Chang'e
the moon lady who drank the elixir
aetherChang'e drank the elixir of immortality and floated up to the cold moon, alone but eternal; to dream of her is to weigh what you would trade for escape, and to feel how thin the air is at the height of every hard-won freedom.
She sits in the Cold Palace with only the rabbit for company, and once a year, on the fullest moon, families set out cakes and she comes a little nearer.
She did not steal the elixir out of greed, the old mothers say, but to keep it from a worse hand; some sacrifices look like betrayals only from below.
The higher she floated the lighter she became, until the earth could no longer call her back; be careful what you rise above.
Her husband still looses his arrows at the sky in grief, and the moon keeps them all, the way the sea keeps bottles.