The Sun, the Moon, and the deep, dark Sea

Before the Beginning, when the world was mostly rocks and beasts, and much less interesting but altogether more quiet—the Moon loved the Sea.

She loved them most terribly. With every intake of her even breath, she watched the tide pull inexorably closer, and with every exhale, observed the lapping of their gentle waves. The Moon wanted nothing more than to speak to them, to learn the rhythms of their froth and blue. And so, after a long mustering of courage, she approached her mother: The Centre of All Things.

"The Sea?" exclaimed her mother, aghast at the suggestion. "Surely there is something more suitable—the mountains, or the valleys."

"I do not want the mountains," she replied. "They are stern, and do not change."

"So you would take the Sea? That roguish weathervane? If change is what you seek, the wind is much more suited."

"The wind's change is restrained," came her reply. "I could predict his every whisper."

"The Sea would love you for a moment, and drown you in the next. Perhaps the sky would soothe your desires."

"Mother. She is wretched."

"The Clouds? He—"

The Moon had grown impatient. "Mother! I do not wish for the mountains, or the valleys, or the wind. I do not care for the clouds, the sand, the trees, the caves. And I certainly do not long for the Sky. I wish only to speak to the Sea. And nothing more than that."

The Sun was quiet for a moment.

"They will break your heart, my daughter."

"My heart is theirs to break."

*

The Moon chose a moment in which the Sun was otherwise engaged. Her voice was soft, like shifting gravel, as she spoke through the space between them.

"Hello. I am not sure that you know me."

"Of course I do. You're the Moon. I move in time with your breath."

As her breathing hitched, the Sea swelled and crashed against sand and coves and stones. A watery laugh rippled to the Moon and she felt, for the first time in her many long years, a flood of embarrassment.

"You laugh at me."

"I do. I'd rather we laughed together, but it seems you don't see the humour in it."

"My mother does not laugh."

"Are you your mother?"

She certainly was not. The Moon was so much—smaller. Her mother was the brightest thing there had ever been, would ever be. There was, to the Moon's knowledge, nothing more fearsome, more powerful, more beautiful. Her light touched everything. It nourished all. The Sun was The Centre of All Things, and the Moon could not even create light of her own.

"I am her reflection."

A pause as something stirred within the Moon.

"Well. I can't say I've ever met a reflection who could speak of their own accord. And, to tell the truth—you're much prettier."

"Goodbye!" came the quick reply. The Moon could take this no longer.

As she withdrew, frothing laughter filled the space between them.

*

The Moon stole every moment she could to speak to the Sea and behold the way they changed. There were times when they were quiet or rambunctious, distant or curious. In every mood, they were kind, romantic. It was a wonder her mother had been so concerned. And there was something of a thrill to it: to anticipate the way the Sea had transformed since last they spoke. The Moon had never laughed so much.

"You jest!" she'd said once, scandalised at the Sea's admission.

"I don't! There're many places within me that the Sun's light doesn't reach."

A few hundred years before that moment, she never would have entertained the thought. It was almost unthinkable. A place her mother's light could not pierce? And not just one, from the Sea's words, but great expanses of it, huge swathes of total darkness? Unease bubbled up inside of her, not only at the possibility, but at her doubt in her mother. The Sea's everchanging nature had left its mark upon her, it seemed.

"But that can't be... she sees all things."

"You know," the Sea started gently, after a moment of hesitation, "Down here, the Sky often turns black. And the brightest thing to be seen is you—the Sun's light disappears. New creatures have appeared—they've given it many names, but they often call it 'The Night'."

The Moon felt as if all things were collapsing in on themselves—like gravity was folding and reverberating, spinning around her as the Sea's words splashed against her. Something like—fear was consuming her. It was eating her from the inside out. The brightest thing to be seen is you. The brightest thing to be seen is you. The brightest thing to be seen... is you.

"That... that is... the light is my mother's."

A bubbling sigh. "Maybe you ought to talk to the Sky. She knows all about it."

