The Boy Who Sang To The Moon

A short story and song by Lewis Aldanis: Star Girl

On one cold, windless night, there was a boy who saw the moon for who she was. The boy hadn’t known she was actually a girl, and she was beautiful. She sat by her windowsill in the stars, her white hair drifting down to the clouds. Every night she combed her long hair, leaving behind her reflection by the rippling sea.

The boy went up to the lighthouse in his fishing village and flashed the brightest fire he could create to catch her attention. But his world was too distant, his light too small. So the boy sang. His song traveled across the sky, light as a feather, reaching the moon. His soft melody ached her heart, and she couldn’t fathom why. The earth was slow and was forbidden to visit, as she was a celestial, and such beings would lose their immortality if they dared to travel to the world.

The moon had watched the earth for a long time, but she hadn’t listened to it, not truly. The boy’s song was the first worldly thing that she heard fully, completely. His chorus was a bridge that filled her with a sense of wonder, yet dissatisfaction, as her world was soundless.

She sent him a ship made of starlight, so that they could meet. The boy was amazed when it arrived, silvered light that did not blind his eyes, and the moon’s attendants greeted him in their duskspun robes. Taking him in, they told him he could only stay until dawn.

The moon was nervous and fearful that the boy would be discovered by the other celestials. She met the boy in the space between worlds, the Twilight Forest, where they were hidden under its great canopy of starlight. She showed him the dark dew off leaves made of shadow, the primordial moths that spun their cosmic cocoons, the world trees that rooted across the universe, and other wonders that were an eternal occurrence for her. She said that for all the light of her realm, it was soundless, and joyless in its perpetual eternity.

He understood her, that without her voice, she was merely the moon, trapped in the faraway sky.

Then the boy sang, and his song, once just lost with yearning, was now filled with love. The moon kissed him, meeting his song with her lips. Their love was so bright it radiated over the heavens, catching the eyes of the moon’s father, the lord of time.

He was fearful for his daughter’s life, that she would be entranced by a mortal, and eventually become mortal herself. So he whisked the boy away back to his world, and created a tether between him and the moon, that they would be separated no matter how far or long they tried to reunite. The moon’s father forbade her to watch the earth, though even his influence could not control her forever, and she slipped through the cracks of his power to peek down over the world.

The boy eventually grew to be a man, and he forgot about the girl, pursuing worldly pleasures with worldly women. He sailed across the world on his boat, but every night he would step out on his deck and watch the moon's reflection, broken by the never-ending waves.

With gravitational entropies and melodies, the man lulled his first love towards the earth, for he could not reach the stars. The moon had searched for the boy, but was lost in the gap of space and time between them. When she heard his song, deeper and richer than before, she wept, her tears falling and streaking across the sky, for she could not ferry or reach the boy who had become a man.

The man had become too grounded in his ways. His hands had become weatherbeaten, calloused things, and his eyes now spoke of beauties and losses he had seen that the moon couldn’t even comprehend. He looked down at his boat, a craft he’d worked on since he was a boy, once ordinary, now glorious in its sails of fire and hull of gold.

The tether between the man and the moon was still there, destined to be together, but worlds apart, their light facing away from each other.

Then the man realized he could never be with the moon, as he was now the sun.

The moon, in her loss and understanding of her life, searched for ways to escape her father’s influence. She snuck away in the darkest of nights aboard her ship, circling the earth, in the faint hope to catch the sun’s warmth of his song.

But sometimes, in the hidden places and the darkest light, the sun who was once a boy and the moon who was once a girl would meet across the span of their first love, the Twilight Forest, when its roots reached the earth and bridged between their two worlds.

The sun and the moon rejoiced, for a beautiful and glorious moment, fleeting, but their love everlasting, so bright it blotted out all things, and all people witnessed their splendor and wondered of their darkest light, their never-ending fire.