A very, very long time ago, when time was still young and space had not yet been born, there was only Night.
Alone, silent, deep and strong, Night stretched herself out into every corner, into every last hour and minute that ever had been or ever would be. When she had filled all the universe with her self, she arched her back, opened her mouth wide, and breathed. In her warm breath a misty shape began forming, a golden brightness which slowly took on contours, edges, depth, and height.
And Day came into being, radiant and strong.
Day threw her shining arms around Night, and they embraced each other. In the belly of Day was a brilliant sun; and in the belly of Night was a dazzling moon; and the sun and the moon answered each other with a song that was wild and sweet. And all their singing was shaped by one word (though I cannot tell you what it was, for no one has spoken it since). Yet that word it was which rose and fell, stretched and broke, twisted and wound around itself, creating the contours and corners of the earth. And when their singing was finished, Day opened her eyes and the sun shone for the first time upon the Earth.
At first the Earth, newly called into being, shook and burned from the heat of the fire at his core. But when the mountains had stopped moving and the volcanoes had cooled, the Earth began to see himself more clearly. He saw high craggy mountains, rocky plains, arid deserts, stony cliffs; and he asked himself if there might be something missing.
He extended his vision into all parts of his body, but he could not find what he was searching for. And it came to him that nothing was growing: that although the wind slowly tempered the rocks and shaped the sands into great crested dunes, there was nothing to nourish life anywhere on his body, no breath of awareness, no sap rushing in his veins.
He called out to Day, but she only looked down on him with her fierce sun and answered, "I do not have what you are seeking; search in the skies." He looked up into the heavens; but the remote stars mocked him with their cold fires.
So he called out to Night for help, but she only turned her luminous moon toward him and answered, "I do not have what you are seeking; search within yourself." But when he looked within, all he found was fiery heat, a burning that fed upon itself.
Despairing, he began to lament. As he sang, pouring out his grief into the deep silence around him, something very strange happened:
He began to cry.
The Earth began to shed tears, large salt tears which were both bitter and sweet. At first there was only the quiet echo of his song ringing in his ears; but as his sorrow grew, his body was wracked with sobs and the deep sounds of his weeping filled the air. The tears rushed from his eyes and collided with each other, they collected in the valleys, in the crevices, in the low places. Slowly, as he watched in amazement, the pools of salt water gathered themselves together and the Sea began to rise.
The Sea, searching out his new boundaries, discovered the valleys and plains, the canyons and lowlands, the deep wells of the Earth. Green began to spring up everywhere, bringing new textures to the Earth: ginger and sage, birch and banyan, jungle and savannah. The Earth drank thirstily of the sweet nourishment he found in the arms of the Sea, nourishment which soothed his burning heat and moistened his dry surface.
And so it still is to this day: the Earth and the Sea make love to each other; the Sea gives life to the Earth, and the Earth gives shape to the Sea; and Day and Night continue on their journeys, touching at dawn and at twilight; and all life moves in a circle, and all life is made of beginnings and endings and of the strength we bring to each other.
