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The moon is the goddess of change, of transition. She changes light to dark and light again; she turns men to wolves; as Diana she transformed a man into a stag for daring to see her beauty.
And when a young Handmaid looks up at her, with hope in her heart for something to be different, the moon changes it for her.
And when Marena blinks, she is no longer in the suburban McMansion where she's been living for the past year, but a city.
The buildings reach twenty, thirty stories into the sky. Fairy lights shine from every balcony. Absolutely no one has coordinated their colors, which clash remarkably, or level of enthusiasm. An enormous sculpture of a snowflake made entirely of smaller snowflakes is next to a house belonging to a person who either failed to replace their broken fairy lights with ones that work or sarcastically set out one (1) bulb. One person put out a projector which shows beautiful nature scenes on the wall of their across-the-street neighbor, who had not decorated elaborately enough for that person's tastes.
There are no cars on the street, but there are a few dozen people. About half of people are walking; the other half are on bicycles, ebikes, or tuktuks, with a scattering of wheelchairs. They have brightly-colored hair and tattoos and elaborate makeup that makes them seem Cascadian. One person is entirely naked except for underwear covering her genitals; no one seems to find this remarkable.
Signs in the windows of the first-floor shops proclaim them be SNACKS AND NECESSITIES, or TEENAGERS' CLUB, or CAFE LENTIL, or OLD BOOK SMELL. (The latter is one word, and Marena may notice that the language she's reading is not English.)
No one seems to have noticed Marena.
No one* really cares about the Solstice. It's just... an astronomical thing. Proof of God's perfect clockwork of the universe. Not something special in and of itself. Not sacred.
*Correction: the Eyes care about the Solstice. It's one of the better nights for catching proselyting. This is why she planned to go by herself, and didn't go to anything bigger.
She had plans, anyway. She'd go to the park-- That Park-- again, with a bottle of cooking wine and some clearance cookies, and the knowledge she has no clue how to do a ritual (Hopefully an ignorant offering is still accepted.)
...and it appears that even just intending to counted for something? This. This is not Gilead. Or Cascadia, unless Cascadia decided to suddenly stop speaking English.
Half of her is irritated by how every single house has something out-- streets don't get coordinated unless little old ladies are going around putting the heavy on people about Insufficient Christmas Cheer[tm]. (Rock on, single fairy light guy. Stay strong, keep the faith.) Though she will forgive them a lot for the complete lack of Santa. There is not a single gaudy bishop punching bishop carrying a sack. No reindeer are sending messages that it's okay to be different, but not too different. And zero panopticon elves! Truly, it is a solstice miracle.
The Moon probably has her reasons for this, and she should probably get the lay of the land and try and suss out what it might be. She... probably has no local currency, and the teenager's club seems the place least likely to care about that. ('What's up, my fellow teens? I have definitely lived here my whole life and know what is going on. Snowflakes!')
In the teenagers' club, she immediately encounters a harried-looking twentysomthing woman in brown robes saying, "everyone, seriously, stop fucking* around, it is time to leave."
The teenagers, also variously brightly colored in hair and skin and makeup and clothing, seem to finally form something approximating a clump and head out the door.
*"Fucking" is expressed by saying "playing" with the syllable "hsssh" appended to the end.
Timing!
Brown robes are an interesting choice, considering the rest of the clothing outside, but someone's favourite colour has to be brown. She goes up to her, on the pure logic of her seeming to have some idea what's going on. "Uh. If someone was very lost, do you have suggestions for where they should go?"
"The nearest chuch is one block down and two to your left."
...she is not going to a church. Maybe this place is nicer about it (see: the lack of Santas) but still. There are so many, many reasons that she is not doing that. "Do you mind if I follow you guys a bit, before I do that?"
"Sure, we're having hot chocolate and cookies after."
And so the group is herded to the elevator. (The elevator is full of graffiti. No one seems to have noticed.)
... yeah, she'll do arbitrary things for cookies. She's very bribable, that way.
On a scale of one to ten, how blasphemous is the graffiti?
It looks less artistic and like someone got very angry at the concept of elevators.