The rest of their words passed by in a haze.

*

The Moon sought her mother out only a few decades later, having ruminated many 'nights' on the matter and feeling she was owed some sort of explanation. She would not speak to the Sky if it could be helped. The Sky detested her, for reasons she could not fathom, and in that detestation she was vicious. She knew with perfect, illuminated understanding the precise words which would turn the Moon away, to simmer in misery for a century or two. But she hadn't seen the Sky in quite some time—and had become rather a lot more bitter and rather a lot less patient in the intervening millennia...

"Mother," she started, and knew instantly that this would go poorly for her. "I've... a question to ask."

"Ask it, daughter."

"I heard the strangest thing, of late—"

"Come, daughter. You know my feelings about preamble."

This was the moment to ask. 'The Night'. What was it? How could it be that she was the brightest thing to be seen? It was difficult to fathom any moment in which the Moon, being so plain and altogether easy to discard, was the centre of all focus. The Sky had called her 'little rock' more than once, and not in an endeared sort of way. And her voice was so authoritative, she had buckled beneath the pressure of the lightning in her words.

Perhaps this was the fault. Her mother was bright, yes. And the Sky was powerful beyond reckoning. But how could it be that the Moon was lesser only because she was different? Who was the Sky, anyhow, to proclaim the worth of anyone but herself?

But now, so close to touching a brighter understanding of herself, she faltered. The words about 'The Night' did not come, and instead she asked something truer. And more rotten:

"Am I dull?" she asked. Her voice was shaking. Her voice was always shaking. "All my light is yours."

The Sun, for the first in all the time she'd known her, could not respond. That silence was enough.

"I must go," said the Moon.

If the Sun called her name—the Moon was too far gone to hear it.

*

"Well, hello Moonie," said the Sky, voice light. The thunder beneath her greeting betrayed her.

"That is not what I am called, as I have told you many times before."

"Ah, that's a shame. Really thought you'd have changed since the last time I saw you, but looks like you're dry as ever..."

The Moon had no patience for this. "'The Night'. Explain it to me."

A beat of silence.

"... I stand corrected. Does your mother know you're talking to me?"

"That is no concern of yours."

No. No, of course she did not—for if her mother had known her intentions, the Moon would never have sought the Sky out. She did not have it within her to break her mother's heart. The years had flowed by, one after the other, like droplets disappearing into the mouth of a river, and in all that time, the two of them had never changed. The Sun, blinding, untouchable, The Centre of All Things. The Moon, small, fragile, half-cloaked in shadow for always. She burned within her mother's love—her gaze. As the Moon's heart was the Sea's to break, so too was the Sun's in her power to fracture.

With each eon that passed, the Moon felt that perhaps it was no longer a matter of whether she would break her mother's heart, or even could.

No. It was a matter of when.

The Sky hummed.

"Your mother gave me quite the gift recently," she said, and the Moon felt something familiar stirring inside of her. Not quite fear, but something close. "A wondrous display of the prettiest lights. Purples, greens... near the farthest reaches of my being. She's made me even more beautiful than I was before."

The feeling was like gravity imploding within her, and dragging the best of her into a single pinpoint of something black. It spewed out an ugly, awful thing. And the thing was dark, and the thing was new and yet not-new, and the thing was almost outside of her now.

"Have you got anything worthwhile to offer? I'm not really the type to give away the things I know for nothing, you see..." she said, and each word was like being struck. "The Earth gave me thunder and lightning. The Clouds gave me rain, and snow. The Wind gave me power like nothing you've ever seen. So what will you give me, little rock?"

The Moon's voice was oh, so quiet.

"I will give you death."

There was a stillness, and then a thin, high laugh.

"Oh my," she crooned, elated. "Reflect your mother with that mouth?"

A great many things happened at once.

*

An excerpt of the myth of the Sun, the Moon, and the deep, dark Sea.

At once, the world was plunged in black. At once, the Sky was dead. The Moon turned to her mother's back.

