The rays of the Sun climbed across the horizon of the Earth and made its ways heavenward to embrace the only child of the lunar light. Serenity, daughter of the great Queen Selenity, Goddess of the Moon, felt the sun's warmth spread across her cheeks, arousing a soft blush. The hands of dawn encompassed Serenity's soft form to rouse her awake. It was time for another day to begin anew.
The period when the moon's lithe form hid behind the curtain of the sun's bright rays was the busiest time for the lunar residents. It was their duty afterall to prepare for the night. To assure that the mortals were comforted by the tender light of the moon. To ensure that tides churned and ships continued sailing on these neverending waves. Because as sure as the sun rises and falls each day, its lunar companion will do the same. This was the duty of those born under the moonlight.
Serenity let out a delicate breath that blew a soothing wind to stroke the white surface of the moon. This lunar landscape was all that the goddess-in-training had known since she had first opened her cerulean eyes to affirm her existence. Her fingers entangled themselves within the blanket draped across her. Most of the moon's servants were cold like the porcelain works of art lining her palace halls. But Serenity and her mother were the remaining beings who were born on the surface of the Earth. Within the Earth's atmosphere, which had gently collected the sun's spendor, the Lunarian royals had been blessed with its warmth. But that had been eons ago. There was no atmosphere on the moon to capture and hold any of the sun's warming rays.
It was rare for Serenity eyes to see any color in this kingdom of white. The walls of the palace were untouched by the rich hues abundantly found on earth. The barren sands of the moon bore no fruit. It was a beautiful but lifeless haven for its creatures.
Serenity paused in her weaving of a glittering tapestry. Her distant aunt, Athena, the Goddess of Weaving among countless other things, would have been proud of such an intricate piece of marvel. Her eyes traced the delicate contours of her fingers intertwined with the silver threads of the fabric. The lunar princess was in recess, taking a break between her lessons. She untangled herself from her weaving loom to stride across her room and onto her balcony.
Her balcony was Serenity's only place of refuge from her duties as the successor of the Lunar Kingdom. She gazed down at the only treasure that she could never attain even as a goddess. The beautiful marble of the Earth. It was so far from her touch and although the Earth was hundreds of times larger than her petite form, at the this distance, she felt as if she could wrap her arms around its tender spherical form. Her fingers could imagine being pricked by the sharp peaks of the mountains poking as it palpated across its surface.
What would it be like to swim within its glittering oceans? What she would have not give to lay on the fresh, green grass. She had heard countless stories of this faraway land from her tutor, Ami, Princess of Wisdom under the Guardianship of Mercury.
Ami had made many journeys to the Earth under the wing of her father, Hermes, God of Travelers and Ruler of the Planet Mercury. While in the mortal realm, she collected more books than a mortal could read in his lifetime. With the boundless amount of knowledge and wisdom she gleaned in her readings and on her trips, Queen Selenity saw it appropriate to appoint the wise goddess as her daughter's trusted tutor.
If only the Queen had known that these stories that Ami poured inside her daughters head was making her sweet princess grow more restless by the day, maybe she would have done something different. But even the gods themselves could have not prevented the upcoming tragedy from unfolding. None of them could have known for the future was as dark and unseen as the land under a new moon.
The Goddess of the Moon glided across her marble floors, her heels echoing down the halls as she did so. Her iridescent hair trailed like two rivers of silver behind her. How fitting for the reigning deity of the Silver Millenium Palace. Lately she had been unnerved by whispers from oracles afar about a change threatening to occur. The queen did not like change. Change meant a disturbance and a disturbance could threaten this peace that she had painstakingly crafted.
There was no atmosphere on the moon. There was no storm. No snow. No fires to scorch the already barren land. The only wind came from the sigh of the only two deities residing on this lunar landscape. Nothing had changed in a millenium unlike the mortal realm that was unrecognizable to the Queen who had walked across its rough earth eons ago. But today of all days, Queen Selenity felt a chill brush down her spin on this weatherless satellite.
