Across the ocean and in the misty catalogues of years long before the tales of the elders, a girl went every night to a pool at the base of a wooded mountain. Inside this pool, so it was said, a wise woman had once captured the moon. The girl sat by the edge of the pond every evening and lifted the moon out of the still waters.
“Look,” she would say, cradling the moon in her arms, “There is so much beauty in the world.”
“But there is so much sorrow,” the moon would reply, close its eyes, and shed a single tear into the pool.
And the girl would carry the moon throughout the night, showing the moon the beauty of the mountain, of the valley she lived in, and of the stars above. In the grey of dawn she returned the moon to its pool, and in the evening she would return. So it went for many years, until one night the girl did not come to see the moon.
The moon waited until dusk gave way to dark, and still the girl did not come. The stars peeked out of their dark curtain above, but still the girl did not come. Alone for the first night that it could remember, the moon rose from its pool and ventured into the sky in search of the girl. It searched from one horizon to the other, casting its silver light into every window. The moon found families laughing and dining together, families grieving for the sick and the dead; people content in their own solitary company; people alone in the company of others.
At last, the moon found the girl through the darkened window of her home at the base of the mountain. Its light spread into her room and she woke: she was no longer strong and young, but wrinkled and weak.
“I’ve never seen the sorrow in this world,” she said.
“And I’ve never seen the beauty,” the moon said, caressing her cheek as an old friend does.
The moon did not see her again. But every night since, it has risen in the night sky – to see the world’s beauty and sorrow, and to illuminate the world for men and women to find their own joys and sadness. Only once a month does the moon vanish from the night’s sky: the night that it goes to visit the grave of the girl who had once carried the moon, next to the pool which had once been its home.