Strange, Teal thought, how the streets had seemed too big. The city too open. Everything too spread apart. Earth was huge, and everyone could just sprawl out wherever felt convenient. Or, it had felt that way.

Luna City was the opposite out of necessity. Every square centimeter was carefully allocated for best use at the best place at the best time. Nothing was free, or easy, or happenstance.

Then, suddenly, as if through spontaneous existence, the streets were too full. The city too crowded. The world too small. It was three in the morning and yet everything was bustling.

Matias had insisted on getting Teal back to zer traveling group. Their hotel, the one where'd they'd seen the news, had been just right for a fling. A place to get away and revel in another person's body.

Teal and zer group had rented a house, a month-long deal, for their entire leg in Cancún. It had four bedrooms, massive rooms, high ceilings, and was basically a palace compared to anything they'd have on the moon.

Unfortunately, it was further north along the peninsula than where the group escaped for that evening. And, despite talking about keeping close through the trip, none of them had bothered to check in before heading back to the house after leaving the coffee bar.

There had been dozens of messages after the news broke, messages from the moon, messages from mother and father, and messages from the rest of the vacationing moonborn. Everyone was worried and wanted the trip cut short.

So much for two weeks.

Teal continued tapping away on zer phone, frustrated, ready to cut it off and say it was out of charge. Zie had just barely convinced the group to stay indoors. Wait. Reschedule the tickets, the flights, the rocket, if they wanted to be useful.

Coming after Teal would be foolish. Plus, zie really wanted more time with Matias. With everything being cut short, the connection felt more important. More real.

But Teal only had an hour left with the last earthling zie would talk to for years. Zie hated it. It was selfish and stupid in the face of tragedy, but it was the truth.

Luckily, Matias had his own car, too, which was helpful for both getting back and for spending time together. He leaned into the horn. "Pinche pendejo cabrón! Fuck!" Someone wedged their car in the hint of a gap in front of them. "Sorry, this is gonna be. Difficult."

"Seriously, I could just catch a ride from someone else." Zie would hate to, but would still offer. "You gotta get home too." Zie wanted to go home with him. Because why not.

"I live just outside of the city, so this is on the way. Besides, you're not catching anything in this chaos. People are freaking out."

"Well rightly so. That is a fucking volcano!"

"So? I mean, it's not normal, but really it shouldn't mean anything to us. It's far enough from shore that we'll just have a new island. We're not in danger, and the ejecta isn't likely to reach us." Matias had put on a pair of glasses once in the car. He had smiled to say, "They're mildly corrective­­, mostly informative." He'd been reading news and details while weaving through traffic.

Teal stared out the window toward the volcano's building plume of ash. "At the very least, we shouldn't be breathing that gunk. But I bet it just makes more people come and gawk. This place is gonna be hell because of the fire and the crowding."

"Says the tourist."

"Hey, but I'm a tourist on all of Earth. That lets me off the hook."

"It does? Huh! News to me."

"Seriously! I don't come with the baggage of other countries. I'm not part of their histories of shitting on each other. Plus, we're no threat up on the moon. We're far away, largely ignored, and we can hardly survive on this over-moisturized ball of phlegm."

"Ball of phlegm!?" Matias cough-laughed. "Wow! I had no idea you were so mean!"

"It's not mean if it's true!"

"No," he retorted, "It's especially mean if it's true."

"Oh please, see this is gonna get into weird eartherisms. You ground dwellers are so sensitive about facts. Like they're more than just stating the obvious."

"Uh, ground dwellers?" Matias eased the car into an alley to cut across between roads. He brushed them past an overfilled dumpster and honked at a bicyclist rocketing through from the back. "Last I checked, you lunatics live in the ground. You're all basically dwarves, is what I'm saying."

Teal scoffed. "What!?" Zie was having far too much fun with this conversation. The physical attraction had been great. The chemistry had been perfect. It was no fair that he was also enjoyable to be around. "If anything, we're elves. Even our shortest people are taller than all of you combined!"

Then, somehow, the world inhaled.

It was an audible, physical change in the air. The clouds, reflecting city lights, shifted as one. As if nudged by an invisible hand.

And then, having taken its breath before the plunge, the world exploded into fire.

The ground shook in time with the shockwave of some unseen outburst. Every building around them gave off a sudden cloud of dust. Like rugs overdue for a good smack.

Traffic stopped in the way it must in moments of shock. Vehicles slammed into one-another while others veered into buildings or onto sidewalks crowded with running pedestrians.

Matias slammed on the brakes, still in the alleyway, and someone rear-ended them. His car twisted from the impact until shoved against the wall of the alley.

Both walls wobbled, not from the impact but from the near-constant shaking that continued a rising intensity. One of the walls was brick, and it practically shattered before crumpling in on itself.

The other wall, some mix of glass and steel, twisted as its grounding foundation buckled beneath the pavement.

Matias, still frozen after the crash, was holding the sides of his head. "We have to get on top of something!" Blood trickled down his forehead from bits of windshield. His hands were covered in white-powder from the airbags.

Teal struggled to unbuckle zer seatbelt. Everything suddenly hurt. Zie, too, was covered in flecks of blood and glass and dust. "Ugh." Zie could hardly think. "Out of the alley. Things are falling."

