The Legend of Sun and Moon

“Olivia,” he says, smiling at me. “I’ve written a vow.”

He is wearing a cream colored suit, and there is an explosion of violets tucked into his breast pocket. He is so close to me I can smell them, and the sweet warmth of his skin. 

The minister bows his head and steps back, allowing us as much time as is required. After all, this is about me and him and no one else.



“Hunter,” I breathe, “I wrote one too.”

Sun had pearls for teeth, and his hair was made of tamed fire. He smelled of brimstone and bonfires and hearths burning too hot when he was high in the sky, and later, when he grew tired and slipped down below the Horizon to his Heavenly pillow, he smelled of sleepy summer mornings, and sand on a perfect summer’s beach. 

Moon had silver hair that she wore in braided loops around her annular cheeks. Her eyes were so dark someone could get lost, but when she was joyful stars could be seen, deep within them. Her dimples only flashed on nights when the constellations hid their many smiles, and allowed her an a capella romp through the skies. 

Some said Sun and Moon were opposites, fire and water, conflict and harmony, venture and repose. Some said that Sun and Moon were enemies, and each ochre and vermillion dawn and dusk evidence of the bloody battle fought time and time again for the honor of the heavenly pilgrimage. Some said Sun and Moon were lovers, forced apart, and the brief time when both could be seen in the very early and very late hours was fleeting and heart wrenching reunion, and the colors that the sky wept were passion and grief, joy indistinguishable from pain.

“When we first met, Liv hated me,” Hunter says, addressing the crowd but speaking for me alone. “We met at a law firm that will remain nameless for legal purposes-” he held briefly for laughter, smiling like the Chesire cat when it came on command- “and I’m pretty sure it was not love at first sight. 

“I was sitting at my desk on my first day as a paralegal and Liv came running in, glaring directly at me, although we had never seen each other before. 

‘You have a red mustang, don’t you,’ Liv said to me, no greeting, just immediate attack. I admitted that I did and she informed me that I had parked in her spot at the front of our building, meaning she had been forced to walk two blocks.”

Hunter pauses, and grins at me, and I know what he is going to say.

“Now, I apologized, of course, more out of concern for my own safety than guilt, but felt like I had to ask the burning question: How the heck did she know it was me who drove the offending vehicle?”

Hunter pauses again for laughter, and it rises like a wave, our friends and family clinging to every word of a story that most of them have heard many times before. 

“Do you know what Liv said then? She said, ‘I already know what kind of man you are,’ and then she stalked away, leaving me embarrassed and intrigued as hell.”

Hunter smiles into my eyes, and I feel myself glowing, joy radiating through my entire being. 

“I guess you liked what kind of man I was enough to end up right here with me,” he says, and my soul soars within my chest, like a second heartbeat of pure love. 

Sun and Moon were none of what the people believed, but that was intentional. If all the celestial mysteries were solved, the Heavens would lose its magnificence. 

“It’s true that for the first six months of working together, Hunter drove me to distraction,” I say, my words coming out like soap bubbles, round and sweet and fervently rehearsed on my tongue. “To his credit he never did park in my spot again, but he seemed to make a point of getting in my way. He would somehow always pick the exact moment I did to make coffee or use the microwave; he found himself on just the case I most wanted time and time again, although he swore it wasn’t intentional. 

“I think what infuriated me the most was that Hunter and I were polar opposites, but people always grouped us together,” I continue, finding my voice, trying to remember how it feels when I am in a courtroom, delivering a closing argument that I know I am about to win. 

I grin at the crowd, then into Hunter’s sparkling eyes, “Just look at us now,” I say, “I’m a prosecutor and this guy is a bleeding heart offense attorney.” Everyone laughs, like I knew they would, and I hear one of Hunter’s friends catcall uproariously. 

“For example,” I continue, “There was this huge trial that we were working on together- we were supposed to be researching these extremely obscure laws around identity fraud, and we were at eachothers throats.”

I blush, thinking of Hunter’s teeth against my neck just last night, my hands bracketing his insufferable spine. 

