Spark and Perl go looking
The ground has gone the colour of rust.
So have my paws.
We are standing in the Earth’s shadow.
The whole Moon is inside it.
Then why is it not black?
Look up. The Earth is covering the Sun, and the Earth’s edge is on fire.
That ring is every sunrise and every sunset on Earth, all at once. It is the only light we have.
So from up here it is the EARTH eclipsing the Sun.
It is. And the people down there are looking up at us.
This is taking hours. The dark part of the Sun’s eclipse took minutes.
The Earth’s shadow is far bigger than the Moon’s. We have a long way to cross.
Everyone down there is seeing something a bit different, then — the way they did in the eclipse of the Sun.
No. The Moon itself has changed colour.
Ah — it is not a shadow sliding over them. It is us that went red.
So they all see the same thing.
Every single one of them who is awake and outside. Half the world at once.
More easily than a solar one — every couple of years from any one garden, and you need nothing but your eyes.
It happens at night, so you may have to ask to be woken up.