Our moon is jealous and ugly

Our planet used to have seven more moons. Each shone a different colour, each represented one-seventh of the rainbow, and each was worshipped by the people of Earth. Our current moon, then called the gray moon, had no worshippers of her own. She was dull and boring; she had no colours to be worshipped. She only reflected the sun, a cruel, tormentous fire. The gray moon desperately wanted to be loved, to be prayed to. But in order to do so, she had to become the only colour in the sky. She had to bring down the much more resplendent celestialities.

As they were all worshipped, each colour moon had a year devoted to them. Each celebratory year began with a lunar festival, during which the entirety of Earth was painted the colour of a particular moon. The gray moon had to look at this man-made unsightliness, until at the end of a seven year-cycle, her envy and hatred for the other colour moons had grown so cosmically, she decided she had enough. This contempt, this burst of emotion, flickered briefly on her surface; she briefly shone silver before returning to an ugly gray.

The gray moon manipulated her seven meteorite brothers to crash into her despisals. They, too, were ugly. But unlike their sister, they were also unnoticed. They would never earn the eye of Earth, and so laid down their unimportant lives for the gray moon. During the lunar festivals that followed, shortly after the Earth had been fully painted, one of her brothers would crash into a colour moon.

For seven years, at the start of each year, the Earth’s sky filled with a bang, followed by a ruinous shower of rainbowish chunks. The Earth people were shocked – how could the colour moons hurt them so much on the day they loved them the most! Fueled by vengeance, they built machines capable of destroying the colour moons. These devices were powered by the intense, scorching light of the sun. As they kept getting betrayed, humans rid the heavens of more and more colour moons until they were no more. The gray moon finally had her worshippers, or so she thought.

The machines the humans built were, after all, powered by the sun, who had thusly proven himself to be powerful, reliable and, most importantly, warm. He, who at first was feared for being fire, became Earth’s solely-worshipped celestiality. The humans did not even consider the last remaining moon. The still unworshipped gray moon, now without family and truly alone, started weeping. She has not stopped crying since. She shines an ugly, sad silver.