“Finally Hunter snapped one day and asked me how it was possible for someone completely different from himself to still be so smart, and I was shocked, because it was the most egotistical thing to say, and it was the first nice thing he had ever said to me.”

I beam up into Hunter’s glowing smile, and he cups his hand around mine, encircling the bouquet of marigolds with me, sharing the weight. I don’t say this aloud, but I remember how my heart raced that night in the office after he spoke, and surrounded by Chinese food take out and exasperation, I suddenly saw Hunter in an entirely different way.

“You should have known I was already falling for you by then,” he whispers, and although everyone hears, they grace us by pretending they didn’t, allowing us to lose ourselves in the memory.

Before the world began, there was just Father Time and cool black silence, until he grew sick of the solitude and cast a spell, freeing thousands of stars from the unknown confinement of long dead universes. For eternity, the stars burned and died for each other, and that was enough, until Moon was born from their desire to see beyond the argent edges of the spellbound skies. Moon was beautiful, but her beauty exhausted her, and she would grow thin during her time of rest, and the stars would shine brighter to compensate for her apathy. When she was rejuvenated, her full smile would enlighten corners of the universe that the stars would not see alone. That is how Earth was discovered.

A star forgotten from a thousand times ago, Earth had grown heavy and waterlogged and had fallen to a dark corner of the Universe. When Moon’s light found her craggy mountains and sunken seas, she came alive again under her silver beam. 

For countless lifetimes Moon swelled and diminished and the stars burned bright as they could to compensate for her times of absence. Below, Earth held life of the smallest forms, as despite being undeniably stunning, Moon was too cold to truly kindle creation of the highest order. 

“Liv’s mother passed away at the same time that my younger brother was killed in Iraq,” Hunter says, and I hear the collective sharp inhale of the guests, feel my own lungs tighten. Hunter’s eyes never leave my face, and after a minute, I can breathe again. 

“I didn’t find out until a month later, because the only thing that changed about her was that she worked harder and faster than ever, and although for a little bit it seemed that amicability between us might miraculously occur, she suddenly started hating me again.”

I swallow hard, I have sworn not to cry until the end, because there is only room for tears of joy today, grief is certainly not on our guest list. 

“On the other hand,” Hunter says, smiling sheepishly, “I was an emotional wreck. I was helping a lawyer prepare a case where a brother was suing a brother, and every time I tried to work on it, I would start to cry. Eventually my pride gave out and I came crawling to Liv, begging her to take it from me. She agreed, and I found myself giving her my grief along with the case, spilling my loss to her like somehow she would be able to absorb a little bit of it so it wouldn’t drown me completely.

“That was when she told me about her mother, in the most detached and professional way you could imagine, of course, but I saw myself reflected in her eyes. 

“Her grieving process was as different from mine as you could possibly get, but I knew under all the stoicism her heart looked just like mine.”

Hunter pauses, and looks into my eyes for several heartbeats, making sure I am okay. I give him a subtle nod, telling him that I am okay, as long as he stays right here. 

“I needed Liv,” Hunter says, his voice quiet but carrying without doubt. “I was lost in my own sadness, and I had forgotten that my own life was going to go on even if my brother’s had ended. Liv’s perseverance and strength reminded me that it was possible to go on. Her world had crashed down around her shoulders too, but her back was so strong, and she just held it all up.”

He brushes a kiss on my brow.

“It turned out she could carry me too, that there was room for one more burden.”

Sun was born from Earth’s prayer for bounty. He burned into existence and made Moon close her pearly eyes against his rageful glow. He shone so terribly that the Moon hid her face and the stars retreated behind a black curtain, their fingertips singed. Sun laughed joyfully, and plants grew and grew but the oceans dwindled and dried and the humans who had been baked to life from their clay sleep by Sun pleaded for reprieve. 

“Hunter taught me that if I allowed myself to feel, it didn’t mean I would break. At first I was afraid of his raw grief, because it made my own sorrow scream to be felt, but eventually, and against my wishes, it became cathartic.

