How the Moon God Met His Wife
Since the lovely aviaq drew them for me, and people have been asking, I guess it's right for me to tell the story.
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A long time ago, when the sky was emptier than it is today, two brothers were born. They were twins, and were as different from each other as night and day. The elder of the two was a child with brilliant hair that shone like gold, and fiery eyes of orange. The younger was far more quiet, with dark hair and violet eyes as deep as the night. They were raised apart, these boys, for their fathers were not the same, and their mother feared what would happen if this fact came to light.
The secret could not be kept forever, especially not to the all-seeing goddess of the sky, whose son had taken the twins' mother for his wife. She felt that her half-human son had been betrayed when she discovered that his wife had had a child with another god. In her outrage, she began to pour water out from the sky, flooding the earth. It was all very frightening, and the waters rose high.
All of a sudden, the other grandmother of the twins took the boys in her arms and carried them up into the sky. She turned them into the sun and the moon, and in doing so pinned the sky goddess in the very fabric of the air, unable to move and cause trouble to anyone.
The boys were put at opposite sides of the sky, and traveled from horizon to horizon through the days and nights, keeping the sky goddess well-guarded and unable to do more than sprinkle the earth with rain from time to time. It kept the world safe, but the boys grew lonely, for there was nothing up there for them to play with, nor people to talk to. The only things that could occupy them were the goings-on of the world below, silent and small and busy.
However, not a month after being turned into the moon, the younger of the two brothers found himself on the earth one night, rather than the sky. This overjoyed him, and he ran off in search of his mother and father, but could not find them. Nobody would help him, either, for these were difficult times. Many homes had been lost in his grandmother's flood, and people were busy rebuilding their homes. Saddened, the little moon god sat next to a tree and cried by himself. When his brother, the sun, rose in the morning, he was pulled back into the sky, where he remained for another month.
Month after month, the moon god found himself on earth for one miserable night at a time. This was because of the human blood running through his veins, which caused his power to wax and wane, leaving him entirely human once every month. He grew into a man with a heart as cold and dark as his eyes, for his visits to earth made him grow cold and distrusting towards humans.
One winter night, however, a girl came upon him sitting alone in a forest, and asked him, "Aren't you cold sitting there?"
The moon god gave her a cold glance, then returned to his knees, though he was shivering a little.
The girl sighed and lifted him up, to his surprise. "You are coming to my house for some soup," she told him, and led him out of the forest, not taking no for an answer. The moon god did not say anything in return, though he was rather surprised by the turn of events.
The girl lived in a little hut at the edge of her village, and after they had entered introduced the moon god to her father, before serving him a hot bowl of soup. He had once been a master weaver until illness had stolen his sight, and now it was his daughter who wove in the great loom that took up so much space in their home.
The girl and her father asked the moon god many questions, but he did not answer any of them, out of caution and coldness. They then talked to each other, and also to him, about the goings-on in the village and what the girl was to weave next. The moon god found himself listening, almost out of curiosity, though he suspected boredom was more likely a cause. When a bed was offered to him later in the evening, he lay down in it but did not sleep, and stayed awake all night.
When the dawn finally arrived, he left the girl's house with quiet feet and lept back into the sky as a bird does, his power returned. But as he nestled into sleep in his little corner of the sky, he could not help but think of the kindness of the girl and her father. In fact, when the time came for him to return to earth a month later, he chose to land near her house, so he might thank her for her kindness and then be on his way.
However, he found her waiting there for him with a pot of hot soup prepared. "I knew you would come back sometime," she told him, with a wide smile, and ushered him in. He spent the night listening to the stories of her and her father, and eating soup, and surprisingly enjoying the warmth and simplicity of it all. Like the month before, he was offered a bed, in which he stayed awake until the dawn.
However, this month, he smiled at the girl after her offer, and told her, "Thank you."
"You are always welcome," she replied.
He returned the next month, a month of awakening spring, to the same soup and stories. But this time, he began asking questions, for there was nothing to observe in the village at night, and he found himself wondering more about it. The girl and her father answered with enthusiasm, telling him whatever he wished to hear about.
The month after that, when all the snow had melted, the girl showed the moon god the rug she had begun in his absence, and he complimented her on it. She gave him a smile in return, and he felt warmth in his cheeks for the first time since he was a little child.
Month after month, the moon god returned to that little hut, no other reason for it in his mind for it but the hospitality of the weaver girl and her father. By summer, he found himself wondering how he could repay the girl in full, for all he ever really gave her was a thank you for every night he spent in her house. So, the next month, he asked her if she desired anything.
"If you must give me something," she told him, "then give me a lock of your hair, so I can wear it and think of you."
