The Sun is a Foreign Place

[clonky 1976]

 

 

 

“I have done something I am not proud of.”

 

Seraena only wished these words were the ones that came from her tongue, though all that was left was a measly apology. Albeit quiet and intimate, it did not surmount the feelings she held in her heart. 

 

The Sun eclipsed, a relapse in her judgment, with her Stars straying from the light she illuminated. Her ire cast a wave of fire that indulged the word to burn, and the Moon who stood by her side felt the effects along with her little Stars. Though, one of her Stars flew too close to the Sun, and like Icarus, lost His wings in the scorching heat. Instead of providing warmth, she clipped the wings of her Star, and let him fall from grace instead of uplifting his light. 

 

Too bright did Seraena’s love burn, and it scorched the relationship of her son, Galahad. Though, he too blew away the remaining petals of her forlorn flower, and so did the wind sweep away all the love, leaving only but a stem of what once was. All her life, it was as if she had to survive from the rain in the desert, hoping it would quench her thirst, but delusion was quite the motivator for Seraena. Even when she created such a fantasy, those whom she held dearest did not care to give her a sip from the chalice, but instead let her rot and wilt. Only her husband, Hurin, helped shift the tides of the sea, ascending as the Moon and controlling the waves. 

 

The last surge was the words of Galahad, which pushed her into the wind and let her float away from the empire she created in her mind.

“Evil Incarnate.”

 

It played over as if the leaves that wrestled with the wind murmured these words. Seraena did not know if this was truly what Galahad said, she could not tell if it was her mind playing tricks on her as it always does, or if the cards were played by her own son. 

 

Seraena only hoped that as The Sun, the light of her absence would illuminate enough for The Moon, as the flame that proudly burned now faltered to the near extinguish. The wind did not carry the flame, but instead carried the light to a sphere that was long forgotten, and irradiated into extinguished smoke. 

 

She left a simple note to her husband, in a place that only he shall find it, and it read as follows:

“Dearest Hurin,

 

I have gone back to where the wind has called me, and I have taken the sentence that has been wrought to me. I hope that your persistent love will guide my path, because I know well that you do not falter in the way the flame does. You are constant, my Moon, and hopefully your power over the tides brings me back home when I am ready. My love for you will always burn like a thousand suns, forgive me.”

 

Seraena then signed her name at the end, and suddenly the rain that she so cherished as a forlorn flower now came from her eyes, as tears dropped upon the parchment in which she wrote. She did not dare write of Galahad and the words that scorned her, or Carys, who had forsaken her, or Rumil, whose heart was deep as the ocean. Regardless of all, she hoped that when she returned, so would her love for her little Stars – her children. Hopefully they too, would learn to love her.

 

[Unwillingly 18096]

Galahad remembered wishing his words hurt where his mother loved him most.

He spoke like the sun, but not the way its light shafts through canopies or warms a glimmering pond in midsummer, but the way it blisters the skin and stabs the eyes. The way it burns with all-consuming passion, self-destructive fervor, and how it taunts him the way firedancers taunt hubris from their woven tethers.

Galahad remembered being grateful his brother and sister did not share this burden. He wondered if they would be as thankful of him as he were of them.