In the beginning

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Before the galaxy formed, two sisters were born from the dust of the cosmos. One burned with living flame, the other with ebony darkness. They walked the young world, drinking in the heady newness of life singing in the skies overhead and tumbling in verdant swathes beneath their feet. Everywhere they turned, it flourished and bloomed in abundance.

Except when the sisters strolled by. When they passed, life trembled and fled. As each mile unwound below their feet, the world seemed to empty, silent and ghostly.

Sol blamed her arcane twin, Nisha. Her sister's fathomless dark was responsible for their lonely existence. Wherever Nisha walked, the creatures of this world were blinded and bound in her black shroud. If Sol went on alone, she knew the world wound sing for her. Was she not born of glorious light, her mane of hair rippling with a thousand firelight hues? This world would adore and worship her without the nightmare taint of her sister.

Nisha strode away with clenched fists. Some words couldn't be unsaid.

Sol moved on, alone, her confidence fading with each mile. Life ran before her, and the skies grew gaping with emptiness. She felt the loss of her sister like an open wound that grew and grew to consume her whole.

Bereft, she stopped amid the lushness of a new-born forest, and turned to look back. Behind her stretched miles of burnt, blasted earth. Trees stretched blackened and dead branches toward the sky.

She covered her mouth with her hands, horrified to see scorching, empty sands where once luxuriant life had thrived. They were right to fear her flame, just as they feared Nisha's infinite dark. What a fool she'd been, to lay the blame for their lonely existence at her sister's feet. The world would always be afraid of a woman that burned as brightly as she, would always fear the boundless dark glory of her sister.

Sol went back, finding Nisha slumped a distant shore, head pillowed in her hands. Reaching out, she took Nisha's hand. Where their fingers touched, gold and indigo shaded the sky, breath-taking in its joint beauty.

Nisha stood and gathered her sable cloak, cutting swathes of fabric loose. They gathered the strips of shadow-stuff and hurled them into the sky. The wind caught the ethereal scraps, tangling them around the branches of trees and peaks of mountains, gathering them in the bowls of hills and the depths of ravines.

In return, Sol asked Nisha to comb through the fiery tresses of her hair. The sparks that flew from the ends lit tiny fires in the dark cloth of Nisha's cloak, so it seemed studded with a million flickering points of diamond life.

Now when Sol walks by, the scraps of cloth soften her burning brightness to a warm, life-giving light. When Nisha follows shortly after, we gape in wonder at the brilliant ink-black sky, lit with her sister's love until the end of time.