Her footsteps ceased in front of the place which always pacified all her worries: her precious daughter's room. The queen remembered the countless nights that she would quietly enter her child's room to tell her stories or sing her lullabies. Her soft melodies would gracefully intertwine with her daughter's croons. In this small pocket of the universe, only the two of them existed, safe from any harm.
Queen Selenity took in her daughter's shining, delicate form. Serenity was maturing more and more everyday. Her daughter was a replica of the Queen-except for one difference: her daughter's golden locks. When Selenity had broken through the last layer of the Earth's atmosphere with her daughter wrapped in her arms, the sun's golden rays shined upon her bundle of hope. Serenity's silver locks transformed in that moment of timeless space and absorbed the radiant light of Helios, the predecessor to the Sun God, Apollo.
"My precious moonlight, what has captured your attention so?" the reigning Queen asked her beloved daughter.
"Oh! Mother! I had not heard you come in. My apologies, I became lost within my musings about the Earth."
The Queen stilled suddenly. Her daughter's curiosity of that cursed planet had grown more and more, especially since Ami had become her tutor. "Now Serenity, as beautiful as the pictures the daughter of Hermes must have painted for you, there are much uglier, darker sides to the Earth."
"I know, Mother. I have studied the battles of the ancients for so long now. But I feel like I have learned all that I could from these books."
"Your tutor Ami would crumble into dust if your words had poured into her ears."
Serenity gave a light chuckle. "That may be so, but she has learned from the experiences down below as well. I have had only the words to paint the stories I have heard." She paused, inhaling courage to say her next words, "Mother, I desperately yearn to go down to the Earth and experience it for myself."
The hot vision of the Great War of the Titans flashed before Selenity's eyes. Fear, desperation, unending hopelessness seized her ancient bones and she almost fell over in shock. It had been centuries since she had thought of that terrible time when even light feared to come down to the wartorn Earth. The symbol of Lunarian royalty flashed hotly amid the Queen's brow, blinding both mother and daughter. For the first time in her life, she raised her voice at her precious child, "NO! You must never step foot on the mortal's realm. NEVER!"
The air in the room stilled. One could cut the tension in the room with a sword. Before Selenity could comprehend it, pearls of tear fell from her daughter's cerulean orbs. As there was no gravity on the moon, the pearls gently floated away from Serenity's face, orbiting her golden head. Suddenly, it was not a young woman that stood before the Queen, but her bright-eyed, innocent child who had just fallen and scraped her knee.
Within seconds, her mother bounded across the floor, forgetting all royal decorum, and rushed to her daughter's side. "My moonlight. I am sorry to the sun and back. I had never meant to yell at you like that." As the Queen gently rubbing soothing circles in her daughter's back, Serenity's tears finally abated.
"I understand your worries, Mother. But do you not think that the residents of Earth have changed since your time? It has been so long since the Great War of Old."
"You are quite right about experience being the best teacher that one could ask for. And from my experience, both mortals and immortals of the Earthly realm never change."
Serenity could never understand the absolute horrors that came along with the Great War. And there was no way that the Queen could ever explain such things to her precious moonbeam. Her precious daughter could not even begin to fathom the pain of seeing your loved ones slain before your very eyes. One by one, the circle of Titans were massacred with no mercy by their children. Selenity stood alone as the last remaining Titaness of Old. To live on the Earth meant playing to the whims of your own uncontrolled desires and lust for power. The frail humans would often crumble beneath the thumb of their all-powerful gods. But these gods who have everything that they could ever imagine within their fingertips grew bored of their own invincibility and take delirious delight of playing with their mortal ward. One can so easily become blinded by the dark, vile enticement of jealousy and greed.
Selenity was the only Titaness able to rise from the sea of blood, to break through the Earth's atmosphere, and to enter into the weightless space. With her newborn daughter tucked safely within her arms, she cried one single tear of hope, which crystallized into the core of the moon they live on today. This crystal handmade moon was a beautiful, untouchable paradise born out of her pain and suffering. And to be able to raise her precious, darling child in a world untouched by the tainted hands of those below- this was a miracle that she could have never been able to even hope for in the complete turmoil of the Great War of Old.