The moon god obeyed and cut off a piece of his hair with the weaver girl's bone knife. As he did so he felt a sort of stirring in the cold place where his heart was, an uncomfortable feeling that stayed with him all night and reached through his body with snaking tendrils. The feeling stayed there long after he had flown back into the sky the next morning. It made him squirm and fidget uncomfortably, and he found himself gazing at the little hut whenever he could, relishing the rare instances when the weaver girl went outside at dusk.
It was not until the month afterward that he realized it, when he offered to help her wash the bowls and put them away, when she gave him a smile with eyes that shone a marvelous and shiny black.
"My goodness," he said to himself, sitting in the sky a few nights later. "This is what love must be."
And upon realizing this, the warmth in his cheeks intensified, and he covered his face in embarrassment, though none could see him. He contemplated so long about this fact that, when his next night on earth arrived, his eyes were still downcast as the weaver girl greeted him.
"Whatever is the matter?" she said. He could see the lock of his dark hair woven into the ribbon around her ankle. She reached out a hand and felt his forehead. "You do not have a fever, but your face is very red."
"I am just hungry," he lied. "Please, let us sit down for supper. I want to hear about how you have been." He winced when he realized how he sounded. "And your father too," he added, hastily.
The girl smiled her shiny, black-eyed smile, and brought him inside for a meal of vegetables and fish and stories. He helped clean up afterwards, and he watched her make a little doll in the firelight as he massaged her father's shoulders. "What is that for?" he asked.
"Who knows what it might be? I hate wasting extra yarn," she replied.
"I see." And the moon god said nothing more, just watching her at her work. She had soft black hair that curled about her face like leaves, and he watched it almost shimmer in the light of her fire.
When the time came for them all to sleep, he helped make her father's bed before settling down in his own, his face to the wall, so that nobody could see he was still awake. All he could think of was the weaver girl, the ribbon around her little ankle with his hair wrapped around it, her smile, her hair...
To his astonishment, he felt a soft little package slip between his arms in the darkness, and he heard little footsteps leaving the hut. He turned over and felt with his hands a little doll made of bits of yarn, and his heart began to pound hotly. He got to his feet and went outside, and found the weaver girl standing there, looking into the moonless sky.
"Did you give this to me?" he asked her. She smiled at him, and nodded. He looked at the little doll in his hand, and then at her. "Why?"
"Why not?" she replied. "I hate to waste yarn."
The moon god's face grew very hot, and his fingers trembled. "I do not deserve this."
"You have done more than enough," the weaver girl replied. "You listen to the silly little stories that my father and I tell, and you tell me how I weave, and you clean our bowls, and you massage my father's shoulders. A doll is worth far less than that."
The moon god said nothing, but instead returned to the hut, where he lay down with the doll in his hands, his face to the wall. The weaver girl did not follow him, but she was asleep in her little bed when he rose to leave in the morning.
When he jumped into the sky, the doll slipped through his fingers and onto the ground, where the weaver girl found it the next morning.
She gave it back to him when he returned the next month, when summer was waning and the harvest was beginning. "If you did not like it, you could have told me," she told him, after a silent, uncomfortable meal.
"I tried to take it with me," he replied. "I did not mean to leave it behind."
The weaver girl did not look up at him from the bowl she was cleaning. "I did not expect you to return," she said.
"But I always..." The moon god could not bring himself to finish the sentence, and got up to go outside for some fresher air. He stayed there for the rest of the night.
When the dawn began to approach, he entered the hut again and saw where the weaver girl was sleeping, and kissed her on the cheek. "Goodbye," he told her, and went outside, waiting for his power to come back.
He found her following him. "You never say goodbye when you leave," she told him, her eyes dull and full of sadness. "This means you are leaving for good, I suppose?"
"No, I would never..." the moon god said, and reached out to hold one of her hands. "I am coming back, I promise." He kissed her on her gentle, quick hands. "I would never leave you if I had a choice."
The weaver girl began to ask him what he meant, when the sun began to rise. The moon god smiled at her sadly and jumped into the sky, where he faded away and became the sliver of a crescent moon that follows the moonless night.
When he returned the next month, to a cold and waning harvest, he was greeted with embraces from his weaver girl. "So that is what you meant," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
He told her and her father everything over supper, how his power forced him onto earth once every month, how he had spent many lonely months before she had found him, and how much he cherished his nights with them.
The father, who was a man of few words, chuckled as he finished. "Imagine that," he said. "What a fine husband for my daughter, the moon."
The moon god turned red. "You wish for us to be wed?"
"Only if you wish to," the blind man replied, smiling his warm and wide smile. "It has been nearly a year since you first came to us, and there is nothing that I treasure more than the happiness of my daughter. You should have heard the way that she went on about you, even before all of this moon business came to light!"
All of this was true, for the weaver girl had developed her own sort of schedule based on the moon's phases. "Oh, the moon is almost gone. He will be here soon," was something she often sighed, while putting away the blankets and clothes. And hearing her father report it to the moon god made her blush a red as bright as her eyes.
