Cruisy McCruiseface promised the moon.

Polar bear white, artic foxes with button noses.

Snow hares zig when you zag.

Drony McDroneface searched in the thinner cold air.

Day night day, on the cruise ship’s demand.

Joysticks spindled innards into slewy turns.

Down crevasses and over the high pass.

They were not there.

No bear.

No bear print.

No red slayed like an oily slick coated the sun and the moon.

Then the hare. There she jumped.

Cows and hares and tortoises jumped over and out.

Drony followed, entranced.

Operator lost in the beige haze of shipbound horizon.

On the ship, they now play ten-year-old nature videos for inspiration.

Old bear, old hare, old fox.

Bernd and Emma. Clayton and Doug. Julie and Annabelle.

They paint watercolor blood into icicle wash.

Lemmings with easels at Cruisy’s stern.

Polar sunglasses to cut the glare.

Breakers force meltlands apart.

Vixen race across the rag.

Drony remembers them all, their beady eyes, petrol fumes, desire to hunt alive.

On the other side of the moon, there’s judgment day.

Drowned animals roam in the Thunderdome.

Drony shivers.

The signal comes.

Drony goes in.