“It’s beautiful out here at night, isn’t it?” I asked.

 

“I guess so,” Monica whispered. “It’s so dark I can’t see a thing.”

 

We sat next to each other on the bench seat of our ATV parked in the middle of a hundred-acre pasture, the only people for miles around. It was nearly midnight, the time a full lunar eclipse would occur.

 

“Your eyes will adjust soon enough,” I said. Distant points of light filled the night sky, and more stars became visible as the moon’s crescent shrank, slowly consumed by our own shadows. The only sounds on that summer’s eve were the chirping of insects and the distant moo of cattle in the field.

 

“I see it now,” Monica said, craning her neck to gaze upward through the open top of the little four-wheeler.

 

“See what?” I asked.

 

“The beauty,” she replied. “Up there, in the sky.”

 

I leaned back to see what she saw — a broad drama of diffuse red, blue, and white, brushed across the broad, black canvas of the sky.

 

“The Milky Way.”

 

As the moon got darker, the stars grew brighter, and we perceived more of the nocturnal landscape. Tiny objects caught the starlight and became terrestrial constellations, each one twinkling for a moment, then retreating into the darkness. Drops of early morning dew shimmered in the grass like diamonds. The iridescent wings of flying insects streaked across our vision. Silent critters watched us from the woods just beyond, their eyes like binary stars hovering between the tree trunks.

 

“What are those, babe?” Monica asked, pointing to the far end of the pasture.

 

I smiled and said, “It’s the herd. The cows must realize we’re out here. They always think we have food, even in the middle of the night, I guess.” As we watched them, a sea of bright eyes slowly jostled toward us.

 

Monica and I sat quietly for a while, enjoying the peace, wrapped in the cover of night. Just as the first faint crescent reappeared on the lunar orb, I asked, “Do you think there are people up there somewhere? Or something like us — intelligent beings?”

 

“I do,” said Monica.

 

“Which one, do you think? Which star?” I waited wistfully, hoping she’d choose a special star for us to wish upon.

 

Monica let out a surprised yelp.

 

“What the…?” I began.

 

When I looked, a small four-legged creature stood in the grass just outside Monica’s open door.

 

“Babe, look. It’s only Snowshoe nudging you.”

 

Snowshoe was our eldest calf, born last winter during the coldest night of the year. I always warned Monica not to name the beef cattle (it’s just a bad idea), but she had a special place for this one after it miraculously survived a difficult birth in a deep, icy snow bank last December.

 

When Monica placed her hand on the mischievous calf’s head, it let out a long, undulating bellow, quite unlike any bovine call I’d heard before.

 

“What’s wrong with him?” Monica asked.

There was an odd quality to that calf. Not just the sounds it made — low, rhythmic rumbling noises — but also its eyes. They were brimming with something besides just starlight. Something almost... intelligent.

“Listen to him,” Monica said in awe. “I swear it sounds like he’s trying to… talk to us.”

 

Just then, the light suddenly went out of the calf’s eyes and it fell heavily to the turf. Monica silently stepped out of the ATV, I assumed to check on the poor animal. But she just stood over it for a while, saying nothing at all.

 

“Monica? What is it, babe? What happened?”

 

By then, the herd had surrounded our vehicle. They stared at us with those odd eyes, not quite bovine and not quite human, and they all bleated the exact weird sequence of not-cow sounds I’d heard from Snowshoe.

 

Terrified, I called out to my wife, “Monica. What’s happening? Get back in the ATV and let’s get out of here. Now!”

 

Monica turned around to face me. To my horror, she had the same strange eyes as the cattle. She looked up to the brightening sky and pointed to a specific point of light in the belt of Orion.

 

In a low, gravelly voice, more like the bleating cattle than her own, my wife said, “That one.”

 

The herd grew silent while Monica continued to speak.

 

“You asked which star we are from. It is there. And we have come a very long way to meet you.”

All around us, the cattle began falling to the ground with thunderous plops, their bright eyes blinking and then extinguishing when their legs buckled beneath them. My stomach fluttered as if a thousand insects swarmed within me. I could still feel the steering wheel in my hands, still see through my eyes, and still recognize the terror in my heart. But my will belonged to something else. My soul, if such a thing exists, had been taken from me.

I felt myself start the engine and switch to four-wheel drive, then roll away, bumping over inert bovine bodies. Without knowing why, I steered toward a glow on the horizon, the telltale marker of a city of thousands of inhabitants. A newer, bigger herd to conquer.

Monica sat beside me again and placed her hand on mine. Outwardly, we smiled at each other in anticipation. Inside, we silently screamed.