Worry

"What is the eclipse?" Jared asked.

It was dark and they were standing on the balcony looking up at the thin black ring around the moon that was nearly full. Cora and Jared had just finished their feeding for the night. Margo and Antione were preparing to leave to go to the feeding den. Cora had some misgivings about that, and Jared was pretending not to care.

Antione shrugged but Cora answered. She was beginning to feel like a know it all. "It is a gas released by the earth that has entered the upper atmosphere and creates a halo effect. Humans can't see the rings. Though they think the gas is a type of fog. Some of their instruments can just pick up the hint of a halo."

"Where does the gas come from?" Margo asked curiously.

"It's released when the earth has reached a threshold of the decaying matter it is trying to process. It stops when the decay is reduced enough to process again. It's the earth's cycle of processing death in mass quantities."