The first time Aaron opened his eyes, it was to the sound of his mother singing a lullaby, and his father whispering sweet dreams to the son he couldn't wait to meet. About 3 weeks later, he was under the bright lights of a hospital room on the third of October, exercising the lungs he'd developed over the last nine months. Everything was new and strange and nothing like the dim comfort of his mother's womb, yet he loved it. The voices he'd heard his entire life shushed and hummed him to sleep each night, and the faces he'd come to recognise as his parents cooed and smiled at him each day.
Back then, he knew he was loved.
Alas, it was not destined to last; before he could grasp this knowledge, it was stolen from him.
Ten years later, he sat among his peers, observing them with their parents and cursing his poor luck. How unfortunate he was to have lost his own before he had even turned a year old. Eighteen years later, he watched the door of the place he'd called home click shut on him. His time at the orphanage had come to an end, and he was alone once more. Twenty-six years later, he stood on a stage, cheered on by a crowd that loved the idea of him, but not the person.
This was how his life had always been. The sisters at the orphanage thought he was lovely, but not enough to keep. His friends were kind, but not enough to stay. His fans were precious, but they'd find someone new to cheer on one day. At the end of it all, what was he left with? Who loved Aaron? 331Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe3oTA718gU
384,400 kilometres away, the lady on the moon opened her eyes.
The first time she'd opened them, it was to silence and grey dust floating unfettered around her. In her world, nothing ever changed. The lights always twinkled in and out of existence in quiet explosions. The giant holes on her home never grew larger. How long had she been on the moon? Was it years or seconds? She did not know.
There were some things she knew, though. She knew that her moon was vast and endless. She knew that every time she looked into the moon puddles, a pale, skinny thing looked back at her. She knew that the long, metal cylinder left by her strange visitors with shiny helmets let her see the blue blob called Earth, and from the moment she found it, her monotonous life gained a new ray of light.
Every day, she'd climb up to the roof of her little home and peer at the Earth, focusing on whatever caught her attention. At first, it was mundane things, like the vivacious colours in the rainforests, the brown, marshy swamps of the mangroves and the greyish, rocky mountains of the alpine tundras. Then, she began to notice the life inhabiting the blue blob. Everything—from the lazy flutter of an eagle's wings to the slow crawl of an earthworm—fascinated her.
When she had tired of them, she looked to the humans for entertainment. They moved just like her, and looked the same as she, yet she could tell they were different; they carried a certain warmth she'd never felt. Perhaps it was the sun. Maybe it loved the earthlings and gave them some of its heat as a gift. Perhaps it was one of the many devices they'd created. Maybe the joy of creation gave them that lively glow.
Thus, she set out to make her own warmth. She sat in the Sun's rays until her delicate skin burned, and when that left her with more pain than warmth, she went about creating little toys of the scraps her visitors had left. Indeed, her skin took on a new shade, and she felt a little brighter, but it was nothing like the humans she watched every day. Soon enough, she realised it was neither the sun nor the little inventions that enlivened the humans.
They were surrounded by people just like them. Where she had endless miles of grey dust and craters, they had eight billion people to befriend; it was no wonder they were so warm. She tried to make her own friends, to no avail. She could make things that moved like her and looked like her and spoke like her, but they would never be truly alive. Returning to her telescope, she settled for watching the humans' warmth from afar.
One day, her eyes settled on a man strumming a guitar. Sixty thousand people had filled a giant auditorium to see him. If she could have but one person from his crowd, she would be ecstatic, yet the man did not seem to care. He played his guitar well, but it did not carry the warmth characteristic of the humans.
What could cause a man so loved to be so cold? she wondered.
A new interest had bloomed for the lady on the moon. She left her old pursuit of warmth to watch the cold boy every day, hoping to find the answer to her mystery.
For sixty long years, she followed him on tours and interviews, watched him break down, rebuild himself and pray for someone who loved him until she understood: he was loved, but he did not know.
When she spoke of love, she did not mean the stale desires his fans poured out to him, nor the long-gone affection his parents had given him.
It was the never-ending dedication of the lonely moon-dweller, the woman who had watched him for decades and had come to admire his resilience and creativity. She was the one in love, but he would never know.
No matter how deep it was, her love could not stretch across the miles to reach him.331Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ35bGNLneIN
and then Add to home screen.