It was late one chilly early-winter evening. Sam and D'vana had just seen the theatrical re-release of the Incredible Cinematic Universe's latest masterpiece, Deep Space Nine 3, and Sam was walking D'vana home.
Sam continued his rant, "And remember when Ben Sisko committed war crimes and made that long monologue about it--"
D'vana interrupted. "See, I just don't think of it that way, because-"

"Come see the Moon!" said a voice.

D'vana startled and retreated her neck, and Sam turned to face the sound. It came from a large man with long curly hair and a scraggly beard which must not have been trimmed since 2020. He was pointing at Sam.

"Hey! Yeah! You! Come see the Moon at high power."

Sam froze, unsure of what was happening, or if he and D'vana were in some kind of danger.

"Yeah, come see the Moon. It's here in my telescope."

D'vana turned and, when she noticed the large friendly waving man standing next to a long white tube on a black wooden box, she raised her eyebrow, looked at Sam, looked back at the telescope, and darted across the street to take a look. Sam ran after her. A car had to stop suddenly, horn honking, so as not to hit him.

This strange astronomer of the sidewalk smiled an enthusiastic smile at D'vana, and gestured to the eyepiece. "Ok, so you look in through here...," he said.

"Wow!" D'vana said. "I've never seen it like this!"

Sam caught up, a little short on breath, and shot a concerned look toward D'vana and the strange man. His concern fizzled away when D'vana's grin turned towards himself.

"Have a look too why don'tchya," the man said.

"It's so cool! You can see all the craters," D'vana said.

Sam pressed his glasses up to the eyepiece lens, and the image shook slightly. He backed his eye off and tried to find a better angle, but couldn't. He took his glasses off and tried again.

"Uh, you should keep your glasses on," the stranger said.

----

"But I can't see with--"

"Ok hold on. Do your glasses correct for astigmatism?" The stranger said.

"Uh... I don't... think so?" Sam said.

"They don't," D'vana said. Sam looked a little bewildered at D'vana. How did she know that? It was just yet another weirdly in-depth bit of knowledge she had about his health.

"Ok, so you can take your glasses off. Now, you see this knob right here," the stranger said, gesturing to the silver knobs on the black projection which came out of the top side of the tube. "That's the focuser, you twist it and--"

Sam had already started playing with the focuser. "Got it," he said. He stayed silent, mouth slowly opening as he took in what he saw.

"What do you think?" The stranger said.

"It's incredible," Sam said.

"RIGHT!?" D'vana said.

"I mean that's amazing!" Sam continued.

"It sure is," the stranger grinned.

"Oh, uh, what was your name?" Sam said.

"Gregory. And you?"

"Sam."

"D'vana."

"Nice to meet you, Sam and uh, what was that again? Savannah?"

"D'vana. It's an unusual name, I know."

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend," Gregory said. "I just don't have very good hearing! You said, uh, D'vana?"

"Yes, and it's no problem, you're good."

"So what kind of telescope is this?" D'vana said.

Sam retreated from the eyepiece, with a negative image of the bright gibbous moon still hanging in his eye like a ghost. Gregory gestured to the front of the telescope. "Well, here, come take a look down the front of the tube."

D'vana hesitated at first, but walked to the front of the telescope and peered inside.

"This is a newtonian reflector telescope. The light comes through the front," Gregory said, gesturing a motion down the sides of the tube, "then it hits the curved mirror in the back. Then the light comes back up the front of the tube to a focus point right about here," he said, pinching his fingers just in front of the end of the telescope. "Except," he continued, "there's a flat diagonal mirror here which folds the light path so it comes out the side, and then we examine the image with the lenses in the eyepiece."

"How do you aim it?" Sam said.

"Oh you just shove it around. This is a Dobsonian, which means it's on this rockerbox thing which goes up, down, and all around," Gregory said, and he kicked the rockerbox and grabbed the tube, pushing it around. "You just kind of shove it where you want to go. Here, let me show you something," Gregory said. He pulled his chair up to the eyepiece and sat down, then put his head behind a small tube hanging off the top.

"What's that?" D'vana said.

"It's a finderscope, a little refractor telescope used to aim the big one," Gregory said, scanning up and down until he'd recovered the Moon. He looked into the eyepiece, then fiddled with a set screw and removed the eyepiece, and replaced it was a slightly longer black eyepiece with a thin gold band around it. "I'm just changing magnifications," he said. He fiddled with the focuser knob until he was satisfied, and made small tweaks to the aiming of the telescope. "Okay, now look carefully here," Gregory said, standing up and gesturing to the chair.

