It was as if the warmth grew searing serrated teeth.
Her palms were red and raw. Her arms, scorched by the merciless heat. Crimson rivulets emerged from between her clenched fingers, dripping to the dry dirt below. She watched her blood form craters, then small puddles. Still, she held to the sun. The sure agonising suffering from the severance of her fingers incomparable to her fear of the world without the blue. Of her fear of the purple black dark which ate the earth from behind the mound of clay.
The sun tugged harder, as if indignant of the woman’s denial of the inevitable. Slowly, the string of light stretched. Slowly, it sundered. A part of it splintered like wood before a vicious snap shattered the still air.
The Sun dove into the earth. The woman collapsed in puddles of blood.
She was now alone. Alone with nothing but her bloodied hands and a soft golden glow which coiled around her crumpled body. Everything else was an impenetrable void of black.
A budding green and bundle of vermillion bloomed from where the sunlight touched her blood. Poppies, then a rose. The beginnings of a white wildflower and a plant that dripped white at its tips. A bed of nature cradled her in it’s palm.
She couldn’t bear the black skies. She couldn't bear such an abyss. As if she and everything within the glow were the only things that existed.
So she tore half the length of sunlight from the coil, and proceeded to meticulously rip the length into smaller lengths no bigger than rose petals. With the small precious pile of sunlight in her hands, she threw it into the dark above.
Thus, the skies were splattered with starlight. The largest piece became the moon. Although the light wasn’t as potent as the Sun, it laid a soft veil of white across the land.
Remembering the clouds, she fashioned a brush from the long grass of her bed. The leaves were then tied with three strands of her dirt brown hair. She gathered all the white flowers she could find and ground it up with a piece of rock. The cool, white puree of crushed petals now coated the tip of her makeshift brush. Eager to complete her makeshift day, she boldly swiped the watery white across the dark sky. Such was the birth of the milky way.
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