Purple flowers - Sun, World, Flower fiction

SUN, WORLD, FLOWER: Fiction by Max Reif

Last updated: January 27th, 2019

All alone in its corner of the universe, a sun shone.

“Ha-ha, I’m MIGHTY!” it thought, enjoying the sheer power of projecting light and warmth out, out into cold, dark space. “And the best thing about this is I’ll be able to do it FOREVER!” But after a long while, the Sun began to think, “I may be powerful, but I’m also very lonely. Sending my power into space like this is getting boring. I would feel happy again if I had something to shine on.” But how could that be? As far as the Sun knew, there was nothing else in the universe: only the cold, dark space, without end.

Unbeknownst to the Sun, however, there were other things. They were just so very far away that none of them had ever come anywhere near the Sun. These other things—untold numbers of other suns, dense black holes, massive clouds of gas, and all sizes and shapes of meteors and comets, spun and soared crazily, every which way, continually entering realms beyond those they were used to, out to the very limits of the ever-expanding Universe.

After eons and eons, one meteor…one large rock, that had broken off long before, from a comet that had slowed and begun to harden in its old age… happened to soar into the corner of the universe where our sun had always shone alone.

As the rock sailed in view of the Sun, she thought, “What have we here?” And as she soared even closer, she thought, “Say, I kind of like the look and feel of this sun, at least this side of him. I’d like to see more!” And so she sailed all the way around the Sun!  And the more she saw, the more she liked him.

Shyly, when she was at her closest point to the Sun, the rock spoke:

“I’d like you to be my sun,” she breathed, for the rock had truly fallen in love with the Sun. “I want to spin around you and you only, she told him. And right away, as if to prove herself someone of her word, she began to do so. Caught in an orbit of love, the rock spun ’round and ’round the Sun, dizzy and giddy, overjoyed to be on this merry-go-round, to be forever (she hoped) circling and circling ’round the very one she loved, so that the beloved became the centre of her own existence.

This finding of an orbit of love had quite an effect on the rock’s feelings about herself. She began, in fact, to think, “I’m much more than a mere rock. Before, maybe, I was only a rock. But look at me now!  I’m blessed to orbit the Sun!  I’m no mere rock, nor even a mere meteor. I’ve become… Yes, I’ve become a world!”

This understanding deepened the rock. Her solid, hard mass began to soften in places…to erode…until there were some places that were still stone-hard, and others that were soft and pliable. These places had become soil.

The Sun felt happy with the love of the new world spinning around it. “Your devotion brings me much joy!” He said. “You have relieved my long-time loneliness. And your love inspires me to keep giving back to you, more and more brightly and purely. I don’t seek merely to have you in my orbit… although that seems to be to be all you desire.”

***

Drawing - Sun, World, Flower fictionThe Sun continued to shine on the world. Deep, deep in the bowels of the world, fed by the healthful rays of the Sun, a SEED mysteriously began to form. It lay still, as though asleep, daily nurtured by the Sun’s love and the nutrients of the world’s soil.

A choir of angels, passing near that corner of the universe just then, felt the precious love there and the angels began to weep. Their tears watered the seed nestled deep in the world’s soil. When the seed had soaked enough water up, it sprouted and began to plant roots deeper still, and to reach up towards the Sun with tiny seedling arms. Daily it grew, like a dancer swaying to the music of the Sun’s rays, until one day it broke the surface of the world!

Now there was green in the world, there was tender, growing life. The little plant, daughter of the Sun and the world, kept dancing and swaying. She unfurled more and more small, bright leaves, lifting herself up into the clear air, her roots deep in the body of her loving mother, her body stretching gracefully towards her dear father.

And then, one day… one morning in the cool air, when her father had just arrived to pay his daily visit… she bloomed. Oh yes, she bloomed, with a purple-pink flower whose filigree petals fanned far out into the pure air.

“I give you this gift,” said her mother, the world, to her father, the Sun.

“She’s my gift to you, as well!” laughed the Sun. And the air all around the flower filled with the perfume of their love.

After that, the world gradually came to flourish with innumerable, different kinds of life-forms. From that day to this, though, flowers everywhere celebrate the union of father and mother, sun and world, and bless us with their sweet, miraculous fragrance, reminding us that for love alone does the world orbit the Sun; for the sake of love alone does the advancing stream of life surge ever forward; and that love is the only thing life is really about, anywhere under the Sun.


image 1: Jim (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA—no changes); image 2: Max Reif

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