D'vana took a seat. "Oh wow! That's so much closer!"

"Okay, so you see how there's some dark spots, and some lighter areas, right?" Gregory said.

"Ah, yes!" D'vana said. "Oh! Are these the lunar seas?"

"Very good," Gregory said, "I don't suppose you can tell me anything about them?"

"They're ancient lava seas, right?" D'vana said.

Gregory grinned. "Absolutely, yes. As you know," Gregory looked between D'vana and Sam, "when an asteroid hits the Moon it blasts a crater out of the surface. When the Moon was young, it was hit with enormous impactors that gave it these huge multi-ring basins. Later on, volcanoes flooded the lowlands with lava, covering up the craters in the lowlands and making everything mostly flat, whereas in the highlands, there's still lots of rugged cratery terrain."

D'vana stood up and let Sam have another look, but Gregory put his hand in front of Sam to stop him from taking a seat. He looked in the eyepiece, nudged the telescope slightly, stood back, and gestured for Sam to take a seat.

"Woah. That's big."

"So you see that sorta half-circle bit of mare sticking out of Mare Imbrium at something like the 5 O'Clock position?"

"Uh... yes."

"That's Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows. Not especially colorful, but you see that little like, kinda ridge at the border? What happened was as Mare Imbrium filled up with lava, it weighed the crust down, until the rim of the Iridum crater was low enough that lava would flow into it. The ridge there is that hidden little bit of crater rim folding the lava as it settled."

"I see," Sam said.

"That's so cool!" D'vana said. "Let me see!" She pushed Sam back in his seat and leaned over to the eyepiece. Gregory smiled, amused at this strange display, but a little nervous--she might nudge the telescope like that. Sam was too shocked to react.

"Now, at about the 12 O'Clock position, you see that brighter crater? When an impactor hits, it makes a huge cloud of rock vapor, right? The vapor condenses into glass beads, which rain down over the surface. That's how you get rayed craters. The one just on the south, ah, top edge of Mare Imbrium is called Copernicus."

"The guy who came up with geocentricity?" Sam said.

"Yep! Golly, you guys know your stuff."

"Not as much as you! How did you learn all this stuff?" D'vana said.

"Uh, heh, I guess it's just the uh, autism," Gregory said.

"Mood," Sam said.

Gregory left the pair to fight over eyepiece access for a brief moment to go look around the corner. He squealed a little bit and rushed back.

"OK, something fantastic is rising," Gregory said. Sam and D'vana stood up, but were surprised when Gregory squatted down and grabbed the handle on front of the rockerbox and one of the side-boards, and hoisted the whole telescope up. He carried it a few feet to the corner of the sidewalk and carefully put it down. Sam and D'vana followed him.

"It's funny, I was just gonna pack up before you two came along."

"How many people came before us?" Sam said.

"Oh uh, about 20, I think? Lotta people just see a strange man shouting about the Moon on the sidewalk and pass him by, I guess." Gregory said. He returned to his chair, grabbed it, and put it back in front of the telescope. This time he pointed towards some barely visible stars which had just cleared the skyline. "Now I have a real treat for y'all. This is going to be a little tough since we're in all the downtown lights." Gregory shifted from the finderscope to the eyepiece, and he replaced the eyepiece again. "This time, we're gonna use low power," Gregory said, quietly. He adjusted the focuser knob, and smiled. "There it is!"

D'vana took a seat first, and took a look through the telescope. The field of view was a dull, dim gray-blue, which matched the sky. A few stars filled the field of view going from one side to the other. And as her eye adjusted, she could see that in the middle of the field was a dim, ghostly gray nebula.

"Huh." D'vana said. "Interesting."

That response was apparently a little disappointing to Gregory. Before D'vana could get up, he spoke, "okay, so you're gonna want to use your averted vision for this one. And maybe use the OTHER eye that you didn't just use to look at the super bright moon."

"Averted vision?" Sam said.

"Sorta dart your eyes around the field of view. Or like, put your eyes on the edge of the field of view but pay attention to the middle. You'll be using the more light-sensitive cells in the outer parts of your retina, rather than the color-sensitive ones in the middle," Gregory said.

"Oh! Okay! That does it! It almost looks like it has wings!" D'vana said.

"Wow, that's... kind of amazing you can see that in these conditions," Gregory said. D'vana got up and let Sam take a look.

"Remember to use a different eye," Gregory said, noticing Sam put the same eye to the eyepiece.