"What have you done?" she said.

“I have your light within me drawn, and killed it with a sigh. I love you, Mother, love your dawn, but her fate was to die.”

The world was cold, and almost gone, the Moon consumed all light. And now the night was everlong, the Sun too weak to fight.

A thousand, thousand years passed by, the Sea was soaked blood red. Below the bloated corpse of Sky, all creatures there lay dead.

This tale well could have ended there—Sky rotting, Sun near death. But then she heard a gentle splash, in time with tagged breath.

"I love you, Moon, more than the Sun, the Sky, more than all things. More than the dawn which now is done, than Wind's great beating wings.

I love you more than all I am, my heart is yours to break. But twilight will bring sorrow, and regret when soon you wake.

If you, somewhere, these words can hear, I ask no more than this. If now is when my death draws near, I ask you for a kiss."

And as the Moon waxed small and close, and turned her being down, the Sea took hold of her fair face, and dragged her in to drown.

She thrashed, she screamed, she begged, she fought, she slowed, she stilled, she stopped. And as her body came to rest, they knew their love was lost.

There was no darker moment for the Sea than in her death. They would find no atonement, no more comfort in her breath.

And what was left was not the Moon, but little more than stone. Forever cursed to sway and swoon, in circles and alone.

*

“My daughter asked something of me, once.”

The Sea was very quiet, and very, very still.

“She had asked if she—was beautiful. I… I feel that in that moment, I was too honest. I could not find the words to express that—that my daughter was beautiful in a great many ways.”

“If it's comfort you’re after, I’m sorry to say you won't find it in me,” said the Sea quietly. “... But I’m… I'm so sorry. More than I can say.”

The Sun pulsed with something roiling and raw.

“You needn't be sorry.”

“I am, all the same.”

*

What the Sun achieved in the wake of her daughter’s passing was beyond comprehension. For, with a great, long mustering of strength and will, she poured her light into that pale fragment of the Moon. The Sky, now small and young and new, having risen from the body of what came before her, darkened as the Sun’s light dimmed to almost nothing. She pushed herself to the brink of death, and lurched further still.

The stone stirred. And then—

“Mother?”

The voice was familiar. So small. So weak—and shaking.

“Mother, is that you?”

“Daughter,” came the Sun’s reply, voice full to bursting with something that could not be named. “Oh, I missed you, so.”

“What have you done?” asked the Moon, for her body was different, now.

“I brought you back,” she said simply. “I love you more than anything.”

The Moon was filled with sorrow.

“I am so sorry. I was so wrong to do that awful thing.”

As the words were spoken, the terror was already forgotten. She would forgive her daughter anything. Any devastation she could abide, now filled with the glowing warmth of knowing that her daughter was returned to her, at long and awful last. How long had it been, since her child’s voice had reached her? How long had her absence forged a gaping hole within her heart?

“Do not cry, my child. You are home again.”

And then came the terrible silence. And the terrible realisation, and the terrible determination that followed. Her scream of anguish touched all things, and darkened them soon after. The cost was nothing to her. The Sun would drag her daughter back to unlife for millennia, for always if that was to be her fate. For how could she name herself a mother, if she held within her the power to raise the Moon to her side, and chose instead to leave her dead?

*

So was the Sun’s self-written fate, to waste her endless days. To toil, struggle, push, and break, for moments of allay.

And when at last the time would come that Sun’s light was enough, became the Moon what once she was—victim of mother’s love.

Now in this endless cycle is the Moon cursed to return, and Sun cursed into weakness by a truth that she has spurned.

And quietly with every moment of solar eclipse, the Sea is haunted by the whisper of the Moon’s sweet lips.

For then the Moon is oh, so near, but oh, so far away. For then Sea cannot bear to hear the words that she would say.

How could they not have earned her scorn for all that they had done? They shied away, alone to mourn, and left her with the Sun.

So goes the tale of Sun and Moon and of the deep, dark Sea. A mother’s grief will blot the world for all eternity.