This short story has now been unpublished as a standalone, but has been republished in the collection:
THE NIGHTMARIST AND OTHER STORIES

DIAMONDS ON THE MOON

Did you ever wish there was something more interesting on the moon than dust?

In a hibernating cave, something stirs on the dark side of the moon.
The creature is billions of years old but has no sense of what it is, nor if it has any purpose. Worse still, it can’t remember why it is hiding.
But then a miracle happens: the moon is turned into a paradise. A glorious, green garden now orbits Earth. An astronaut arrives to ask the question on everyone’s lips: what happened to the moon?!
On other moons across the solar system, dragons are wakening to terraform their hostile worlds. But where is the moon dragon? Why is it still hiding?

EXTRACT
The effect of the changing moon was monumental.  Science, philosophy and politics veered into unknown territory, like an unmanned moon buggy, wildly out of control, the world that lay beyond the horizon a terrifying unknown.  There was no question of not going back, no single moment of doubt, no time that was wasted before that astronaut came at last to a much-anticipated standstill on the moon grass and asked the question that everyone had asked – everyone who had looked up one clear night and puzzled over the new fuzziness of the moon that gave way so quickly to its riotous landscape of greens and blues and creamy cloud.  Its landscape of life.
What happened to the moon?
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WRITING
I wrote this for Neil Armstrong.