Aetherias Moon

by Aetherias Moon

I knew it wouldn’t end well, but I loved her anyway. Radiant and regal, she captivated me. Always swirling around each other, our gravitation a sweet caress. In that way I could feel her, like a sixth sense, but I’d never know her.

Hear her. Touch her. Taste her.

She had a soft blue aura. Her core matched mine even if I strayed more violet. We danced, with many in our thrall. They craved us, but we never paid them any mind. It was always me and her. Our hold on each other was like two magnets kissing. We’d never let go. Could never let go.

Me and her, always.

Me and her, always…apart.

Out of reach, but never out of mind. I didn’t even know her name. The distance between us is a mathematical constant. So many relied on our pull.

I didn’t care.

I should have cared…

I fell towards her. I always fell towards her, but not like this. I had broken it. This perfect shuffle shredded apart by my desire. Planets flared, fell into me, and disappeared like a moth to a flame. I could feel her shock, the way her gravitation faltered and cried out in confusion. Her constant touch, calm and blue, had become radioactive sapphire.

I spent millennia doing equations in my head, playing with the edges of the very laws of the universe. So I could know her entirety for one perfect moment. Every piece of her, past her neutrons and down to her quarks. I just had to break free, if I could only destroy the very fabric of reality.

So I had.

I broke space and time. I took numbers, patterns, the very laws of the universe.

I defied them.

The universe quivered in terror. An impossibility crossing the fragile line of reality. It whispered its fear, begging me to undo what I had done. But it should have known with all its wisdom that I couldn’t be stopped.

Because I loved her.

And somehow, with a twist of a rule, irrationality had won out.

Love became the most powerful thing in the universe.

Fear emanated from her, but underneath, a layer of curiosity grew. My warmth grew to a heat far beyond the degrees I had known.

Could I finally speak to her after all this time?

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Kahi,” she whispered. “You?”

“Soh,” I said, flaring ever brighter.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

“I know.”

“Why are you doing this?” her azure radiance bulged towards me. With a jolt, gravity returned. Our pull stabilized in a way, became a dance of death, as our orbits fell too close.

An inevitable spiral, one final waltz, as we anticipated our first touch.

Our final touch.

“You know,” I said.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Some of her plasma ejected and fell into me, and I shivered. She was so close, so very close.

“I do.” She gave into the dance. No. She leaned into it. Reaching towards me, as our sixth sense demanded our demise.

Millions of protons ejected from me and became one with her. A moment later, a wave of energy spilled from her. The light show must have been glorious, but I savored the feel of her. The parts of her that became mine, the pieces of me that became hers, like two puzzles fitting together, somehow wrong and somehow right.

She laughed, her glow rising in an incandescent smile. “I never knew I needed this.”

“I did.” I chuckled.

“But this is the end,” she said.

“No, my love.” Gravity pulled me so close that our plasma sucked into one another. Energy collapsing, and yet–“This is a beginning.”

“Our beginning,” she said.

We ignited, waves of gravity exploding out of us, changing space and time itself. A kilonova. Two souls becoming one.

Our love complete.