Author's Note: This story is a bit different than what I normally write, but I felt inspired with the approaching Valentine's Day to write a story about a different kind of love. Enjoy, and please leave a comment below if you liked it!
Parental Love
When I was a child, my father told me the story of how the Sun and the Moon began. He told me, enraptured as I was with wondering eyes, that the Sun was a star, born from another star, which was born from another, which was made by God.
He told me the Moon was a rock, only a piece of an asteroid, which had broken away from another asteroid, which had been made by God. I interrupted him to ask why God had not just made the Sun and the Moon in the first place, and he shushed me.
"Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?" he would say.
So I quieted down in my blankets, pulling them up to my chin, and I listened as my father's deep voice carried me to other worlds beyond our own.
Once upon a time, the Moon was the most powerful force in the universe, he told me. The Moon had the power to span the galaxies with heat and fire, burning anything in its path. Of all the superpowers, the Moon had the best, and he used it to both help and hurt others.
I asked my father why the moon had superpowers, and he just gave me a look until I closed my mouth and eyes again.
Now, the Sun, it was just a small Star, floating in the depths of space, lonely and dark. The Star watched the Moon in quiet admiration, and the Star told himself that someday he would be just like the Moon. So days passed, and the Star tried to glow as brightly as the Moon, but he could not even muster a slight light around himself.
"You see," my father said to me. "Nobody had told the Star that he and the Moon were different, and that rocks and stars were not the same."
The Star could not glow, and so one day, he finally gave up, casting away to the other side of the Earth so that the Moon could not see him try and fail again.
The Star thought that the Moon would be cruel to him, and mock him for not being able to light up, so he closed his eyes and cried himself to sleep.
I told my daddy that he was wrong, and stories did not work like that. The Sun had to light up!
"Well, if you think that is all there is to the story, then you are probably right," my father retorted, standing to leave.
I begged him not to leave, and to return and finish the story. I promised him I would not make any more interruptions, and he finally came back by my bed to tell the rest of the story. I had been seriously worried, at least until I saw the smile dancing in his eyes.
"Where were we, ah yes, the Star was crying itself to sleep," my father winked.
Little did the Star know, but the Moon had been watching him from far away. The Moon loved all the sky very much, but above all others he loved the Star. So, the Moon gave the Star the greatest gift he could give. He shared all of his power with the Star.
As the Moon drew closer to the Earth to share what he had with the Sun, he got caught into the orbit around the planet by accident. He was still able to see the Star wake up though, and when he did, the Star began to glow brightly.
The people down below on Earth marveled about the golden Star in the sky, but the Star was given a new name. He was now called the Sun.
And the Sun turned to the Moon, who had given him a new life, and the Sun noticed that the Moon was a lot weaker than he had been before. Now, the Moon could barely warm any planets at all, and the responsibility had fallen on the Sun.
And so the Moon gave up his power to help the Sun, and they loved each other the rest of their days, working together to help the people on Earth. The Sun was the light by day, and the Moon their guide by night.
"And that," my father finished, "was how the Sun and the Moon came to be."
I clapped in delight, and I told my daddy that he should be an author because he was great at telling stories. My father laughed, rustled my hair and pulled the blankets up further across my chest.
"Get some sleep, my son," my father smiled.
He was half-way across the room when I called him back to ask him why the Moon would give up his life to help the Sun.
My father looked at me for a moment and laughed, saying, "You'll understand when you're older."
And with that, he turned off the light and closed the door, allowing the glow of the moon to fill my bedroom.