"I would not mind marrying you," the moon god said to his weaver girl, after a long period of thought. "Though we would only see each other once a month, when I am brought down to earth."
"I would not mind any of that," the weaver girl said to her moon god. "But we should not rush into this sort of thing. Let us think over this for a while."
And so, they spent the night much like they did their other nights, though the weaver girl stayed up all night with her moon god, talking about marriage, but also laughing and asking him of what life was like in the sky, and of his brother the sun, and his parents, the gods of the dead.
When the sun rose in the morning, she was there with him when he returned to the sky, and saw him off with a kiss.
The two of them spent the whole month thinking over their marriage, and when the moon god returned once more, he found his weaver girl dressed in the white cloth of a bride. "Let us be married," she told him, and he agreed.
They were wed that night in that little hut, on the anniversary of the night when they first met. Though truly they did nothing more than share a few choice words and a bowl of soup, there was enough feeling and love in those actions that they were undeniably tied forever. They slept together that night with their necks curled together, her ankle with the ribbon and his hair folded between his ankles.
She kissed him again, in the morning, when he had to leave. "I miss you already," she told him.
"I will return before you will have time to miss me," he replied, and flew into the sky, his hand reluctantly leaving hers.
The air rumbled in triumphant thunder as he called out her name in love, over and over, across the day sky. And when she heard it, she laughed and she called out his name in reply.
And so, the years passed in this manner, with the lovers meeting once a month at that little hut. They were happy, her telling him stories of the little things in the village, and him telling her stories of the sleeping earth, the clouds and the trees.
However, the weaver's father was a very old man, and the moon god arrived to earth one night to find that he had died of an illness, his wife still grieving over his ashes in the ground.
He returned to the sky that night utterly crushed by emotions of all sorts.
He had spent a night comforting her, feeling her tears hot on his shoulders as she cried into his chest.
He had spent a night grieving the quiet old man, who had treated him so kindly, but had never fully entered his heart.
But most painful of all, he spent a night suddenly confronted by the fact that someday, somehow, his wife was going to die as well. And that was what he absolutely could not cope with.
He found himself crying, a few days later, in dry shock. He called out his weaver girl's name, grieving her before she was even gone.
His sad thunder could be heard by everyone, and it even attracted the attention of his mother, who collected the souls of the dead.
"My sweet boy," she said, rising up to meet him and resting on a cloud. "Why do you weep so?"
He did not see his mother often, and took a long time to come up with the words for her. "I cry for my wife, mother," he finally said. "For one day she shall die, and I shall be alone."
"She will be reborn again someday. There is no need to cry," his mother replied, wiping away his tears with a bone-white hand. "Death is only temporary. You will find her again."
The moon god shook his head. "How would I know where she was, or who she was? I do not want her to die, mother," he said, and began crying again.
"When your father left me, I found him again. When two souls come together, they can always find each other," his mother said, and left him with a gentle, pink kiss on his forehead. "You will find a way."
The moon god did not return to his wife that month, curling up into himself and his thoughts in the shade of the forest.
The sun god came to him next, waking him up as he floated across the day sky. He had been following the strange romance of his moon-brother, and had grown very worried by the recent developments. "She cries without you there, you know," he told the moon god. "You need to be with her. Another month without you and you may lose her more quickly than you think."
The moon god gave his brother a fierce and ugly look. "What would you know about this?"
"Nothing, I'll admit," the sun god replied, "but you need to talk to her again. That seems to be the right thing to do. " He said no more, and left his brother to sleep.
The moon god spent the rest of the month thinking, and finally decided to be with his wife as he was supposed to be, to tell her of his anxieties and find out what she thought of the whole thing.
She no longer cried when he returned to her, though she hugged him more firmly than she ever had before. "I missed you," she told him, her voice muffled in his chest. "I almost forgot to cook dinner."
And over bowls of rice and the last of the smoked meats, they talked. Though, mostly, it was him talking. All his wife did was nod and listen intently, never taking her eyes off of him. By the end of it, she put down her bowl, and gently laid her hand on his cheek, and kissed him.
"Your mother and your brother are both very wise," she told him. "Someday I will die, but I don't mind. Maybe someday you'll find me again. But loving you in this life is worth far more than I deserve." Her eyes sparkled with little tears.
The moon god looked back at her, at her careful fingers and her eyes, and he thought himself very foolish for thinking such thoughts. He and his wife embraced and did not let go for a very long time, and they held hands tightly until he finally had to leave.
The years continued to pass, and the moon god regained his contentedness. But there was still, in the back of his head, his nagging fear, nipping at his ears with increasing frequency as the years wore on. And when he began to notice little silver hairs growing in his wife's black hair, and little wrinkles growing at the corners of her mouth, it began nipping at his stomach and heart, and it gained a voice.
