Near the big waters of the west a small and very old village lay, nestled within a grove of trees yet close enough to the waters to hear its lull a boy grew into a man and when he became a man he began to look for a wife. As it was a common thing to do at his age he decided that he would take a full cycle of the moon's course in the sky to search for a wife.
Now this man did not want just any wife. He wanted a woman who was not only beautiful but kind and resourceful, a woman who would be a contrast to the more harshly beautiful women of his tribe. So he set out in search of this soft beauty that he desired.
So he grabbed those supplies that he needed to survive for this time and left. He traveled far North, so far North that the clothing he had brought was hardly enough to keep him warm, especially at night and not having the time to kill an animal and use its hide for warmth he began to search even harder for another village.
One day the air and world around him was so cold that he could now see his breath in the mornings and late at night. Now having passed through many villages and to no avail he began to despair of ever finding the perfect woman for him. He began to wonder if he should not just give up and go back home, but he knew that going back without a wife would mean not only total humiliation but also that he would have to settle for one of the girls of the tribe, and although for a warrior humiliation was dreaded, he feared being unloved even more. He not only wanted a perfect wife, he wanted a perfect wife who wanted him.
One night he couldn't sleep. The
full moon would be rising that night and after this day he had decided to begin his journey back to his home village. He decided to watch the moon until it set that night. While keeping watch on the moon he walked around through the grove that he had decided to camp. His wanderings brought him near the last village that he had traveled through and not wanting to go to close he headed back toward his camp.
But there was singing . . . a soft child's lullaby it sounded like. It sounded almost as if the forest had gone completely silent just to listen. It wasn't the most beautiful voice or the strongest, but the feeling with which it was sung somehow felt right to the man. He wandered slowly toward the source of the music and when he was near enough to spy on the singer he peered around a tree and found the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was small and had a different kind of beauty than other girls, a pure look, an aura about her of innocence. He was surprised though - he had never seen her before. He knew that she could only have come from the nearby village and though inspired by the many hardworking girls there he hadn't been particularly impressed by any other than that . . . and she had never crossed his vision. He was sure he would have noticed her if she had been anywhere in that village at the time, so why had he never seen her?
He approached her and asked her why he had never seen her before. She quietly answered him that she had not wanted to meet him, afraid that she would fall in love and have to leave her sickly father. She told him of how she had caught glimpses of him when he had briefly been besieged by some children curious to meet the stranger and she had been dazzled by how gentle he had been and how honest he seemed with everyone but she simply could not leave her father and she knew that that was what marrying a stranger like him would mean.
In the moonlight the man who had thought he would never find the perfect woman was surprised that he was destined to lose her before he had even truly had her. But he could not let that happen. In that instant he decided to tell her that he would stay for her, he would help care for her father as well and asked if he could get to know her better.
Needless to say they fell in love, and a month before they were to be married he left for his home village to tell them the news, return for those things that he had left behind and then return to marry the girl he loved. For he did love her, she was the gentlest woman he could imagine, the most patient, kind and loving. She was the only one whom he could see himself ever loving and never would he find another. His search was over.
Soon they were wed and then soon after that as well she was expecting a child. Life seemed it could not be happier, and everything in their lives seemed to agree.
But then disaster stuck. The girl's father died and the girl was overcome with grief. In her grief and pain and torment the baby came early into this world and she delivered a baby boy. The man tried to comfort her and care for the child as much as he could, but his dear wife was driven insane by grief to the point that she even stopped speaking.
One day in the middle of the wintertime when she was at her worst he left for a short hunting trip to bring them back food to eat she left. She ran away from everything she knew and loved taking their baby son with her. When he returned and found her message he was heartbroken. In her message she had asked him never to follow after her and he didn't. In his grief over her pain he considered death but couldn't do it, in case she should return. But he could not see that happening. In her message she also told him how afraid she was that loving her father and him loving her killed her father, and her loving the man and the man loving her would surely kill him as well. So she was gone.
The man didn't move from that spot. He stayed, in his agony and pain, starving . . . hoping that life would just drain away. But survival was too deeply ingrained in him. One day though, barely alive and pain burned into his face as his sole expression he went to the village herbalist or rather shaman. He begged of her to find him a way where he could watch over his dear beloved wife and son always.
The shaman looked deeply into his eyes and saw a love greater than she had ever seen or known before, and it scared her. But she knew what she could do to the man. She warned him that it would be forever, and that there was no going back. He would live far longer than his beloved wife and son ever would and he would have to watch centuries upon centuries of pain and torment upon the earth.
The man readily agreed, for though his wife had not wanted him to love her anymore he could not let her go unprotected for the rest of her life. So he told the shaman that he would do it. She told him to meet her out under the stars at the next full moon just outside the village and she would take care of the rest.
The next full moon came. He was there. The shaman was there. She told him to take her to the place that he had first seen his beloved and he did. She told him to close his eyes and told him also that when he opened his eyes again it would be from far away and that he would be able to see his beloved.
He closed his eyes.
Memories of the night that they had met flooded his inner vision and her beautiful face lighted by the moon was the foremost thought on his mind. Suddenly he opened his eyes to ask the shaman a quick question but low and behold . . . he was far away and looking down upon the shaman from a distance that he could never dream of measuring. Then he realized . . . I am the moon.
He searched the earth's surface for his dear wife and found her . . . she was in another village, safe and warm and his son was beside her. She sang to him a sad song of longing and fear as she brushed his dark hair away from his face. She looked up into the sky and into the man's face, unknowing that he watched her too. She got the strangest look in her eye . . . and it was almost as if she knew that he had past from his earthly life into that otherworldly sphere just for her. A silent tear fell down her cheek without her knowing the precise reason why.
And so the man watched over her for the rest of her life. And when she had died he watched over his son and their family and so on for generations and generations to come. The shaman who was soon to die searched and found one of the man's descendants and told them the story of the man who loved the woman enough to become the face of the moon and asked that he would tell his descendants of this act of love for as long as he lived, and he did. The story has never ended since.
Common belief has it that when one dies you become a star and that is why you could never count them, belief is also that the closest star to the moon . . . is the man in the moon's one true love, to watch the world as it goes by - where there love is forever.
The End.
