Tethered to Love

Once upon a time, there was a quiet little girl who had never been to the ocean. In fact, she didn't even know the ocean existed. Until, one day, the moon captured the tide, found the little girl, and tugged and tugged and tugged on her wee little fingers with the most beautiful threads made out of moonbeams. Of course, the moon was gentle and patient and lovely - so lovely that the little girl fell secretly in love. Before long, all the little girl wanted was to follow the moon's threads.

Frightened by the moon - its powerful beauty and long moonbeam threads - the little girl took a deep breath to mettle her nerve. Finally, she reached up high, grasped at one of the threads and gave it a tug. For one blissfully fearful moment, the tide lurched and the threads wobbled, but the girl steadied herself and stood firm (her other secret, you see, was that she had long looked up to the moon and yearned for adventure, for the moon to come and take her away). And so, with her feet newly settled on blank earth, the little girl nudged herself forward. "If I hold on a little tighter," she asked, "where will you take me?" Because the moon was wise and knew that the little girl was timid, the moon simply said, "Have faith, my delicate girl. Come with me and I will show you the most beautiful things."

And so, in time, the moon's beams grew shorter and the tugging stopped. You see, the little girl had fallen into the moon's beams and let them carry her wherever the moon wanted. Together, the moon and the little girl braved the dark forest, moved heaps of dead earth and made the most brilliant new shade of pink to splash through the sky. And the tide grew resentful. After all, the moon had captured the tide, and it was the moon's job to carry the tide in and out, along the shore, in keeping with the ocean's rhythm. Without the tug of the moon's beams, the ocean would lose its sway and the moon would never be able to show the little girl all that the ocean held.

But the moon didn't care. The moon had the little girl in its grasp, riding its beams. They had become a pair, limbs and beams entwined in their limitless potential. Caught in the moon's beams, the little girl couldn't believe all that she had seen - and she couldn't imagine herself without the moon. This is when the moon, gazing at the little girl, forgot the tide and gave all of its beams to the little girl. This is also when the little girl surrendered herself to the moon, opened her wings to the pink sky, and discovered perfect happiness in the waves and light of the moon.

Patient and gentle and lovely as the moon was, however, the moon could not sustain itself against the crashing tide, wild without the moon's beams to steady its flow. What the little girl didn't know (and what the moon didn't tell her until too late), is that the waves did not belong to the moon. They were the tide, captured by the moon, bound to the ocean. The unstoppable, immovable ocean. The ocean that would, with relentless patience, remind the moon that they were forever bound to shift and sway.

Lost in the waves, the little girl could never have predicted that this terrible force, this beautiful ocean, would be the ugly thief of her dreams. And while the moon had not let go, the little girl soon came to know that the moon's beam's were changeable and weak in her grasp, especially against the constant strength and rhythm of the ocean's tide. The moon did not want to be tied to the little girl and she would have to let go.

At first, the little girl thought she would try and try and try to join the shift and sway of the moon. But the moon simply stretched out its beams beyond the little girl, searching and wandering - sometimes wending its way back to the little girl, and sometimes piercing her heart with the most wicked and knowing betrayal. The little girl had to know that the moon would never focus all of its beams in her direction.

Over time, the little girl was able to stretch herself further and further away from the moon. The tide would sometimes draw her back and she would fall back into the waves, but always the moon reminded her - these beams are not for you and they will always reach beyond your body. Gradually, the little girl lost faith in the moon and as the last of the moon's beams slipped out of her fingers, she knew that the moon would never again tug at her fingers. Finally, the little girl could fly.