Aurelia Aurita

The sound of woodland creatures fills the night air. Situated at the edge of a dark, remote lake is a young astronomer, Rentaro Harukaze. He has been camping out in the area for days, waiting in anticipation to spot a comet that hasn’t been seen for centuries. He doesn’t sleep but instead spies through his telescope, gazing at the stars dotting the black sky with a big smile on his face. “Five days I’ve camped out here, five nights I’ve been looking up, but I’m sure tonight I’ll see that comet!” he spoke to himself, recording whatever he says on his phone. “What a nice night out! It might just be me, but the stars look even brighter than before! I think I can see Miss Vega and Mister Altair having fun just in time for the Star Festival!” 

He keeps his eyes glued to the sky. “I wish I could share this moment with someone. All my friends are so busy.” he spoke almost longingly. “At least when I get back to civilization for the Star Festival, I’ll have something to show them.”

Suddenly, he hears a loud thumping from a nearby diesel train about a hundred paces to his right, and he takes his eye off the telescope for the first time in hours. The train was there long before he arrived, abandoned and left to the elements; thick vines creeping over the chassis, giving it a woven appearance, and holes rusted through the hull. “Must be animals.” He puts his eye back on the lens. Another thump echoes from the derelict, but this time he keeps his eye on the sky. “Just animals. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.” he said to himself, continuing to spy the night sky.

His concentration is shattered as the train car falls onto its side, dust from the ground filling the night sky. “There’s no way that’s just from a fox.” He turns on his flashlight to investigate the wreckage. He shines light through the dusty windshields, and can barely see past the dust and lichen. He circles around to the rusty wheels and finds nothing but freshly-pulled roots. “The wind must’ve just caused it to lean over and fall over.” He says unconvincingly before walking back to his telescope.

He resumes his search but notices a soft white glow emanates from the right edge of the lens. “Light pollution!” he thought when he takes his eye off to see a crackling white light glow from the edge of the water, close to the fallen train. “What’s that? Is it an algae bloom?” Suddenly, tendrils burst from the water and grapple onto the train like hydraulic cables. 

The tentacles are thin, lined with frilly white membranes, and electric arcs surges along their length, electrifying the train’s hull on contact and burning off the vegetation that once wrapped it into little more than black ash. Rentaro backs away in fear as the tendrils drag the train into the water like hydraulic tow lines, slowly but surely. “Wha- what is this?!” Rentaro switches from the recording app to the camera to capture this scene, just when even more tentacles grab the next empty train car behind the previous. “I’m out here stargazing at…” he struggles to think of his next words as this strange phenomenon happens before his eyes. “…Look what started happening next to me! It came from the water!”

As soon as the first train is pulled into the lake, another set of tendrils push out a pile of carefully-carved scrap metal, their edges burned as if they were separated with a plasma cutter. Rentaro backs away as the metal starts piling up; wheels, glass panels, rusted metal sheets, and miscellaneous greebles from the trains. “I’m not sure what’s down there in this lake, but it wants the abandoned trains!” Suddenly, the rest of the lake starts to glow brighter and brighter, turning the lake into a watery moon on Earth, and Rentaro turns his camera to capture the scene, seeing a thin, bell-shaped membrane breach the water. “It’s… a giant jellyfish?”

A massive jellyfish sail rests atop the water, the diameter of which is the size of a small office building, filling up most of the lake’s surface area. Rentaro stares at the eerie beauty of the jellyfish’s glow, but the moment is cut short when the water explodes, raining lake water everywhere. Quickly more tendrils breach, lifting a blackened, exploded diesel engine that the jellyfish throws into the trees behind Rentaro. He stares at the clump of splintered trees behind him, smoke from the wrecked engine seeping into the air. “Did you see that?! My friends aren’t gonna believe this when I get back to them!” he says this before feeling a bright light touch his shoulder, and the sound of crackling electricity nears his ears.

Rentaro turns around and is met by two tendrils pointed right at him, like the colossal jellyfish senses his presence. “If… I get back to them.” He could do nothing but stare back at the tendrils, leaving himself at the giant creature’s mercy. “Uh… hi…?”

In response, the tendril to Rentaro’s left waves back, confirming that the jellyfish knows he’s there. Instinctively, Rentaro waves back at the tendrils with trembling hands. The glow dies down as the jellyfish sinks down into the lake depths, slinking back its tendrils into the water with whatever parts of the train it salvaged. And with that, the lake falls quiet once more, with the regular chirps and croaks of woodland creatures taking a moment to resume. Rentaro’s awe of the situation fades into shock as his eyes roll back and he faints.

The moment his unconscious body hits the ground, a white streak flies across the sky before blinking away. Once he awakens from his shock-induced sleep, he may not have a memory of the comet he wanted to see, but he still has the memory of a once-in-a-lifetime event that he won’t soon forget.