The group exits the elevator and heads to the first apartment door and knocks, at which point it is revealed that the activity happening is caroling. Everyone seems mysteriously to know all the lyrics of the song already.
The upshot of the lyrics, insofar as Marena can catch them, is that the Teacher may or may not have actually existed and pretty much all the stories we tell about him are made up, but even if he didn't exist we can treat him as sort of a personification of all of the hundreds of people whose thoughts contributed to the Teaching coming into being.
??? IS THIS JESUS? ...ATHEIST JESUS?
HAS SHE BEEN BETRAYED.
She may not know the lyrics, but she is fully capable of doing her best on any repeated chorus. Isn't the Teacher cool if probably fake, tra la la la.
The group progresses to the next few apartments and sings to a variety of delighted people. There's a song about how listening to the Teacher listened to the logos inside his heart and so should you, and one about all the pagan gods bowing to the baby Teacher, and one about whether the Teacher's mother knew that the baby grabbing her finger was the most important person in history, and one instructing various inanimate objects to rejoice because the Teacher has brought us the love of the logos, and one about how nice it is to be cozy and warm under a blanket with a cup of tea and the person you love that almost manages to be nonreligious before it slips in thanks to the logos in the last verse.
Everyone is very good at singing-- they've clearly received a lot of training.
One of the people answering the door is fully naked, like, you can see his penis, and no one seems to find this remarkable.
Listening to your heart and babies, yaaaaaaaay. How did she fall into a goddamned youth group?
... though the little voice around here seems more pro-nudity? It's startling, but... cool. Even if she now feels incredibly overdressed, covering her ~sinful collarbones~.
(The cozy blanket song is cute).
For the next song they form into a semicircle. Everyone sings "here and now!" then, communicated by some system Marena doesn't understand, a person sings a line about a good thing. The lines scan and form couplets. The list of things that exist here and now includes desserts, makeup, the singer having a boyfriend (this results in widespread groaning), a new movie coming out, the end of malaria, treatments for sleep apnea, and stars.
One person sings about their favorite celebrity's love of cats and another person objects.
"Okay, but Lanna is a shithead."
"Lanna is not a shithead, you take that back--"
"Did you see the interview about her ex-boyfriend--"
The woman in the brown robes snaps, "we're singing."
The person being sung to laughs. "Teenagers."
Yep, toe to tip, this is a youth group. (Apart from someone just admitting to having a boyfriend???) But she has witnessed incredibly similar conversations about celebrity.
Sorry not sorry for being a fellow teen.
She hasn't worked out quite how people are signalling who's going to sing next, which that makes sense seeing as she's new. But it helps her plan. There's no way she's going to be able to come up with a rhyme under time pressure, but she won't have to if she 'misreads' who's meant to go next and jumps in at the beginning of a couplet.
It's a fool proof plan--
-- except for the fact that the first chance she has to jump in, she hasn't thought of what to sing. What comes out is warbly nonsense about nudity and not having to wear clothes if you don't want to.
The person who was supposed to sing awkwardly sings a note but stops when she starts singing.
No one comments on this and the song carries on, although there is a vague air that they are all being Tolerant Of People With Different Abilities.
She will take Gentle Tolerance and run with it.
No one is going to expect her to sing again! She has Won This.
After a while of more singing, everyone heads back to the teenagers' club and there is hot chocolate and tea and cookies and brownies and cake.
Brownies: proof of a kind and loving God/Logos/Moon/civilisation/delete-as-applicable.
"So, you long have you been going here?" She asks the stars-are-good person.
"I've been going to this one since I turned eleven, I like Sister Equality. You're new, did you move or are you just checking out new places?"
"Oooh, where did you live before? I've never lived anywhere but Sankrena."
She needs to go slap the her of thirty seconds ago. 'I'll just say I moved here. That doesn't sound crazy like the truth, and it's not like anyone would ask any follow up questions!' She can't even make up a plausible place name!
"I like to be an international woman of mystery. --hey, what's your favourite place is Sankrena?" Smooth as butter.
"Oh! I like the science fiction mural. Have you been yet?"
"Yeah, I feel you. You gotta get to know people. --You should go see the science fiction mural! I know everyone says that, but it really is as cool as it sounds."
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