Eclipse

TW: Sexual Assault, Eating Disorder

She embedded herself deep into the felt of the sky, tilting her head back with familiarity on the black fabric that was her universe.

It was past midnight. The sky was darker than dark. Not quite onyx. It was still in the muddied air. The only disruption was her, the white orb rippling her light into the night.

The quiet hummed through the desolate calm.

Mute was what she was. She had no voice, no song. She was prey to the larks, who spread their wings across her face and sent her shrinking behind branches. She was vulnerable to the insomniacs, who watched her, watching them. She was a wanderer of the night, lapping the earth.

‘What does red feel like?’ she wondered. ‘White is light. Grey is thin. Blue is closeness. Black is there, all around my naked self.’ 

But she had never felt the colour red.

Or orange or yellow or green.

She supposed red felt heavy. Heavy and rich pressing on the eyelids. Sharp and lavish.

She blinked as a whisp traced her cheek. It drifted around her round face and skimmed into the black.

She shivered, bringing her head down to study the globe below.

Every night she rushed to see the fading day and the long-legged creatures who scampered around between their homes. She missed them every time. They ran from her into stony oblongs. They hid from her silver stare.

She didn’t understand their fear. She heard they welcomed the Sun. They marched out in their hundreds to suffer his glare and sacrifice their bodies to him. They exposed every inch of decent (or indecent) flesh to his touch and felt every colour. He scarred them with his red and smirked at her, the Moon.

The creatures concealed themselves from her, their nightlight. They covered their eyes with their sunburnt flesh. They left her lonely, wandering the black duvet of the night, keeping her distance from him.

For centuries she had wrapped herself protectively around that distant planet. She had watched its people build upwards and bury themselves downwards. She watched them multiply and join themselves together… and tear themselves apart. She watched the Earth choke on their power and their children reach for clean air. She held these poor creatures in her soft arms as they struggled for sleep, and she recovered them from the violence of the Sun. All the while keeping her fear private.

She spent her life watching anxiously as he slid and skulked his way toward her people, crawling underneath clouds and ducking behind mountains. His sneer lingered on the horizon, blazing in ripples of confident lust.

He mocked her for her shrinking profile, a grin stretching across his perfect globe of a face. He watched as she shredded over weeks, weakening on her diet.

She fasted until she thinned to a paper cut.

Then, she began to stretch.

Over days, she reached her body outward, flexing her muscles until she started to look more her proper shape, willing herself into the Sun’s silhouette. When she was whole, she hung onto the stars around her with gossamer strength in her arms, her heavy form suspended in a web-like constellation. People would watch the sky hours after the Sun had gone. When she grew this big, some would kneel and pray, bending their bodies in salutation. Her beacon would shine with joy. Her courage vibrated through the dark, the stars fizzing and whispering energy between each other. They gossiped their light all the way along the constellations to the Sun.

He felt a wave of her strength in a breeze. He baked in jealousy, resolving to singe her back to a smaller frame.

He began to move, scouring and scorching over the smothering storm clouds. He sizzled along the lid of the ocean, following her moon glade trail.

He got close. He could feel her dusky friend trying to hold him back as he crossed to her side.

The Earth burned in his wake, its day rushing and intensifying, blinding the creatures who could no longer march to the rhythm of the sun’s ticking over their heads.

He plummeted into the darker sky, leaving a momentary sting in his wake. He was a sparkler swearing across the frozen air, gaining on her now, penetrating the dense night, targeting the distant lighthouse ahead. He threw his head down and tunnelled like a flaming arrow underneath the heavy bedcover of stars. He pounced.

She didn’t see him coming until he was upon her, forcing her open like a shell with his burning tongs. She screamed as he branded himself into her dusty skin and carved his shape out jaggedly inside her contracting body. The stars echoed her wails and the sea crashed unevenly far below. She felt herself being grated and sliced away from within. She felt her body diminishing from the inside out, and she exploded into unconsciousness.

The sun cackled. He was the first man in the moon.

When he was done, the Sun brushed himself down and soared, satisfied, back to his periphery of the sky.

The Earth rotated and exposed the moon slowly to another set of sleepy dependants. Her mind limped back into being, and she clung to what was left of her skinned self. Shock rattled her frame.

Down below, a child stood at their window, fiddling with the latch. They slid the window open with a minute clunk and looked up at her.

She felt the gentle jolt below and turned her shaking body down to watch.

The child’s eyes glinted with awe, and the moon blushed; the attention strangely stung. They held each other’s gaze for a long time, and as the moon looked down at the child, she began to form a plan. She was determined to avenge the lost shards of herself.

She smiled sweetly down, grinning secretly to herself and shining her warmest light down on her watcher, who, in time, was reassured and turned sleepily back to bed.

The moon’s returning light pulsed through the open window.

It didn’t take long to plan her route. She knew by heart the alignment of her fellows in the sky and how to travel between them.

It was her strength she had to focus on.

To overcome him, she knew she had to build herself back up again. Flesh her body out.

It took weeks of hard work, but at last, with taut muscles and stretch marks striping her body, she felt ready.

She waited for the Sun to rise to his peak directly opposite her. When he had fallen asleep in his heat, hovering selfishly over the equator, she began.

The clouds were on her side. They gathered at her signal and followed as she sank through the sky, rushing through her orbit to catch him up. They shielded her from curious eyes below and raced ahead to increase her speed.

She swam breaststroke, her body arcing with adrenaline. Next, front crawl, her face pointed determinedly forward and her body pumping in exhilaration. She was gaining speed. She dipped down in butterfly, reaching first light as her shadow spilt like liquid over the earth beneath. Singing with energy, she levelled with the horizon and set her target on the furnace ahead.

She could smell him now, the melting tarmac and burning bushes billowed into her nostrils, permeating her head with sour heat. She was close. Much too close. The heat impaled her. Only a few leagues more. She forged through the memory and pulled her body tight, to stop it from melting with pain. The anger from his violation mounted inside her.

She screamed her energy toward him. He awoke but couldn’t react.

She plunged into his light, choking his heat and smothering his bullish body. Slowing down to extend her mark, ignoring her charring back, she held her arms out to her sides in sacrifice, turning her face away from him and towards her people. Most were gathered on plains of sunburnt ground, watching in fright and excitement. She beamed at them, and they saw her, or rather, his absence. And she thought to herself:

Red is heat, hurt, and revenge.