The Trellis

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Kyle refolded the napkins and pulled the tall water drop glasses back towards the plates. Lark wasn't due for two hours, and he'd changed the sign announcing her sixteenth birthday twice, switched placemats once, and dropped a knife on the floor. He paced.

Boot steps. Henry's signature slow shuffle identified him before he rounded the corner into the huge galley. The older man surveyed the perfect table, and his lips curled into a slow smile. “Quit worrying, Kyle,” he said. “She won't say so, but she'll be glad to see you.”

Kyle sighed. “I haven't been here much this year.” Henry watched over Lark when Kyle was visiting Charon. Too often.

Pluto was beautiful as it fell towards the windy dark of aphelion. Crystalline methane and nitrogen clouds sparkled as the light from the base hit them from below, illuminating a gauzy barrier between the frozen surface and the heavens. The clouds drifted across Charon's face. Charon never moved in the sky: directly overhead from where the trellis touched down, a brilliant white sphere where Earth's Moon would have been tiny and flat.

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