By Amanda Rodriguez

I’m going to tell you a story that not many know or have heard before. I warn you, you may wish later that I hadn’t. Go your own way now if you wish to keep your illusions untarnished by truth.

At the beginning of time, Sun and Moon, both beautiful goddesses, were in love. There was no full day or night, but only dawn and twilight because they roamed the skies together always.

The Earth was a jealous man and wanted Moon for himself. No words or gifts could lure her away from the heat of Sun, though. There was one thing he had that they didn’t: flowers, so Earth planted a field of pale-petalled lilies so vast that it was sure to draw the attention of Moon. Then he waited for the flowers to grow. While he waited, Earth threaded a chain made from comet tails and star dreams, and he forged it in his own molten core.

As the sweet-smelling lilies blossomed, they turned their hundreds upon hundreds of snowy faces to the sky. Moon could not resist coming down to visit the field, to see and touch the white flowers that so resembled her. As she bent to drink in the scent of the dew dappled petals, Earth snared her with his unbreakable chord.

Now Earth keeps Moon hidden while Sun searches for her lost love. Each time Moon refuses Earth’s bed, he gives her more work. Now she waits on him, a servant, her ankles and wrists bound with a delicate, tinkling silver chain.

Each night she escapes and races light-footed across the sky, searching for her beloved Sun. Moon only circles the Earth, though, because the silken thread still binds her to him. Each morning as Sun and Moon grow close to reuniting, Earth pulls her back down to him. For him, this is great sport. He loves to play the fisherman, reeling Moon in, hand over hand, as if she were a magnificent celestial fish.

On those nights when you look up into the sky and we have no Moon, that is when she has not managed to slip the clutches of Earth. And when you see the Moon bloody with wrath, that is when Earth has stepped between her and Sun, blocking their reunion with his own body.

Sun’s search, as you may guess, is full of despair. Each day she does not find her love, Sun plunges herself into the abyss, extinguishing her own light. But, what you may not know is that Sun is a great phoenix. Each day she arises from the chaos of the abyss new and whole again, her light ever radiant and true.

But on rare occasions Sun and Moon do evade Earth’s grasp. The lovers meet for brief moments, their coupling so powerful that the sky goes dark and us mortals go blind to look upon their sacred union.

The saddest part of this tale, though, is that you and I and all we love do not want Moon to ever break the tether that binds her to Earth. We selfishly do not want Sun and Moon to reunite. If that were to happen, Earth would fly into such a grief and rage that he would smash himself into other worlds. In his spite, he may even collide with Moon, killing her for spurning him. So vast is Earth’s jealousy and meanness of spirit, that he would surely cause a cataclysm that destroys the order of our universe if he could not possess her.

He has made us all complicit in his crime, our lives ever dependent on the sorrow and separation of Sun and Moon. Each time you look up at the sky, know that, day in and day out, we choose Moon and Sun’s suffering over our own.

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Amanda Rodriguez is a queer, first generation Cuban-American and the Marketing Director for environmental nonprofit Dogwood Alliance in Asheville, NC. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. She is the published author of short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, lesbian erotica, and poetry. She is also the first-time filmmaker of the critically acclaimed short documentary “Stories Happen in Forests.”