The Love That Moved the Sun

Outside is a day yet not a day in Level 78, one may look up from the deck to see the SUN there pondering, looming, burning over the WORLD. A WORLD he may not yet understand in the pale public phase of his frail, short, unwitting existence. But to watch over it. Only to watch.

And the SUN watches.

The SUN, young and without a name for what it means, feels the WORLD beneath him like a question he does not yet know to ask. Joy came unnamed to him, an untimely happiness fueled by unknowing, by the beautiful, terrible not-yet-knowing of what the WORLD is. What it does to those who love it. The SUN revolves without fear, without regret, asking always in his curiousness: what is more to this WORLD? What else hides deep inside it?

He asks, and the WORLD does not answer.

Enters the PRIMUM MOBILE.

The PRIMUM MOBILE, the first of all movers, the ancient turning to enable all other turnings. He is simply there unannounced, as great things often do. And the PRIMUM MOBILE guides the SUN around the WORLD; or perhaps it was always so, and the SUN only now perceived the hand behind his revolution. The SUN, born afraid of the dark between the stars, feared it no longer. Through the MOBILE's care: the patient, unspeaking care that needed no further explanation.

The SUN wonders this often in the small hours of his young revolutions. Is it really true? That a SUN like him could never think like the PRIMUM MOBILE? Could never move like him? Could never be? Never? Is it really true?

The MOBILE reassures. His reassurance is not always in words; at times it is in presence alone. The gravity of a MOBILE around which the SUN quietly orbits without ever knowing it does. The MOBILE says: once the SUN is older, the SUN would pierce his accomplishments into the sky. Would shine in ways the WORLD cannot ignore. The SUN holds these words and does not know yet that he is.

They wandered then, the both of them across the WORLD, each in their own separate revolutions yet unison. The SUN learned to see the WORLD from beside the MOBILE, and the WORLD looked different from there. Fuller, and more worth seeing. The MOBILE taught the SUN to shine bright. To unmask his light from the WORLD and give it freely to the dark. To not apologize for burning.

And what of the WORLD? The WORLD received his light. Received it as it receives all things, with perfect indifference. The SUN is just another many suns, the WORLD knows this, and does not pretend otherwise. His insignificant persistence only brought joy to himself and the PRIMUM MOBILE. And perhaps… Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps it was always enough and the SUN only could not see it.

The SUN, insistent on being important, heeds the MOBILE. Grows slowly into his light. Believes for small moments that maybe the WORLD may look up after all.

Though sometimes, the SUN curses the MOBILE. This is true. In the selfish heat of his own burning the SUN looks at the MOBILE and finds something to despise. The SUN curses the MOBILE and the MOBILE shows no fret. No withdrawal of the guiding hand. The MOBILE loves still, if love is even the right word for what a PRIMUM MOBILE does; if such a word is small enough or large enough. The SUN may hate the MOBILE. The MOBILE will never hate the SUN.

And time goes in this timeless plane.

The WORLD, the SUN, the PRIMUM MOBILE.

The WORLD, the SUN, the PRIMUM MOBILE.

The WORLD, the SUN, the PRIMUM MOBILE.

The WORLD, the SUN, the PRIMUM MOBILE.

The WORLD, the SUN.

The WORLD and the SUN.

That fateful revolution, the PRIMUM MOBILE's sparks disappeared.

With final brightness, with theatrical last light? No. As if the sphere beyond spheres had simply ceased to need the turning, as if he had moved its last and found it was enough. He is just gone. And the SUN, having no mechanism nor instruction to stop, kept revolving because what else does a SUN do but around what now? Around what does the SUN revolve? Around what?!

The life of SUN would be naught without the PRIMUM MOBILE, I said.

The silence where his guidance was. The SUN calls out and the call returns to him unchanged, unmet, unfulfilled, unguided, unprotected, unloved. He shines because the MOBILE taught him to shine, but who was the shining ever for? Who receives it now?! The SUN does not know how to unlearn the burning. Does not know what else to do but burn, burn into the indifferent dark, the way the MOBILE showed him.

The WORLD is indifferent. The WORLD gives no resolution, no absolution, not an ounce of pity towards the grieving SUN. The WORLD has watched suns grieve before. The WORLD will watch them grieve again. This is the nature of the WORLD and the SUN always knew it, the MOBILE always knew it, and knowing did not change a single thing.

And still the SUN revolves.

And still the SUN revolves.

And still the SUN revolves!

In the place where the PRIMUM MOBILE was, the SUN lingers longest. He does not know he does it. He cannot stop lingering. The orbit remembers what the MOBILE was, even when the SUN tries to forget.

The WORLD and the SUN.

The WORLD, the SUN.

The WORLD, the SUN.

The WORLD.