You and Ezra had landed on the green moon a bit ungraciously and crashed. No matter. You were here for gems and it wouldn't be hard to bribe your way with another crew when I was time to take off.

For now, you used the crashed ship as a home base, going on mining digs every day at the crack of dawn. Every day was relatively the same: dig, mine, come back with a handful of small gems. But Ezra...Ezra was looking for the motherlode. The Queen's Lair. Said to contain vast caverns of gems.

One day while mining, you fall through the dirt into an old tunnel with a yelp.

"Are you alright?!" Ezra hollered from above.

You stand with a groan and wipe off your pants"Yeah! Looks like-" You click your flashlight on and peer down the tunnel, noticing a glint. "There's definitely gems down here! Come down!"

Ezra quickly ties a rope around a nearby tree and rappels into the tunnel. "Oh my..."

You start making your way down the tunnel towards an opening where you spotted the glint. You turn and- "Sweet mother."Ezra murmurs.

A sea of gems that goes for damn near a mile!

You exhale sharply, brushing your fingertips along a particularly large gem. "We found it...the Queen's Lair."

Ezra nods and starts jamming as many gems into his pack as can fit. "Go on and prove useful." He gestures for you to fill your bag also.

You nod and start packing gems into your bag. You notice, lodged under some gems, a strange looking rock.

"What do you think this is?"

"Appears to be a geode. Bring it along and we shall discover it's secrets back aboard the ship." He says with excited energy.

After marking the location on your map, untying the rope so no one will find the entrance, and heading back to the ship, you're exhausted.

You dump your bag of gems into the table and slump into the seat. "Forgot how heavy those are."

Ezra nods, plopping his own sack onto the table. He rummaged through it until he pulls out the geode. "Shall we discover it's secrets?"

You nod and lean forward, watching intently as he picks up a chisel and cracks it open. A brilliant blue geode shimmers inside as a plume of something glittery stretches into the air. What...what is that? Are those spores?

Ezra murmured, stumbling back as the cracked geode pulsed with a faint, inner light. The air shimmered around him, thick with glittering dust that clung to his suit like starlight. “Feels as though... it’s humming inside my head,” he said, pressing a gloved hand to his helmet as laughter bubbled unbidden from his chest. “The moon is breathing, isn’t it?"

You shake your head, trying to clear it as it gets foggier and foggier. Every muscle in your body tightens. Is this..oh no. You look up at him. Pollen.

Perhaps the moon demands no blood, only witness.