The thing about planets and wheels was this: they were both, generally speaking, round and they both, generally speaking, were meant to turn. The Church of the Last Sun knew this, and the Adept of the Church of the Last Sun (being an adept, as it were) knew this as a result.

Today, however, the Adept was confronted with a theological conundrum that left him nothing to do but scratch his head. Something had landed in the mudflats on the banks of the river down the hill from the church.

That something was a wheel.

And it had fallen from the sky.

The Adept had watched its descent, burning, sparking, flaring, growing, until it buried itself in the mud and leaned, threatened, then steadied. It was massive, the wheel, and it looked as though he could lean out the church door and touch it. The Adept didn't lean out the church door. He didn't dare.

It felt like breathing sacrilege. Like waltzing on blasphemy.

It was tempting.

No one else was around. The monks hadn't risen, still deep in their slumber, dreams being siphoned into pipettes in preparation for the morning offering. The Adept had not yet gotten to the dream extraction stage and was a little bit glad of this. He liked his dreams, and frankly, was afraid more than just dreams would be taken.

The wheel, though, didn't look like it would take anything from him but awe. Awe made it more than a mere wheel, made it a Wheel because he should give it the capitalization it deserved. Big, brazen, meteoric. The Adept felt a bit meteoric himself and startled to realize he'd begun the descent to the river's edge. Somehow, somewhen, his feet had walked off without him.

He didn't need to get close to see something even more startling than the giant's smile of the Wheel spanning over his head. Paint streaked its surface, mottled and pitted and deep-as-the-sea green-blue. The Adept knew that color, knew it like his own eyes, like the yellowness of his own teeth. It was the same deep-as-the-sea green-blue as Old Bastion.

The monks, being dreamers as well as Dreamers, gave their attention to more than the morning. They loved the night sky too, its secrets, its celestial menagerie. They studied the stars, the planets, the whole lost court of the Last Sun. Every night they gathered beneath the glittering crown of that court, praying that it might find the Last Sun once more.

Which is why the Adept knew with a thrill of panic that the Wheel was the exact same deep-as-the-sea green-blue as Old Bastion. Which is why the Adept knew the Wheel and Old Bastion were the same. And if Old Bastion wasn't a planet, what exactly were they all staring at every night?

The Adept held his head and breathed hard and careful and decided it was time to wake the monks.