.

Soon, she was back at the cottage. Moon thundered through the door, slamming it open, and instantly a few blobs of water that had been floating in the air collapsed, while a few swirled around her, dizzyingly fast. There were a few metallic rings, which echoed into fragments of voices. 

"Don't! Tell me why in the world you called me here first! Today was my only day to meet Terra!" Moon snapped, swatting at the water, but her hand only went uselessly through the liquid and out the other side. Then, she saw something spelled out in a damp water stain on the floor. The water that had been swirling around her now flew off to make a circle around it instead. 

'Saturn is dying', it read. Almost instantly Moon's hand dropped to her side. A moment of stunned silence followed. Then her anger died away in her throat. 

"Thanks for telling me. For once I'm not even glad you made a watermark." Moon sighed and then hung her bag back up on the sturdy vine on which it had previously been. The vine bent precariously but she paid no attention to it. Saturn, dying. "What a holy mess this is," she said. Saturn was key to all the other planets, obviously, but more than that, everything would be thrown around in chaos if Saturn died. After all, the Sun was quite literally a tyrant, so Saturn had acted as the leading figure for the longest possible time. If Saturn died, it would be quite a bit… unfortunate… 

Not to mention Saturn was the only one of them with the power to make jewels, gold, silver, and titanium out of thin air. Without her, all the other planets would fall apart if they weren't constantly given metals. 

In other words : Saturn dies, everyone dies. More or less. 

"Do the others know?" Moon asked, gesturing to the water droplets floating around her, but not asking anyone in particular. The watermark scuffled around to arrange new words in a rush of waves: 'It's from PH27 and AE12'. PH27 and AE12 were both meteoroids, nicknamed Ae and Phae, a deadly combination of the fastest and slowest meteoroids. They kept the planets up to date, obviously, and it was also why asteroid showers happened more frequently in Tory. Like Moon had said, though, the meteoroid showers were mostly hidden by the thick fog that fringed the small town. Ae and Phae rightfully owned Moon's jealousy, as they were allowed to leave the barrier at will. If Ae and Phae were the ones supplying this gossip, likely she was the first to know, and they also probably wanted something in return. And of course, it was never, ever a good thing to mingle with other planets. It almost always ended in something bad. 

And of course, all the planets hated Ae and Phae with a burning passion because they had killed Proxima - the closest star to their solar system, and the only hope of escaping from Sun's abusive rein. They had killed her and killed all of their hopes with her. Now they were almost always treated like nuisances, which they were and were thus rightfully deserved. 

"When did they visit?" Moon asked, still to no one in particular. She never did talk to Ae or Phae a lot - usually, Terra did her job for her. Indeed, the Moon of Earth didn't have a very big job or many responsibilities. There was a rustle behind her and a creak on the oak floorboards, and someone tapped her on the shoulder. A slender, clawed finger. She whirled around to see slit yellow eyes, and bright yellow hair tied in two twin buns. Ae. 

Ae was a sneaky planet, to say the least. Her powers allowed her to bend light and dark to her will - and she abused them by spying and listening to things she shouldn't. Currently, she was looking clearly at Moon.