Once upon a time, Moon was the queen of the night sky, resplendently rotund. Sun coveted her delicate silver light, chased her through the heavens every night, but he could never catch her. Moon wasn’t interested in her golden suitor, she had everything she needed in her circle of planets, and knew better to look to the stars for companionship. Yes, they were brilliant and blazed with an ardent energy, but everyone knew that if you played with them, you would get burned.

Her coldness made Sun burn hotter. He erupted with jets of molten lava, disturbing the entire firmament. The planets trembled at Sun’s fury. Moon tried to hide behind Venus, but wobbled at the last moment on her desperate orbit away from Sun. Sun caught Moon, penetrating her atmosphere with a coronal mass ejection.

Moon escaped Sun’s magnetic pull but every night she grew fuller and fuller until she was almost the size of Jupiter. Then, with a great sundering, her child came into being. He was a funny looking thing, green and blue, swaddled in vapor. Nonetheless, Moon loved him, and named him Earth. A good mother, she stayed close to her child, keeping a watchful eye.

Jealous of Moon’s love for Earth, Sun increased his wattage so that Moon faded into irrelevance. Soon, Earth only had eyes for Sun, ruler of the sky, and Sun became the center of Earth’s orbit. Moon’s pearly light paled into nothingness against Sun’s bold glare.

Being a mother is hard; being a single mother is harder; being a single mother vying for her child’s favor against the brightest star in the system is the hardest. Moon faded from a disc of pure argent to a tiny sliver of herself, worry and sorrow eating away at her. Embarrassed of his careworn and haggard mother, Earth gave all his love to Sun, worshipping him.

Worried that her friend might decide to end it all and find a black hole to crawl into, Mars, who had had her own uncomfortable encounters with Sun, urged her friend to fight back.

How? Moon cried. He’s 400 times bigger than I am. I’m cold rock and he’s molten lava. I’m dead matter and he’s pure energy.

Said Mars, I have a plan. It’s not much, just a little act of disobedience, but it’s better than doing nothing. The opportunity will come only once every other orbit around the Sun. I saw it happen once. You didn’t notice, but Earth did. Just make sure you’re the fullest you can get, and then it’s all about the positioning. But it’s hard work. You must starve yourself in order to fatten yourself so that when the moment is right, your full magnificence will completely erase Sun. For a minute or two. Then everything will go back to the way it was. But won’t those minutes be glorious?
Moon wasn’t sure it would work, but it was either completely submit to Sun’s dominance—he had become so cocky he had named the whole neighborhood after himself—or engage in this small act of resistance.

And all credit to Mars, it worked! After months of waning in order to achieve maximum wax, Moon was ready. For one pure moment, she blotted out Sun, her cool presence dimming Earth’s feverish brow, the exquisite love of her gaze mirrored in Earth’s darkened visage.

It was all too fleeting, and Sun soon regained his brilliant reign, Earth again in his golden thrall, giving him all blessings, all thanks; the obeisance making Sun more powerful.

Ever patient, ever faithful, Moon stays close to her child, thinning and fattening so that she may show Earth what a mother’s love truly looks like.