"I can make her immortal, you know. It would not be that hard."
The voice had an owner, one whom he hadn't seen in many, many years. But he could not put a name to it until, on a full moon's night, he looked over his shoulder in angry annoyance at the words, repeating in endless variations. "Show yourself, whoever you are!" he said.
From the deep blue of the sky, he saw a woman emerge. She was beautiful and ageless, and her hair was the pale blue of rain-filled clouds. She was his grandmother, the sky-goddess, whom he kept prisoner. Her stare made him shiver.
"What do you want with me?" he said.
"I wish to make you happy, dear grandson," she replied, a smile with heavy eyes on her dusky face. "I can bring your wife up here to live with you, here in the sky. It would not take very much."
The moon god was immediately interested, but cautious. "What do you mean, 'very much'?"
"It is an easy thing to do. I just require a small piece of you, is all," she replied. "Your voice, perhaps, or maybe your heart."
"I will not give you anything," the moon god replied, his eyes narrowing.
"Of course. I will let you think about it," his grandmother said, with a hollow smile. "You have as much time as your wife does."
And with that, she disappeared with the blowing of the wind. The moon god shivered again.
He was still thinking about her when he went to be with his wife a few weeks later, his face so distant and distracted that she asked him about it as they ate their meal together.
She pursed her lips and thought deeply when he told her about his grandmother's generous offer. "That is very kind of her," she said. "And very kind of you also, but I thought that we had already discussed this?"
"I do not..." the moon god began to say, and swallowed, cursing his weakness. "I do not want to lose you."
His wife looked at him with comforting eyes. "I understand," she said, and brushed off her skirt. "Well, I always wanted to see the sky for myself..."
"Does this mean that you wish to do it?" the moon god said.
"Yes, but promise me this one thing, love," his wife said. "I do not want to see you all the time."
The moon god's face twisted into hurt confusion. "I do not understand."
His wife giggled and sat beside him, putting her head on his shoulder. "What is special about you is that I get to look forward to you," she told him, and sighed. "If we saw each other all the time, there would not be anything to look forward to, would there? Besides." She looked him in the eyes. "I want to see the sky for myself, to see things how you saw them. I want to meet your brother, and your mother, and everyone else you told me about."
The moon god began to laugh, figuring he should have expected this. "Then that is what I will tell my grandmother," he said, and kissed her on the forehead.
When he returned to the sky, he whistled a mighty whistle and summoned his grandmother. "So you have decided," she said, for she was the whole sky, and saw everything that ever happened. "Both of you have decided." The moon god nodded. "She desires to be free. Well, that won't cost nearly as much as what I was expecting. If you had wanted to have her with you for ever and ever, I would gladly have eaten your heart and made it so. I can still do that, if you want. Make it so that she'll never, ever leave you." Her voice was filled with sweet water and promises, and it made him thirsty for it. He could feel his heart straining in his chest, almost begging to be cut out and given to her.
The moon god swallowed. "No," he said, firmly. "She wants to be free, so let her be free. I will give you anything for this."
His grandmother looked at him through her eyes, so dark that there were hardly any whites in them. "So be it, then. Give me your right eye, and it shall be done."
So, the moon god plucked out his eye and gave it to his grandmother, who ate it in a single gulp. It gave her power, and with the power she reached down onto the earth and pulled the moon god's wife into the sky. "You wish to wander, so you shall be a goddess of stars," she said, and it was so. "Go and be happy, my grandson. This is my gift to you"
She smiled her strange, her emotionless smile, and disappeared.
The moon god and his wife, overjoyed by their reunion, embraced one another, and the light that shone off of them grew so bright that many people thought that it had become day. When the sun truly rose, the star goddess left her husband to explore the sky in full for the first time, and as he drifted off to sleep, he waved at her, knowing that she would return to him, just as he always did.
As she raced across the sky, the ribbon on her ankle with her husband's hair trailed behind her in a beautiful silver arc, which you can see to this day on certain nights, when she passes over this region. She stops, only occasionally, to weave stars together into constellations out of raw clouds and stars that are not bright enough to shine on their own.
Her husband, the moon, also carries his own piece of the story. The moon was once a perfect, silver disc, much like the sun is made of perfect gold. However, when he took his eye out for the sake of his wife, the blood ran all over his face, and marred the surface of the moon. That is why there are craters on the moon, to remind people of his trial and faithfulness.
And as much as she loves exploring, the star goddess always takes at least one night to be with her dearest husband. This is why there are so many falling stars on the nights of the new moon--how else could she be with him on earth?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpjdrK1GVc
Boats & Birds - by Gregory & the Hawk
"But you can skyrocket away from me
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly.
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by."
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvRurwxWEZo
The Call - by Regina Spektor
"I'll come back when you call me,
no need to say goodbye."
