the moons of jupiter


Short Stories / Sunday, May 13th, 2018

The concept of a moon had always seemed strange to him. That there should be a heavenly body up there somewhere, always crouching in the obscure, hidden in plain sight by the shadow of the world and all the while shining brightly for everyone else.

How was it to be explained?

Matter of the universe condensed into a vast rock of light and iron, circling our world from far above, reflecting light forever and a day more without keeping any of it for himself – the selflessness of it baffled him.

He must have been well past childhood years when he found out that there wasn’t just that one moon. That there existed various other moons, circling around their particular planet, eternally bound to an invisible route in the sky, turning their rounds on a path only known to them, around the centre of their particular universe.

It was an antidote for everything; the knowledge that there existed other things with different centres of the universe than his. It also scared him, though. That there could be a moon which was so dependent upon his planet that he wouldn’t dare stray too far away for fear of losing his grip on what he knows and drifting away slowly, free from the gravitational pull that had always held him back and end up floating disorientated until he’d erupt into a fiery spectacle before an unyielding sky into dust and ash and falling stars.

It was only years later, when he finally managed to leave his suffocating hometown behind, that he realized that he, too, had been a moon all along, too scared to let go of the things he knew and trade their comfort for the possibility of happiness.

He also came to realize that falling stars were not only the end of a small world; they were also the start of a wish coming true.

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