"No, climb up, up there!" Finally, Matias began to move. He pushed his door, shoving with both arms and a leg, until it opened with a grating pop. "Up the side of this building.

The metal-glass building had fallen over, mostly intact, but the ground was cracking beneath them. Everything was still shifting, moving more.

Sirens, deep, all-encompassing, blotting-out-thought, erupted into a sonorous wail.

"Whatever just erupted, we have a tsunami heading here like now!"

Teal coughed, shoved zer own door open, and tumbled from the vehicle. "Shit." Zie scrambled after Matias for the twisted side of the building. "Shit, shit, shit."

Vacation on Earth, zie thought. Once in a lifetime opportunity, zie remembered hearing. Zie felt shards of the windshield biting into zer hands while climbing up the side of the wall. Zie really wanted to like earth, but now it felt like all the naysayers might be onto something.

#

Hours had gone by, but it wasn't getting brighter. If anything, the sky seemed to grow darker. Closer.

The clouds felt like they'd fall at any moment.

Teal wrapped an arm around Matias' shoulders. He kept coughing, so it was uncomfortable, but as least it let them share warmth. The day, if you could call it that, was staying depressively chilly.

"How long before the water recedes?" asked Teal.

An older woman, gray-haired but pacing with energy, glanced over her shoulder. "Maybe, eh, two, three, hours, but, uh, es difícil con seguridad, Nicolas?"

A younger man, one that shared the woman's features, shrugged. "This isn't like some usual flood, no. The ground has changed." He shrugged again. "She is right, maybe three hours."

"What's it matter though? If the water goes? You said it yourself. The earth itself is collapsing. Look!" Matias gestured with his still-bloodied hand.

A nearby hotel, a twenty-story behemoth, a block wide, a block deep, was sinking into the grime-coated waters. As it tilted, enough weight shifted so that half of a wall caved in. They could hear the newly-crafted rubble crashing into the flooded streets below.

"Everything is washed away," mumbled Matias, "and what isn't will be swallowed by this hole into hell."

Teal grimaced. "Someone has to have some boats. There are ships out there, too." Internally, zie hoped similarly for the rest of the lunatics. The townhouse was two stories. Surely, they would've gotten on the roof. Please, she thought, the building survived the initial quakes.

"Whatever might happen, hasn't happened yet," grumbled the old lady. She crossed her arms and walked to the edge of the rooftop. The building had crumpled to one side, so the structure was tilted at an angle, but it seemed to be holding up.

As long as the ground didn't swallow them whole.

"Sorry I couldn't get you back to your friends," muttered Matias.

Zie rubbed his back, up and down, up and down. "It's okay, hey, it's fine. You tried. Tried your best." Zie thought it was absurd for him to apologize, to take any of the blame. He had no control over a wondrously ridiculous planet.

"We should try and sleep," Teal offered.

They heard a distant grumble.

Looking toward the sea, back where the plume had been, they could see a rising glow. "Shit. Is that thing still going?"

Thunder, and then lighting crackled across the sky.

"Look, we need a plan." The gray-haired woman glanced between the three of them. What appeared to be her son, or grandson, a scrawny moonborn, and a local man still shaking in shock.

"What can we do?" asked Teal.

"First, some of us must swim."

The other young-man nodded. "I could probably make it to the marina. Go from one building to another. There's bound to be a few boats."

"Why not just wait for the water to recede?" Matias raised his head. "Then we can grab a vehicle and head inland."

"Not happening, lindo niño. The roads were already swamped before the water came." The old woman shrugged. "And we cannot leave. We must stay here, to help those still trapped. But we will need boats to do that."

Teal felt zer eyes bulge. "I'm sorry, what!? You want to stay here? This place is actually in the middle of exploding!"

Matias squeezed zer arm with a sigh. His face was showing extra stubble, extra lines, from the long night. He looked exhausted. "No, she's right. This is home."

"Will one of you come with me?" The other man stood, brushing off his knees. He was covered in grime from the damp dusty air. Flakes of ash had been falling for hours.

"Can't swim, myself," said the woman. She raised her hands in a long shrug. "I never did like the ocean."

Matias frowned. "The most I would do is slow you down, or put you in danger. I'm no swimmer, and that's on a good day."

"How about you?"

Teal winced. "I mean, I only ever swam in wave pools or the submerged domes." Zie glanced at the wide-eyes of zer new companions. "Oh. Right. I'm from the moon."

Matias sighed. "What the hell is a submerged dome?"

"Well, we need the biome diversity, so-"

The old woman raised a hand while shaking her head. "While very interesting, it isn't the time. Please, it sounds like you can help, moonborn."

Zie looked away, toward the red-tinted horizon. "It's Teal."

"Hm?"

"My name's Teal. Teal Dyltissoni. And this is Matias Gutierrez."

Matias waved. "Hey."

"Georgina. Call me Georgi. This is my grandson, Nicolas."

"Nic."

Georgi rolled her eyes. "Nicolas." She gave her grandson a soft smile. "I love that name, cariño." Her gaze flicked back to Teal. "So, you will go?"

Teal gritted zer teeth and took a breath. "Yeah. I guess it'd be for the best. Take care of him." Zie glanced down to Matias. Kneeled beside him. "I really like him." Zie kissed him on the cheek.

Then they shared a proper kiss.

Georgi sighed. "A splendid time to find love. Now we just must live for it to grow."