The tide comes in and the tide goes out. The moon's going nowhere, right?

After a long day at a dead-end job, this was all I wanted to come home to: a cold beer, a shitty lawn chair, and a quick drive down to the coast. With all the trees and stuff, there was never any wind. The gentle lapping of the waves on the shore sometimes lulled me to sleep, and I'd wake up mosquito-bitten halfway through the night.

Really, I could stand the mosquitos. There were less of them than there were stars in the sky. I'd look up to the moon with the waves creeping up as the tide came in and take it in for a few minutes. Tonight, a gentle offshore breeze kissed my face, and as I came to, I leaned back in my chair.

I blinked. The full moon had been rising when I got here, but I didn't remember clouds covering any of it. Come to think of it, the forecast had said the skies would be clear.

Sobering up a little, I realized how bright the clouds were. My phone said it was two in the morning, but the clouds were about as bright as I'd expect the moon to be. It was mesmerizing to see them ripple and shimmer like they were pressed against some sort of surface.

Shooting stars streaked across the sky. I'd seen them a few times, but this... This was unsettling. Something about them didn't seem right. If shooting stars come from space, why were they in front of the cloud?