Sam pulled back from the eyepiece and pointed to his left eye. "This scar isn't decorative."

If it weren't dark, Gregory would have noticed the scar, and D'vana and Sam would have noticed how pale Gregory had turned.

"I... I... I... uh... I-I'm... EEEE-EEEEE-EEEEEE-EEE-uh, s-sorry, I have an, uh, nervous tic d-d-d-d-d-d-isorder," Gregory stammered, twitching his neck.

"It's okay man, you're good, honest mistake," Sam said.

"Yeah you're good!" D'vana said.

Gregory continued stammering. "W-well, uh, I... the--"

"Woah, hey, that's a lot of stars!" Sam said.

"Do you see the nebula?" D'vana said.

"Oh hey! It's so dim," Sam said.

"Your e-eye is not so s-sensitive to dim light," Gregory said, "and the uh, color cells are even less sensitive, which is why it's gray. Despite what you see in pictures, most nebula appear even through very large telescopes as gray blobs. Galaxies and some clusters too. But they're a lot easier to see if you get out of the light pollution; this is just about the only nebula we can see from downtown."

Sam stood up, and D'vana sat down and took another look.

"So this is a star-forming nebula which is currently making new star systems as we speak," Gregory said, his confidence returning. D'vana's mouth was wide as she took in the view. Gregory walked closer to the telescope and held his hand out above D'vana's head to cast a shadow onto D'vana's eye and the eyepiece to block out the moon and streetlights.

"Wow, that's so cool that we can see that with our own eyes," Sam said.

"You see that tight little trapezium of four stars in the middle of the field of view?" Gregory said.

"Yeah," D'vana said.

"Those are all stars that were formed by the nebula. The brightest one there is an O-star, and its ultraviolet light is what's powering the nebula."

D'vana stared at the nebula. There was something weirdly familiar about it, like it had some importance to her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "What did you say this nebula was called?" D'vana said.

"Oh, it's Messier Forty-Two, the Great Nebula in Orion."

Great Nebula. The Great Nebula. Orion. It was starting to come together. A memory flew into D'vana's head of her childhood. The all-too-familiar and yet entirely alien ring of winter Bellbugs, and a sky darker than any she'd seen since, but glowing with a band of glittery white, and a puffy, winged cloud of gray, blue, and pink.

"It's in the Sword of Orion, one of the OB associations in the constellation Orion, which is uh, that right up there, probably the best constellation in the winter skies," Gregory continued, oblivious to D'vana's trance.

The Winter constellations. The three bright blue glowing stars which were the pointers of the Winter Constellations. What were their names?

Gregory was pointing out the stars to Sam. He pointed out four stars making up a rectangle: "These are Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph, and Rigel, and they're all more nearby stars, but beyond that is this complex of hot young stars," Gregory explained. "That's the Orion OB1 association, and the Belt stars are part of the same association as the nebula. They look like a line, but they're actually an equilateral-ish triangle. They're Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, with Alnilam being the slightly farther one."

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka? Something clicked in her inner ear and forced her to turn those words over in her mind. She *knew* Gregory had said some kind of arabic proper nouns, but they were morphed into something else. Something alien and familiar. She had been staring at the sky when it had all happened, hadn't she been? It was so long ago. The bright flash, and she fell into an unfamiliar place, all alone until her adoptive parents found her. A tear fell down D'vana's face, followed by a quiet sob.

Sam and Gregory both turned suddenly. Sam rushed to D'vana and put a hand on her shoulder. Gregory winced.

"Uh... ma'am, are you uh, okay?" Gregory said.

D'vana sniffled. "I'm... I'm sorry, I just... I'm a little emotional." She stood up and wrapped her arms around Sam, who hugged her back.

"Oh, that's uh, fine. Astronomy can be a profound experience, and uh..."

"Thanks for showing us these things," D'vana said, turning back to face Gregory. She looked back up at Sam, then forward at the sidewalk, and yanked his arm to get going.

"Oh, uh, bye. Oh! And! If you want to see more of these things with a bigger telescope, you should come to the college observatory!" Gregory hollered as the two got farther away. "We're open every clear friday night!"

With Sam and D'vana gone and the streets virtually empty, Gregory started to pack up his things, and carried his telescope back through the alley to his car, chanting "idiot, idiot," to himself. "No," he said, "not an idiot." He silently reassured himself that no, actually, they were having a great time, he's good at this.

He was very pleased when, a few weeks later, he saw their silhouettes appear on the steps in the dim red glow of the Observatory dome.