Once upon a time there was a woman who walked on a road of glass by night with a
flickering lantern...
she traced her steps, followed her shadow and climbed moon beams to the closest star...
And as she went the sun rose and fell but the lantern only grew brighter as she went. When she reached the East Edge of the World, she climbed the stairs there with her feet in tattered sandals and she hung the new sun in the sky. Some say she traveled south and became the moon, and others say she was a river that ran the course of the land, retracing soft steps across the glassy desert.
the water, emerald, as her eyes, flowed as her hair had, farther than the eye could see..
...and birds sang out by the reed-strewn edge, and they plucked carp from the shallows with beaks the color of the flickering lantern light.
And a young man grieved in a far village, for the woman had come in sandals and jewels and stayed by his side and in his bed by the light of his lantern over her moon-pale skin, and in the morning, she had taken her skin, the lantern, his heart.
At dusk, owls descended and sang the fish to sleep and a million lightning bugs filled the air, swirling over head and making miniature constellations overhead.
And if the man remembers and if the man grieves, what care legends? Stories were not meant to be kept as wives.
stories are meant to be shared- told and re-told said aloud at a campfire- whispered into a child's ear as their fingers lose their grip on wakefulness...
...and story or legend, the birds still sing and catch fish in their beaks and the man still cries, and the woman still wanders the glassy road with a fading lantern, eternally to rewake the sun by light of the inconstant stars.
ascii hearts to etouffee, who contributed the italic text and played off of me in the catbox.