"My precious Serenity, I can never expect you to understand the traumas of the past. But this unreachable heaven that I have created for the two of us," she gestures to the lunar landscape before them, "this paradise is what the Earthlings yearn for. They worship our fellow Gods and Goddesses their entire lives for a glimpse of what we have. So trust me when I say this, you do not want to be any place but here."
Serenity gave a slight nod of acknowledgement within her mother's arms. The Goddess of the Moon slowly unwrapped her arms from her most precious treasure. "Go take a short rest before your next lesson Ami. And with that, the Queen thought she would never hear a peep out of her daughter about this subject again. Her daughter was all the Titaness could hope for: beautiful, intelligent, respectful, and obedient. So of course, her child would take heed of her mother's words without question. She had always done so before.
But even a deity as great and wise as the Titaness Selenity could be wrong.
For the rest of the day, as Serenity went through the repetitive tasks of lunar godlihood, she formulated a plan to escape this handcrafted paradise. For when she nodded in acknowledgement of her mother's words, she was not recognizing her mother's warning. She was recognizing what her words had meant: Serenity would never be allowed to truly live under her mother's watchful, overbearing gaze. If experience would not come to her as a teacher, she would go out herself to seek it.
With only the cloak of darkness on her back, Serenity whisked herself away in the dead of the night. Her palm touched the cold surface of grand marble doors guarding the most important room of the palace: The Pylonus Gateway. This room could only be entered by those branded with the Lunarian mark of royalty. The upturned crescent moon flashed and dimmed as the doors opened to welcome its succeeding monarch.
Serenity had secretly watched when her mother would lead her tutor into the room and guide her on her way to the next destination. The princess had not been allowed to enter the room without proper supervision, but she had never even had the chance. Her mother would never even allow her to go to the castles of the Inner Planets to visit her guardian friends, stating that the moon had the best security of all. Enough was enough. Tonight she was finally going to leave this paradise-prison.
The young royal pulled up the controls for the esteemed Pylonus Gateway and blanched at what appeared before her. It was a language that she could not recognize. Was this the language of the Titans of Old, one that would have died if her mother had not escaped? She could make out some symbols here and there, but most words were indecipherable. But the unwavering princess continued trying to press her fingertips on this ancient technology.
A palace guard on his usual rounds noticed the slightly ajar door to the portal room that Serenity had forgotten to close in her haste. Racing to the foot of the door, he yelled, "Your Royal Highness! What in Selenity's name are you doing? You are not allowed in this room!" Serenity turned back to briefly acknowledged the intruder, "well, neither are you." Just as he tried to enter the forbidden room, an invisible force threw him back. His back hit the floor with a painful wallop and his mouth fell agape at this defiant version of the princess that he had never seen before.
Hastily, he ran to the end of the hall to alert the Queen, but the royal had already stirred awake due to the commotion. The doors bursted open to reveal the disheveled palace guard. "Your Majesty! The princess! She's-" But the guard did not have a chance to finish his words as Queen Selenity brushed by him. Her legs carried her to her worst nightmare.
Her daughter Serenity was frantically pressing buttons left and right on the Pylonus Gateway. "Serenity! Cease what you are doing this instant! You do not understand what you are getting yourself into!" Her desperate voice carried across the immense room.
The golden-haired Lunarian paused to turn back to her loving mother. "I do not understand, but should I not get the chance to find out for myself?"
Hearing those words, Queen Selenity blasted the doors to the portal room wide open and bounded across the immense room to reach her daughter.
Princess Serenity's heart was one beat away from breaking through her chest. Adrenaline pulsed through her veins and she pounded her small fists against the gateway technology in frantic desperation. If she did not leave now, she would never get the opportunity to do so again.
The tell tale signs of the Pylonus Gateway turning on signaled to both Lunarians that time was running out. 'Please!' both mother and daughter sent a mental prayer.
Just as the Queen's fingertips brushed her daughter's arm, a light within Serenity bursted forward, blinding all occupants of the room. Bolts of energy surged forward from the portal, running errant at so much power forcing its way through.
Her mother had never felt such an explosion of power before and she was blasted backwards across the hall. "I'm sorry, Mother" were the last words that entered the Queen's ears before her vision went dark.