Old Tono, the sole keeper of the moon house, was reaching for a cupboard set way too high, same as every morning. Standing on her step stool, she muttered, “Whoever built you must’ve been a giant.” Tomorrow’s launch window would carry her back to Earth. Twelve years since she’d last set foot there. She wanted to pack up fast and be done with this stubborn old house for good.

The moon house holds exactly one keeper. Air, water, the garden plot — everything’s rationed for one person, no more. So when keepers change over, the outbound ship has to leave before the inbound one arrives. The two vessels never sit on the ground at the same time. Tono had landed here twelve years ago without ever seeing the face, hearing the voice, or learning the name of the keeper before her. There was simply no way to meet.

The handover was the house itself. Whoever left made sure to put things in order first — seeds in the garden, water stored up, the water heater primed and ready. That was the rule. But nobody ever told a keeper who was coming next. The manifest listed only a number and a weight.

The day Tono had arrived, she’d found a stack of old, well-worn step stools piled in the corner. Must’ve been quite the pack rat before her, she’d figured — some big guy, probably. Everything in the house sat way too high: the shelves, the mirror, the hooks by the door. Small as she was, Tono had spent twelve years at the mercy of that step stool. Up and down, up and down.

Now it was her turn to go. Following the rule, she set about preparing the house for whoever came next — seeds in the garden, water stored, the heating line checked. Then she paused for a while and wondered: what kind of person would it be this time?

Anyone who’d travel all the way out to the moon just to keep watch had to be sturdy. Some strapping young pioneer type, tall and broad-shouldered — that’s who Tono decided on, more or less without thinking about it. So she took the shelf she’d lowered over the years and put it right back up where it belonged. Raised the mirror, too. Raised the hook. “There you go — plenty high for you,” she sniffed.

“Tonoooo,” came the mission control voice, drifting lazily down from the wall speaker. It belonged to some young guy. “Next window’s in two hours. Better hurry with the loading.”

“I know, I know.”

“You’ll miss the next keeper, same as always.”

“Fine by me,” Tono said, cinching a strap around her bags. “No reason to owe somebody I’ve never even laid eyes on.”

Still, right as she reached the doorway, she stopped. In her hand was her own folding step stool — twelve years of company.

She looked back at the pile in the corner. All those old, worn stools, stacked one on another. A big man, she’d always figured. But if that were true — why were the shelves so high? A big man wouldn’t need a step stool at all.

Tono stood there a while, looking at the pile. Then, slowly, it struck her as funny. Whoever built those shelves that high had probably been a small old woman too. Someone who’d assumed, without any real reason, that the next keeper would be some strapping young pioneer. A small old woman, deciding that all on her own. And the one before her. And the one before that. Every single keeper raising shelves for a giant who never showed up, every one of them climbing that stool, up and down, up and down. Because none of them ever met, the same mistake just kept getting handed down the line.

Tono added her own stool to the top of the pile. She left the shelves right where she’d raised them — didn’t bother lowering them again. Somehow that felt like the funnier way to leave things. Instead, she tucked a scrap of paper into the stool. Leaving this here. Pretty sure the one before me wasn’t a giant either.

The shuttle lifted off the moon right on schedule. Through the window, climbing into the black sky, it passed the incoming ship at the exact moment their paths crossed. In the other window, a small silhouette — stretching up on tiptoe, one hand raised toward her. Under the other arm, a folding step stool.

Tono raised her hand back. No voice could carry that far. And even if it could, there was really only one thing worth saying. Go on, then. Up and down you go.

In the corner of a house built for a giant who never came, one more small stool joined the pile, and the stack grew just a little taller.