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I hope you enjoyed this little piece of The Land, and I hope you enjoy my future stories. =)
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A long time ago, when the sky was emptier than it is today, two brothers were born. They were twins, and were as different from each other as night and day. The elder of the two was a child with brilliant hair that shone like gold, and fiery eyes of orange. The younger was far more quiet, with dark hair and violet eyes as deep as the night. They were raised apart, these boys, for their fathers were not the same, and their mother feared what would happen if this fact came to light.
The secret could not be kept forever, especially not to the all-seeing goddess of the sky, whose son had taken the twins' mother for his wife. She felt that her half-human son had been betrayed when she discovered that his wife had had a child with another god. In her outrage, she began to pour water out from the sky, flooding the earth. It was all very frightening, and the waters rose high.
All of a sudden, the other grandmother of the twins took the boys in her arms and carried them up into the sky. She turned them into the sun and the moon, and in doing so pinned the sky goddess in the very fabric of the air, unable to move and cause trouble to anyone.
The boys were put at opposite sides of the sky, and traveled from horizon to horizon through the days and nights, keeping the sky goddess well-guarded and unable to do more than sprinkle the earth with rain from time to time. It kept the world safe, but the boys grew lonely, for there was nothing up there for them to play with, nor people to talk to. The only things that could occupy them were the goings-on of the world below, silent and small and busy.
However, not a month after being turned into the moon, the younger of the two brothers found himself on the earth one night, rather than the sky. This overjoyed him, and he ran off in search of his mother and father, but could not find them. Nobody would help him, either, for these were difficult times. Many homes had been lost in his grandmother's flood, and people were busy rebuilding their homes. Saddened, the little moon god sat next to a tree and cried by himself. When his brother, the sun, rose in the morning, he was pulled back into the sky, where he remained for another month.
Month after month, the moon god found himself on earth for one miserable night at a time. This was because of the human blood running through his veins, which caused his power to wax and wane, leaving him entirely human once every month. He grew into a man with a heart as cold and dark as his eyes, for his visits to earth made him grow cold and distrusting towards humans.
One winter night, however, a girl came upon him sitting alone in a forest, and asked him, "Aren't you cold sitting there?"
The moon god gave her a cold glance, then returned to his knees, though he was shivering a little.
The girl sighed and lifted him up, to his surprise. "You are coming to my house for some soup," she told him, and led him out of the forest, not taking no for an answer. The moon god did not say anything in return, though he was rather surprised by the turn of events.
The girl lived in a little hut at the edge of her village, and after they had entered introduced the moon god to her father, before serving him a hot bowl of soup. He had once been a master weaver until illness had stolen his sight, and now it was his daughter who wove in the great loom that took up so much space in their home.
The girl and her father asked the moon god many questions, but he did not answer any of them, out of caution and coldness. They then talked to each other, and also to him, about the goings-on in the village and what the girl was to weave next. The moon god found himself listening, almost out of curiosity, though he suspected boredom was more likely a cause. When a bed was offered to him later in the evening, he lay down in it but did not sleep, and stayed awake all night.
When the dawn finally arrived, he left the girl's house with quiet feet and lept back into the sky as a bird does, his power returned. But as he nestled into sleep in his little corner of the sky, he could not help but think of the kindness of the girl and her father. In fact, when the time came for him to return to earth a month later, he chose to land near her house, so he might thank her for her kindness and then be on his way.
However, he found her waiting there for him with a pot of hot soup prepared. "I knew you would come back sometime," she told him, with a wide smile, and ushered him in. He spent the night listening to the stories of her and her father, and eating soup, and surprisingly enjoying the warmth and simplicity of it all. Like the month before, he was offered a bed, in which he stayed awake until the dawn.
However, this month, he smiled at the girl after her offer, and told her, "Thank you."
"You are always welcome," she replied.
He returned the next month, a month of awakening spring, to the same soup and stories. But this time, he began asking questions, for there was nothing to observe in the village at night, and he found himself wondering more about it. The girl and her father answered with enthusiasm, telling him whatever he wished to hear about.
The month after that, when all the snow had melted, the girl showed the moon god the rug she had begun in his absence, and he complimented her on it. She gave him a smile in return, and he felt warmth in his cheeks for the first time since he was a little child.
Month after month, the moon god returned to that little hut, no other reason for it in his mind for it but the hospitality of the weaver girl and her father. By summer, he found himself wondering how he could repay the girl in full, for all he ever really gave her was a thank you for every night he spent in her house. So, the next month, he asked her if she desired anything.
"If you must give me something," she told him, "then give me a lock of your hair, so I can wear it and think of you."
The moon god obeyed and cut off a piece of his hair with the weaver girl's bone knife. As he did so he felt a sort of stirring in the cold place where his heart was, an uncomfortable feeling that stayed with him all night and reached through his body with snaking tendrils. The feeling stayed there long after he had flown back into the sky the next morning. It made him squirm and fidget uncomfortably, and he found himself gazing at the little hut whenever he could, relishing the rare instances when the weaver girl went outside at dusk.
