Orrery of Fallen Moons — Lunar Dragon Astronomers Reference Sheet

The story of Orrery of Fallen Moons

A fictional story inspired by the artwork.

Once each winter the smallest moon fell off the orrery. The six dragons usually found it under the carpet, polished its brass surface on a sleeve, and returned it to its wire. This year the apprentice who retrieved it noticed tiny scratches across one hemisphere. They spelled the name of a village.

Nobody in the observatory knew that name. The crystal-winged astronomer turned through the old registers until she found a receipt for six brass spheres. Below it someone had penciled a request for the return of a seventh. The apprentice held the little moon to the window. Through a pinhole in its shell he could see daylight on the far wall.

By lantern light the hole projected an entire street onto the ceiling. Six dragons lay on their backs counting the houses. In the last window a tiny figure waved. The village was a traveling shadow theater, packed away inside a prop by its maker and mistaken for part of the machine ever since.

They replaced the missing moon with a plain wooden bead. On the observatory steps that evening the apprentice lit the little brass theater for the public. A woman in the front row recognized the figure waving from the window. Her grandfather had always signed his work that way.

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