Excerpt: The Significance of Wings

Afterwards, Walker leaped from stone to stone to the middle of the stream where a large boulder was moored. He climbed on top of it and sat staring at the sky, arms folded atop his knees, watching the atmosphere turn from indigo to the blackest blue. Stars began to wink into existence, greeting their siblings as they began their dance across the heavens. There were more than Walker had ever seen in his life. Millions upon millions clustered together in swirls and patterns, some caught in rainbowed necklaces of burning gasses. The sight took his breath away and made his heart ache with the supreme beauty of the night sky, unsullied by the fluorescent glow of civilization. It was the light of Paradise shining through pinpricks in the veil between this world and the next. Walker was so moved by the wonder his eyes beheld that he forgot the aches in his muscles and the hunger in his belly and the bewilderment of his mind. The universe was suddenly very big and awesome and terrible in the glory of its majesty, and he was a very small man indeed.

And then he noticed the moon…and then the other moon…and then a third.

Three moons hung in various points of the sky. One was golden and nearly full, the second held a slightly rosy tinge and was still in the phase of the half-moon, and the third was no more than a slender sliver of a silvery-blue crescent.

Walker could only stare speechless for a long minute. “Holy crap,” he croaked at last. “Holy freakin’ crap.” This went beyond freak seasons and illogical time zones. There was no possible way that this was even his planet.

He was so screwed.