It was not until the month afterward that he realized it, when he offered to help her wash the bowls and put them away, when she gave him a smile with eyes that shone a marvelous and shiny black.
"My goodness," he said to himself, sitting in the sky a few nights later. "This is what love must be."
And upon realizing this, the warmth in his cheeks intensified, and he covered his face in embarrassment, though none could see him. He contemplated so long about this fact that, when his next night on earth arrived, his eyes were still downcast as the weaver girl greeted him.
"Whatever is the matter?" she said. He could see the lock of his dark hair woven into the ribbon around her ankle. She reached out a hand and felt his forehead. "You do not have a fever, but your face is very red."
"I am just hungry," he lied. "Please, let us sit down for supper. I want to hear about how you have been." He winced when he realized how he sounded. "And your father too," he added, hastily.
The girl smiled her shiny, black-eyed smile, and brought him inside for a meal of vegetables and fish and stories. He helped clean up afterwards, and he watched her make a little doll in the firelight as he massaged her father's shoulders. "What is that for?" he asked.
"Who knows what it might be? I hate wasting extra yarn," she replied.
"I see." And the moon god said nothing more, just watching her at her work. She had soft black hair that curled about her face like leaves, and he watched it almost shimmer in the light of her fire.
When the time came for them all to sleep, he helped make her father's bed before settling down in his own, his face to the wall, so that nobody could see he was still awake. All he could think of was the weaver girl, the ribbon around her little ankle with his hair wrapped around it, her smile, her hair...
To his astonishment, he felt a soft little package slip between his arms in the darkness, and he heard little footsteps leaving the hut. He turned over and felt with his hands a little doll made of bits of yarn, and his heart began to pound hotly. He got to his feet and went outside, and found the weaver girl standing there, looking into the moonless sky.
"Did you give this to me?" he asked her. She smiled at him, and nodded. He looked at the little doll in his hand, and then at her. "Why?"
"Why not?" she replied. "I hate to waste yarn."
The moon god's face grew very hot, and his fingers trembled. "I do not deserve this."
"You have done more than enough," the weaver girl replied. "You listen to the silly little stories that my father and I tell, and you tell me how I weave, and you clean our bowls, and you massage my father's shoulders. A doll is worth far less than that."
The moon god said nothing, but instead returned to the hut, where he lay down with the doll in his hands, his face to the wall. The weaver girl did not follow him, but she was asleep in her little bed when he rose to leave in the morning.
When he jumped into the sky, the doll slipped through his fingers and onto the ground, where the weaver girl found it the next morning.
She gave it back to him when he returned the next month, when summer was waning and the harvest was beginning. "If you did not like it, you could have told me," she told him, after a silent, uncomfortable meal.
"I tried to take it with me," he replied. "I did not mean to leave it behind."
The weaver girl did not look up at him from the bowl she was cleaning. "I did not expect you to return," she said.
"But I always..." The moon god could not bring himself to finish the sentence, and got up to go outside for some fresher air. He stayed there for the rest of the night.
When the dawn began to approach, he entered the hut again and saw where the weaver girl was sleeping, and kissed her on the cheek. "Goodbye," he told her, and went outside, waiting for his power to come back.
He found her following him. "You never say goodbye when you leave," she told him, her eyes dull and full of sadness. "This means you are leaving for good, I suppose?"
"No, I would never..." the moon god said, and reached out to hold one of her hands. "I am coming back, I promise." He kissed her on her gentle, quick hands. "I would never leave you if I had a choice."
The weaver girl began to ask him what he meant, when the sun began to rise. The moon god smiled at her sadly and jumped into the sky, where he faded away and became the sliver of a crescent moon that follows the moonless night.
When he returned the next month, to a cold and waning harvest, he was greeted with embraces from his weaver girl. "So that is what you meant," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
He told her and her father everything over supper, how his power forced him onto earth once every month, how he had spent many lonely months before she had found him, and how much he cherished his nights with them.
The father, who was a man of few words, chuckled as he finished. "Imagine that," he said. "What a fine husband for my daughter, the moon."
The moon god turned red. "You wish for us to be wed?"
"Only if you wish to," the blind man replied, smiling his warm and wide smile. "It has been nearly a year since you first came to us, and there is nothing that I treasure more than the happiness of my daughter. You should have heard the way that she went on about you, even before all of this moon business came to light!"
All of this was true, for the weaver girl had developed her own sort of schedule based on the moon's phases. "Oh, the moon is almost gone. He will be here soon," was something she often sighed, while putting away the blankets and clothes. And hearing her father report it to the moon god made her blush a red as bright as her eyes.