“Hunter asked me on ten dates before I said yes,” I say, and the crowd laughs, relief evident at the lighter shift of tone. “Finally, I agreed, but I was terrified. Hunter was all the things I wasn’t, boisterous and outwardly joyful and heartbroken, respectively.

“We met at a bar, and I was so nervous I could tell that I was being cold.” I pause, then grin at Hunter. “Hunter would probably say I was being absolutely frigid, and he wouldn’t be wrong.

“Finally, after nearly an hour of really bad conversation, he threw in the towel. I remember he told me that it was okay, we could leave now, he was done pulling my teeth. I was embarrassed and annoyed, and although I almost convinced myself it was him I was annoyed with, the jury just wasn’t buying that.

“We were walking down this little street, and I remember all of the sudden in front of us we saw all these paper lanterns on the ground, they looked like magical pumpkins, and I thought of Cinderella, and the prince who wouldn’t stop until he found her. 

“Hunter picked one up, and I will remember for the rest of my life the way he cradled that lantern in his hands, how his face was glowing from the candle within, how all I could think of was what it would feel like to be that lantern.”

When I pause and look into Hunter’s eyes, he is illuminated, and I imagine that night he swallowed part of that lantern, that it has waited in his soul until now to burn again.

“His eyes met mine over the lantern, and I knew I was completely and utterly damned, or blessed, that depends on your view of unintended salvation.”

Finally, Sun came to Moon, so close that she shrank to her smallest form and tried to slice him, spill out the lava of his soul and free them from his unintentional destruction. Sun asked Moon if they could share the Heavens, if her cool touch could follow his burning grace to soothe the new and quickly dying magnificence of wonderful Earth. She agreed.

“I saw it in Liv’s eyes when she stopped fighting her heart, that night with the lanterns. I walked over to her, the way you walk when you don’t want to startle a deer on the side of the road, knowing at any second it can run away from you, or terrifyingly, right towards you. 

“I put the lantern into her hands, and kissed her. And shockingly, wonderfully, she kissed me back.”

Earth grew and flourished and life bloomed and the mountains groaned with it. The people greeted Sun with praises and built magnificent things under his beacon, and danced with joy and dreamed under Moon’s gentle prayer. For the first time, everything was perfect.

“Olivia Grace Walters, do you take this man?”

“I do.”

Sometimes, in the early dawn hours, the people would see Moon, pale and secretive, hiding in the corner of the morning sky, the sun turning her curves pink. Before they could truly wonder at the sense of it, she would be gone, and Sun would burn shamefully hot, making them look away, embarrassed at being caught, sure that it had just been a trick of the light. 

“Hunter James Brown, do you take this woman?

“I do.”

Sometimes at night Moon would rise early, wistfully watching Sun with her cat eyes, and he would push out his chest and give his lion’s roar and an extra hour of daylight might cling to the mountaintops, even after the valleys gave way to the dusk

“You may kiss the bride.”

The people on Earth believed that when Sun set, he was pouring out his heart for Moon, begging her to turn around and sink back below the ocean horizon with him, to swim in everlasting waves. They believed that sometimes, when the skies turned gossamer pink and lavender caught in the swirls of cloud, and Sun set without his usual scarlet fanfare, it meant that Moon had bestowed upon him a kiss as she passed him by. Those mornings were usually the most beautiful, the horizon a thousand colors, Sun’s blush never hidden. 

Due to the bargain struck between Sun and Moon to ensure the survival of Earth, the only time they ever truly came together was during an Eclipse. The people would vow not to look, but could never resist peeking up. It was both terrifying and wonderful, and some believed that when Moon covered Sun they were fighting, battling for the sole position in the terrestrial skies. Most people knew it was a love story though, that it had been from the beginning. 

They knew that love like that was too beautiful to be looked at with the naked eye, and they saw the utter joy in the wondrously brilliant crescent of eternally resilient sun. 

“I love you,” I whisper against his lips, and they throw rice on us, so out of the corner of my eye it looks like a thousand shooting stars, wishes granted for innumerable lifetimes.