A Light to Work By | Teen Ink

A Light to Work By

October 19, 2016
By PriyankaD. GOLD, Princeton, New Jersey
PriyankaD. GOLD, Princeton, New Jersey
12 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.
Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Pamela Vaull Starr


In the beginning, the world glowed with a strange light - deep blue, like a sapphire. It was barely enough to see an arm’s length in front of oneself. It was in this light that Aura, famous across the seven seas for her delicate stone jewelry worked incessantly. Gods and goddesses traveled to watch the beautiful ornaments she fabricated, which they could then take home as gifts. Whenever the pile of iridescent stones beside her seemed to diminish, her daughter Lykopis, a famous archer who later joined the Amazons, set out into the oceans and the mountains to collect more for her mother. On her journeys, Lykopis would enjoy aiming her arrows at impossible targets along with her friend, Orion the Hunter.

 

Gradually, over many eons, Aura became increasingly weary of bending over while creating her fine jewelry. The universe’s light was not enough to see by, let alone for fine work like Aura’s. One day, when Lykopis returned from an exciting day with Orion where she had managed to shoot the top of a mountain before him, she was shocked to hear her mother groaning in pain. Rushing inside the underwater cave where they lived, Lykopis was pained to see her mother clutching at her back with one hand while continuing to sew minuscule stones into a special bracelet for one of the gods. Lykopis grasped Aura’s hand and pleaded, “Mother, it is enough! All the heavenly beings have more trinkets than they can count, yet you are suffering from more pain than you realize! Stop, before it is too late!” Aura, however, pulled away from her daughter’s grasp, and muttered to herself, “No, it is not enough, the forest nymphs are celebrating the arrival of new land so they might need bracelets… No, it cannot be.”

 

Lykopis realized that it was a losing battle to persuade her mother, so she went out to the coral reefs where Orion was impatiently waiting to begin their daily contests. Within a minute, however, they were engrossed in trying to figure out how to increase the light in the world, for they knew they alone couldn't stop Aura from working. At last, they shook hands and took up their positions - Orion poised in the sky, Lykopis crouching at the edge of the Earth. Upon a shared signal, Orion began to shoot his arrows at the treacherous seaweed that bound the treasure of the ocean - the Sun - to the ocean bed. As the shredded tendrils began to give way with shrill screams, Lykopis pulled out the Sun with all her might. Suddenly, it slipped out of her hands and was thrown into the sky above the Earth. Aura, still working on her jewelry, was blinded by the Sun’s radiance, but her eyes soon adjusted and she found that she no longer needed to bend close to her hands to work. However, Orion, still in the sky, wanted to escape from behind the Sun, so he pushed it away. Slowly, the Sun flew in an arc above the Earth till it disappeared over its other edge, where the devious seaweed again grew and bound it to the ocean floor. Lykopis was angry at Orion for throwing away their hard work, but then she saw that Aura, having become accustomed to the bright light, could no longer continue her work by the old blue light alone and thus was resting for the first time since the very beginning. Lykopis finally felt redeemed.

 

Even today, Lykopis and Orion wrench out the Sun from the insatiable seaweed for Aura to work by, after which it is pushed back into the ocean for Orion to escape from the sky and for Aura to rest after a long day’s work, which is is why we see the Sun rise, travel across the sky, and set, each day since the very beginning.


The author's comments:

This piece is similar to the style of a "Creation Myth", where natural phenomena are explained by a combination of fact and fiction. Here's a new twist on why the Sun rises, travels across the sky, and sets each day!


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