"I would not mind marrying you," the moon god said to his weaver girl, after a long period of thought. "Though we would only see each other once a month, when I am brought down to earth."
"I would not mind any of that," the weaver girl said to her moon god. "But we should not rush into this sort of thing. Let us think over this for a while."
And so, they spent the night much like they did their other nights, though the weaver girl stayed up all night with her moon god, talking about marriage, but also laughing and asking him of what life was like in the sky, and of his brother the sun, and his parents, the gods of the dead.
When the sun rose in the morning, she was there with him when he returned to the sky, and saw him off with a kiss.
The two of them spent the whole month thinking over their marriage, and when the moon god returned once more, he found his weaver girl dressed in the white cloth of a bride. "Let us be married," she told him, and he agreed.
They were wed that night in that little hut, on the anniversary of the night when they first met. Though truly they did nothing more than share a few choice words and a bowl of soup, there was enough feeling and love in those actions that they were undeniably tied forever. They slept together that night with their necks curled together, her ankle with the ribbon and his hair folded between his ankles.
She kissed him again, in the morning, when he had to leave. "I miss you already," she told him.
"I will return before you will have time to miss me," he replied, and flew into the sky, his hand reluctantly leaving hers.
The air rumbled in triumphant thunder as he called out her name in love, over and over, across the day sky. And when she heard it, she laughed and she called out his name in reply.
And so, the years passed in this manner, with the lovers meeting once a month at that little hut. They were happy, her telling him stories of the little things in the village, and him telling her stories of the sleeping earth, the clouds and the trees.
However, the weaver's father was a very old man, and the moon god arrived to earth one night to find that he had died of an illness, his wife still grieving over his ashes in the ground.
He returned to the sky that night utterly crushed by emotions of all sorts.
He had spent a night comforting her, feeling her tears hot on his shoulders as she cried into his chest.
He had spent a night grieving the quiet old man, who had treated him so kindly, but had never fully entered his heart.
But most painful of all, he spent a night suddenly confronted by the fact that someday, somehow, his wife was going to die as well. And that was what he absolutely could not cope with.
He found himself crying, a few days later, in dry shock. He called out his weaver girl's name, grieving her before she was even gone.
His sad thunder could be heard by everyone, and it even attracted the attention of his mother, who collected the souls of the dead.
"My sweet boy," she said, rising up to meet him and resting on a cloud. "Why do you weep so?"
He did not see his mother often, and took a long time to come up with the words for her. "I cry for my wife, mother," he finally said. "For one day she shall die, and I shall be alone."
"She will be reborn again someday. There is no need to cry," his mother replied, wiping away his tears with a bone-white hand. "Death is only temporary. You will find her again."
The moon god shook his head. "How would I know where she was, or who she was? I do not want her to die, mother," he said, and began crying again.
"When your father left me, I found him again. When two souls come together, they can always find each other," his mother said, and left him with a gentle, pink kiss on his forehead. "You will find a way."
The moon god did not return to his wife that month, curling up into himself and his thoughts in the shade of the forest.
The sun god came to him next, waking him up as he floated across the day sky. He had been following the strange romance of his moon-brother, and had grown very worried by the recent developments. "She cries without you there, you know," he told the moon god. "You need to be with her. Another month without you and you may lose her more quickly than you think."
The moon god gave his brother a fierce and ugly look. "What would you know about this?"
"Nothing, I'll admit," the sun god replied, "but you need to talk to her again. That seems to be the right thing to do. " He said no more, and left his brother to sleep.
The moon god spent the rest of the month thinking, and finally decided to be with his wife as he was supposed to be, to tell her of his anxieties and find out what she thought of the whole thing.
She no longer cried when he returned to her, though she hugged him more firmly than she ever had before. "I missed you," she told him, her voice muffled in his chest. "I almost forgot to cook dinner."
And over bowls of rice and the last of the smoked meats, they talked. Though, mostly, it was him talking. All his wife did was nod and listen intently, never taking her eyes off of him. By the end of it, she put down her bowl, and gently laid her hand on his cheek, and kissed him.
"Your mother and your brother are both very wise," she told him. "Someday I will die, but I don't mind. Maybe someday you'll find me again. But loving you in this life is worth far more than I deserve." Her eyes sparkled with little tears.
The moon god looked back at her, at her careful fingers and her eyes, and he thought himself very foolish for thinking such thoughts. He and his wife embraced and did not let go for a very long time, and they held hands tightly until he finally had to leave.
The years continued to pass, and the moon god regained his contentedness. But there was still, in the back of his head, his nagging fear, nipping at his ears with increasing frequency as the years wore on. And when he began to notice little silver hairs growing in his wife's black hair, and little wrinkles growing at the corners of her mouth, it began nipping at his stomach and heart, and it gained a voice.
"I can make her immortal, you know. It would not be that hard."
