. After listening to the usual nightly noise for so many years, Joaquin found it difficult to fall asleep in this silence. He turned from lying on his left side to his right. The window in his room was illuminated by the moon and starlight. There were no working streetlights where he lived. As he stared out the window, seeing the corner of the next building over and a small patch of sky, he was surprised when the light winked out. It came back in an instant, but he’d never seen anything like that before, as though the night sky went entirely dark for a moment.

“¿Nubes?” he wondered aloud to himself even though it had happened so fast that he doubted any clouds could move that quickly.

He watched the window for a few more minutes and when it happened again he shoved the blankets away and got up. He strode over to the window so he could see out of it properly and looked up at the sky.

There were no clouds. The stars were out as well as both of the moons.

Joaquim caught himself.

“¿Dos Lunas?”

That wasn’t right. There’s only one moon. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was sleeping after all.

There were still two moons in the sky, hanging there beside one another with a gap between them. He recognized the regular moon right away from it’s markings but the other moon, besides being relatively the same size and color, had entirely different markings of its own.

“Estoy soñando,” he said while running his hand through his hair.

He tore his gaze away from the strange sight studied the rest of his surroundings. Surely, he was dreaming, and yet everything else looked and felt normal. There were no inconsistencies that would prove to him he was dreaming, and besides, he rarely had such vivid dreams.

As it happened, Joaquin looked back to the two moons just as they winked out, literally winked, and then came back. It was as if the moons were eyes that just blinked at him. They darkened from both the top and bottom as though eyelids were closing and then reopening.

“Si, si, estoy soñando,” Joaquin said.

The moons blinked again and it sort of reminded him of how his cat, El Señor Guido, would blink at him as a sort of greeting. With that in mind, Joaquin blinked back at the moons.

“Buenas noches, Lunas.”

The moons leaned in closer, growing ever so slightly larger in the night sky and an arc of stars beneath the eyes twinkled as though they were a smile.

“Buenas noches, señor.” The voice was deep and breathy, as though spoken by the wind. “Tengo una pregunta para ti.”

“¿Si?”

What could the moons possibly want to ask him? Then again, this was a dream so it was probably something nonsensical anyway.

“Si,” replied the moons. “¿Por qué no estás dormido?”

“Estoy dormido,” Joaquin insisted. There was no way this was really happening and he allowed himself a little chuckle at the absurdity of his own subconscious asking him in his dream why he wasn’t sleeping.

“No señor,” the moons said, “estás despierto.”

“No, Lunas,” Joaquin replied, and then began ticking off his evidence with his fingers. “Es demasiado silencioso. Hay dos de ustedes. Estamos hablando entre nosotros. Y parpadeas.”

“Hmmmm,” the moons considered these facts while Joaquin leaned against the windowsill and yawned.

He was finally getting tired and he felt his bed calling to him. In the distance he heard a siren and a car turned down his street. A cricket began to chirp somewhere and suddenly, as though a spell was broken, the night was back to normal. Only the two moons remained out of the ordinary but that was fine.

“Buenas noches, Lunas,” he waved and returned to his bed.

His head sunk down deep into his pillow and his blankets were just the right temperature. Within seconds he was fast asleep. High above him, the moons looked down and watched his breathing slow and his muscles relax. It was a complicated thing, making so much noise, but if it helped Joaquin sleep then they would do it. As the night waned, the moon that should not be there disappeared like an eye closing, leaving the familiar moon alone in the sky once again. Only a single night every few millennia did both moons shine down and Joaquin would never know how unique his experience truly had been. The moons knew it, though, and that was enough for them. To be seen and spoken to was refreshing and new and not likely to be repeated.

“Buenas noches, Joaquin,” the night air whispered. “Buenas noches.”

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I don’t speak Spanish very well, so hopefully I didn’t make too many errors in here. I tried to write it so that even if you don’t understand Spanish you can still get the idea of what’s being said, though a google translate or similar should also do the trick if needed.
Many civilizations have personified the moon and stars and made me wonder what if they were right but that the moon(s) weren’t that active in any obvious ways except for in rare situations like in this story. There is, of course, the unanswered question of what the moons are doing, or how they blink and talk and all of that, but I like leaving that a mystery since it isn’t pertinent to Joaquin.
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