RIDING THE LAND WAVES

I wasn’t supposed to feel anything.

That’s rule number one in the brochures. Rule number two is don’t name the rocks. Rule number three is leave before you start calling the planet “it” instead of “target.”

Tourists like me don’t get attached. We’re collectors. We skim the edge of dying stars and drink radiation cocktails on moons that will crack in a million years. We film the disasters. We ride the gravity. We leave before the world has a chance to remember our faces.

Earth was supposed to be a two-day stop. Check the box: Young Terrestrial, Post-Impact, High Tidal Activity. Post it to the archive. Get out.

But the second my ship tore through the ash layer, I knew the archive was wrong.

The sky wasn’t a sky.

How do you describe a wound that’s still open? The whole dome above me was purple and sick orange and thick with dust that never settled. Four point four billion years and this place still smelled like something had just been hit. Because it had.

Theia.

That’s what the old charts called it. A Mars-sized thing that slammed into Earth and knocked a chunk of both of them into orbit. That chunk was right there now. Hanging low. Too low. The Moon. Except it wasn’t a moon yet. Not the calm, pale thing humans would later write poems about. This was a ball of magma with a fresh scar, still cooling, still glowing like a coal someone dropped too close to dry grass.

And it was close.

Closer than it had any right to be.

I could feel the pull in my teeth.

The ship’s console was going crazy. Tidal coefficient off the charts. Gravitational shear: lethal. Orbital period: 5 days. Day length: 16 hours.

“Best ride in the galaxy,” I muttered, because that’s what we say. That’s the joke. “Land waves.”

I’d ridden land waves before. On Io. On a few young exoplanets that were still figuring out how to be solid. It’s like surfing, except the wave is a continent and the ocean is rock. You time it right, you feel like a god. You time it wrong, you become part of the geology.

I set the ship down on a plateau that wouldn’t be a plateau in ten minutes. The landing struts sank. The ground was already moving under me.

Up.

Down.

Up again.

Forty feet. Maybe more. The whole crust breathing.

Magma cut across the horizon in bright, angry lines. The air was sulfur and ozone and something metallic that coated the back of my throat. No oceans. No plants. No sound except the groan of stone and the hiss of gas escaping from cracks that opened and closed like mouths.

I stepped out.

My boots hit ground that was still deciding if it wanted to be ground.

And that’s when I laughed.

Nervous. Stupid. Because that’s what you do when you’re scared and alone and the universe is too big.

“Alright, Earth,” I said out loud. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The ground rolled.

I staggered. Caught myself on the ship. My heart was doing that thing where it forgets to beat between beats.

This was good. This was the point.

So why did my chest feel tight?

I started walking. The recorder on my wrist was already logging everything. Temperature. Pressure. Seismic activity. The numbers were insane. The Moon was dragging the lithosphere around like wet paper.

I named a crater as I passed it. “That’s going to be a bad one,” I said. “I’ll call you Bruise One.”

Tourist habit. Don’t name the rocks.

Don’t name the rocks.

The shaking got worse.

Not the rhythmic rise and fall of the land waves. This was different. Jagged. Wrong.

It started in my feet and climbed up my legs and settled behind my eyes.

And then I heard it.

Not with my ears.

Under my bones.

A sound like metal tearing. Like a child crying in a room full of fire. Like something had been born and the first thing it learned was hurt.

I stopped.

The recorder kept beeping. The ground kept moving.

But inside me, everything went quiet.

Because that wasn’t geology.

That wasn’t tides.

That was a voice.

“The hell,” I whispered.

The ground answered.

A ripple went through the basalt, a shudder that wasn’t part of the wave pattern. It was local. It was aimed at me.

I took a step back. My boot came down on stone that was suddenly hot. Too hot.

“Okay,” I said. Louder. “Okay, I hear you.”

The shaking stopped.

Just for a second.

One full, impossible second where the whole planet held its breath.

And in that second, I felt it.

Pain. Ancient. Blinding. The memory of an impact so big it cracked a world in half. The confusion of waking up and not knowing where your other half went. The rage of being alone in a sky that wouldn’t stop pulling at you.

The Moon.

It was screaming too, but from far away. This was closer. This was from down here.

Earth was awake.

Not all of it. Not yet. But a piece. A fragment of awareness trapped in the crust, in the mantle, in the places where the rock was still liquid and remembering what it was like to be whole.

And it was hurting.

Protocol says leave.

Protocol says you don’t interfere with planetary evolution. You observe. You document. You don’t talk to it.

Varn would’ve already been back in his ship. Varn always follows protocol.

Varn and I used to ride land waves together. Until he decided the universe was a spreadsheet and feelings were a rounding error.

“Hey,” I said. To the ground. To the pain.

My voice cracked.

“Hey. I hear you.”

I knelt. Pressed my bare palm to the basalt. It burned. I didn’t pull away.

The shaking started again, but softer. Testing. Like a hand reaching out and pulling back.

“What’s your name?” I asked. Stupid question. Planets don’t have names. Not yet.

The ground pushed up against my hand. Just a little.

A question back.

I swallowed. My throat was dry.

“I’m Lyra,” I said. “I’m just... visiting.”

Another push. Softer.

Curious.

Something in my chest broke.

“You’re hurt,” I said. “I know. I’m sorry. That thing that hit you... that was awful.”

The response was immediate. A jolt. Anger. Grief. The memory of fire.

I flinched but didn’t move my hand.

“I know,” I whispered. “I know. But you’re still here. And that’s... that’s something.”

The land wave rolled through again. This time I rode it. Let my knees bend and moved with it instead of fighting.

Up.

Down.

And the pain under my hand eased, just a fraction.

“Can you do that?” I asked. “Can you... ride it? Instead of breaking?”

No answer. Or maybe the answer was the way the next wave didn’t knock me down.

Above me, the sky flickered.

Not lightning. Something else. A faint shimmer, like the air itself was remembering color.

Aurora. This early? It shouldn’t be possible. The magnetosphere was barely there.

Unless...

“Are you doing that?” I asked. “For me?”

The ground warmed under my palm.

I laughed then. Really laughed. Tears in my eyes and I don’t know why.

“You’re impossible,” I said. “You’re four billion years old and you’re already trying to make pretty lights for a stranger.”

The plateau shifted. A new crack opened ten feet away, but it veered off, away from me. Deliberate.

Careful.

Oh.

Oh no.

I pulled my hand back. Stared at my palm. Red, but not blistered.

“You’re listening to me,” I said.

The world didn’t answer with words. It answered by not killing me.

That should’ve been enough. It should’ve been everything.

But then my comms crackled.

“Lyra.”

Varn’s voice. Cold. Precise. Exactly the same as it was the day he told me we were done.

“Report,” he said. “And tell me you’re not doing something stupid.”

I looked down at the rock. At the faint glow where my hand had been.

“Hey,” I whispered to Earth, too quiet for the comms to pick up. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

The ground gave one last, small push against my boots.

Like a nod.

Like stay.

And above us, the wounded Moon kept pulling.