The Art of Naming Moons (Or: Why You Should Never Trust a Bureaucrat in Boots)

The planet Heptara is surrounded by seven moons, one of which is referred to as "Garuja". There are many things that are poorly understood about Garuja. Most of them involve the lizards.

The moon itself makes an unremarkable first impression. What you notice first is the sand. It gets everywhere - into your food, your instruments, your thoughts, and eventually your understanding of why anyone would choose to be here at all. The only structures breaking the endless orange horizon are small, sturdy huts scattered across the wasteland — shared by the nomadic people who have walked these sands for generations and the soldiers of a slowly deteriorating military base.

Soldiers and nomads are very different kinds of people. But the biggest difference between them was not their language, their culture, or their mission. It was their feet.

The Legend of Gah'ru-ja

The desert moon is home to a quite small, very easily offended species of lizard. These lizards do not like being stepped on.
When a barefoot nomad accidentally trod on a lizard, the lizard would defend itself. Teeth would meet toe.
The nomad would hop around on one foot, clutch their bleeding toe, and yell: "Gah'ru-ja!"
In the local nomadic dialect, this is not a grand name. It is not a poetic description of the landscape. It literally translates to: "Damn it, a lizard bit my toe again!"

The soldiers, marching around the base in their heavy boots, heard this exclamation constantly. Every time they passed a nomad near a sandstorm hut, someone seemed to be hopping on one foot and shouting "Gah'ru-ja!"

The military mind is a wonderful thing, but it is not always flexible. The cartographers back at the base needed a name for the moon to put on their official starcharts. They noted the frequency of the word. They admired its sharp, exotic sound. They assumed it was an ancient, sacred word for "homeland" or "sacred dust."
And so, with the grand stroke of an official military pen, the moon was logged into the database as "Garuja".
The base is almost forsaken now, a few troops and an oversized antenna are the remnants of a military endeavour that found nothing to exploit in the ever-grinding sand. But the name stuck.

Today, as the only new visitors to the moon, every now and then heavy-booted soldiers can be seen arriving at the battered landing pads. Some of them will look up at the sky, check their digital map, and proudly tell a comrade, "Finally, Garuja!"
And every single time, the local nomads will look down at the traveler's armored, thick-soled feet, blink in utter perplexity, and wonder how on earth a lizard could possibly bite through that much leather.

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