How the Sun Loved the Moon

It is said that the Sun comes and visits the Moon on the wings of a barn owl.

They were lovers once, of course, before the Old Gods decided that one had to rule the world of day, and the other rule the world of night.

Before they were ripped apart, the Sun would grow flowers for his lover, would warm the sands of the seas and she would guide the tides to kiss the shore. They would hide together in the places the Old Gods couldn’t see and hold each other in arms of clouds and stars.

“Nothing will take me from you…” The Sun would whisper her ancient name and the Moon would smile her secret smile and fall asleep beside her lover, their future unknown to all except the birds who liked to gossip on the affairs of beings far more important than themselves.

But there is always a balance to the world, and the Old Gods, who breathed life into humankind, needed to restore it. And so they found where the Sun and Moon would hide, deep in the forestland, a place of many flowers, and they pulled the lovers apart. The Moon sobbed as she reached out for her lover, her tears turning to stardust, and the Sun swore his devotion to her. That he would never, ever love another. And so he was sent into the sky in the East and she was exiled to the West and when the great magic was done, it was here they were trapped for always.

They were furious of course, and all of nature heard their cries. When the days would turn black and the winds would whip and the skies cried their rain, storms so fierce they could crumble cities of man. Or at night when the seas would turn vicious and sink ships, consume entire villages, or drain rivers into dry beds where no water could be gathered from. This was their rebellion, their pain, for they could never truly meet again.

The Sun began to try and send her messages, calling on animals to travel into the night and whisper his words to her. He sent the wolf, the raven, the mouse, the hare…and all came back with the same words.

“She is starting to forget.”

For the Moon is the one who people tell their secrets to, who watches their dreams, and her head gets so filled with the imagination of others that slowly, day by day, her memory began to fade. It was a tragic thing for the Sun to hear the truth of his love forgetting him. She used to send him messages too. Send the bees, the snakes, the whales…they would tell him poems she wrote in her loneliness:

I ache for you, beloved.

I miss your warmth, your hands, your eyes.

In here there is only the light from the stars.

I fear losing the memory of your touch.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

But the words came less and less, and it was clear that the Moon really was forgetting him. The rains came more then, so often that they would ruin crops and the people would ask why the gods had cursed them. But the gods could only watch the suffering of their followers because there was little they could do in the meddling of things. The balance was there, and to destroy it? The world couldn’t afford such chaos.

So the Sun wept and ached and longed for the ancient, languid days beside the Moon whose arms he missed terribly. But one day, it was the barn owl who returned to him. The owl had agreed to keep sending his messages and was far kinder to the sadness of the Sun than some of the others. The owl would come right before dawn and then spend its days resting before it traveled to visit the Moon again. But this day he was excited as he greeted the Sun.

“She smiled today as I told her your message.”

The Sun perked up, for this news was better than any he had in the last many, many days. A smile was better than nothing at all, wasn’t it?

“She remembered me then?”

“No…but I spoke your words and she liked the telling of them and asked that I return tomorrow.”

“Then tomorrow will you visit her again?”

The owl bowed, spreading out its great wings. For the creature knew what it was like to love and to lose, and they say owls, though wise, are the most romantic of all.

“I will go every night for you, my friend.”

And so, the barn owl would travel by night, carrying the words of the Sun to his Moon, and every morning it would come and describe her smile, even on nights when she hid herself from the sky.

For the Sun, who knew that he would never hold the moon in his arms again, this is enough.

It has to be.

Once the owl had its own family, they too learned of the great love story between the Sun and the Moon and once the owl’s body could no longer carry the Sun’s words, the children, who had just learned to dance in the wind, carried them instead. And they taught their children, and theirs, and so on as time passed and passed and passed. They say the owls continue to carry poems, sonnets, letters of love, greetings, and sorrowful songs to the Moon every night.

And every night, she smiles.