The voice had an owner, one whom he hadn't seen in many, many years. But he could not put a name to it until, on a full moon's night, he looked over his shoulder in angry annoyance at the words, repeating in endless variations. "Show yourself, whoever you are!" he said.
From the deep blue of the sky, he saw a woman emerge. She was beautiful and ageless, and her hair was the pale blue of rain-filled clouds. She was his grandmother, the sky-goddess, whom he kept prisoner. Her stare made him shiver.
"What do you want with me?" he said.
"I wish to make you happy, dear grandson," she replied, a smile with heavy eyes on her dusky face. "I can bring your wife up here to live with you, here in the sky. It would not take very much."
The moon god was immediately interested, but cautious. "What do you mean, 'very much'?"
"It is an easy thing to do. I just require a small piece of you, is all," she replied. "Your voice, perhaps, or maybe your heart."
"I will not give you anything," the moon god replied, his eyes narrowing.
"Of course. I will let you think about it," his grandmother said, with a hollow smile. "You have as much time as your wife does."
And with that, she disappeared with the blowing of the wind. The moon god shivered again.
He was still thinking about her when he went to be with his wife a few weeks later, his face so distant and distracted that she asked him about it as they ate their meal together.
She pursed her lips and thought deeply when he told her about his grandmother's generous offer. "That is very kind of her," she said. "And very kind of you also, but I thought that we had already discussed this?"
"I do not..." the moon god began to say, and swallowed, cursing his weakness. "I do not want to lose you."
His wife looked at him with comforting eyes. "I understand," she said, and brushed off her skirt. "Well, I always wanted to see the sky for myself..."
"Does this mean that you wish to do it?" the moon god said.
"Yes, but promise me this one thing, love," his wife said. "I do not want to see you all the time."
The moon god's face twisted into hurt confusion. "I do not understand."
His wife giggled and sat beside him, putting her head on his shoulder. "What is special about you is that I get to look forward to you," she told him, and sighed. "If we saw each other all the time, there would not be anything to look forward to, would there? Besides." She looked him in the eyes. "I want to see the sky for myself, to see things how you saw them. I want to meet your brother, and your mother, and everyone else you told me about."
The moon god began to laugh, figuring he should have expected this. "Then that is what I will tell my grandmother," he said, and kissed her on the forehead.
When he returned to the sky, he whistled a mighty whistle and summoned his grandmother. "So you have decided," she said, for she was the whole sky, and saw everything that ever happened. "Both of you have decided." The moon god nodded. "She desires to be free. Well, that won't cost nearly as much as what I was expecting. If you had wanted to have her with you for ever and ever, I would gladly have eaten your heart and made it so. I can still do that, if you want. Make it so that she'll never, ever leave you." Her voice was filled with sweet water and promises, and it made him thirsty for it. He could feel his heart straining in his chest, almost begging to be cut out and given to her.
The moon god swallowed. "No," he said, firmly. "She wants to be free, so let her be free. I will give you anything for this."
His grandmother looked at him through her eyes, so dark that there were hardly any whites in them. "So be it, then. Give me your right eye, and it shall be done."
So, the moon god plucked out his eye and gave it to his grandmother, who ate it in a single gulp. It gave her power, and with the power she reached down onto the earth and pulled the moon god's wife into the sky. "You wish to wander, so you shall be a goddess of stars," she said, and it was so. "Go and be happy, my grandson. This is my gift to you"
She smiled her strange, her emotionless smile, and disappeared.
The moon god and his wife, overjoyed by their reunion, embraced one another, and the light that shone off of them grew so bright that many people thought that it had become day. When the sun truly rose, the star goddess left her husband to explore the sky in full for the first time, and as he drifted off to sleep, he waved at her, knowing that she would return to him, just as he always did.
As she raced across the sky, the ribbon on her ankle with her husband's hair trailed behind her in a beautiful silver arc, which you can see to this day on certain nights, when she passes over this region. She stops, only occasionally, to weave stars together into constellations out of raw clouds and stars that are not bright enough to shine on their own.
Her husband, the moon, also carries his own piece of the story. The moon was once a perfect, silver disc, much like the sun is made of perfect gold. However, when he took his eye out for the sake of his wife, the blood ran all over his face, and marred the surface of the moon. That is why there are craters on the moon, to remind people of his trial and faithfulness.
And as much as she loves exploring, the star goddess always takes at least one night to be with her dearest husband. This is why there are so many falling stars on the nights of the new moon--how else could she be with him on earth?
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpjdrK1GVc
Boats & Birds - by Gregory & the Hawk
"But you can skyrocket away from me
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly.
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by."
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvRurwxWEZo
The Call - by Regina Spektor
"I'll come back when you call me,
no need to say goodbye."
--
I hope you enjoyed this little piece of The Land, and I hope you enjoy my future stories. =)