The Sun's Gift

My Teaching Composition class has given me lots of opportunities for creative writing this semester. I LOVE creative writing. I can get it out very, very quickly, and it is a lot easier for me to see the problems.

The little story below is actually my sample for an assignment I created for a big final project for my Teaching Composition class. The assignment was to create your own origin myth (the unit is basically writing a short story). I had to include my own sample.

I wrote this in about ten minutes, and so it is pretty unpolished, but I still really like it. It's called, "The Sun's Gift".

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, Earth was bare. She was lonely and cold—grass covered her in some places, water in others, but there was nothing to break the wind against her shivers and nothing to insulate her with the warm quivering heat of the sun. She cried and cried, pulling tighter within herself at the chilly, quick wind, wondering if she would ever feel the warmth of the Sun sink through her to touch the part of her that was forgotten. One side of her was bathed in the rays of the Sun, but her other side was dark, frozen, and sad.

One day, Earth had an idea. She realized that she had never tried to turn over. Perhaps, if she turned, she would be able to melt the frozen waters on her dark back. So she turned over, and the ice began to crack, and the Sun laughed with joy as he quickly shone through into the tired and weary chill of Earth’s once-back.

Earth loved the feeling of the melting ice, but then she realized that her once-front was getting cold without the companionship of the Sun’s rays. So she quickly turned again, turning, turning, turning, never able to satisfy the ever yearning desire to feel surrounded in the loving rays of the Sun.

In her great sadness, frustration, and frozen tears, she called out to the Sun in one last desperate attempt. “O great and powerful Sun!” she sobbed. “Have mercy on me! I am small and tired, and I cannot make myself warm! I cry and I weep—I watch the ice creep over my waters and I feel the frost choke my flowers to death. Help me, O wondrous source of love, warmth, and beauty! Help me!”

The Sun smiled down on her gently. “Dear Earth,” he said, sending his rays to touch her lovingly. “Dear Earth who gives me children, men and women to praise my power. I cannot see you sad and cold. I will give you a gift, a gift that will keep you warm in the tough winters and the cold nights.” And he reached down, and from the depths of the center of the Earth, he pulled up a tall, beautiful strand of her own inner warmth, rooting it deep within her, hardening the outside into wrinkled bark, and touching the tops of it with bright green leaves. “This, dear Earth, is a tree. It will keep you warm and safe against the absence of my rays. Its roots will never leave you, its tall lengths will break the wind against your shivering ground. I will give you forests upon forests of these beautiful trees. Though they may lose their leaves as the seasons change, they will return with even more beauty and youth to remind you of my love and warmth. You must still turn to remember the feeling of my rays across the ground, but these trees will catch my light and feed it into your soul.”

The Earth saw the forests of beautiful, unique trees spring up over the cold earth, seeping warmth deep into the ground, and she looked at the Sun and smiled.