Baiame, the Sky Father of the Kamilaroi, strode across the Milky Way. He was fixing the stars, ensuring the songlines of the earth below were watered with rain. He was a god of law, of structure, of the way things must be.
Then he saw her.
Chang'e drifted past the Southern Cross, oblivious to the laws of the Dreamtime. She sat on a cushion of nimbus clouds, sipping tea, her white robes fluttering in the cosmic wind.
Baiame frowned. "You are not in the story," he boomed. The sound was like a thunderclap rolling across the desert.
"I am my own story," Chang'e replied, not looking up.
The Law and the Exception
Baiame raised his staff. Law-Weaving.
"Ground," he commanded. "Gravity. Return."
The fabric of the sky tightened. The laws of physics, which Baiame enforced, grabbed at the Moon Goddess. She felt the pull of the earth, the heavy anchor of reality trying to drag her down to the red dust.
Chang'e sighed. She lifted a small jade vial to her lips. Elixir Ascension.
It was the ultimate loophole. The elixir granted weightlessness, immortality, freedom from the tether of the world.
She drank.
Instead of falling, she rose. She turned into pure light, slipping through the net of Baiame’s law like water through fingers.
"You cannot command what you cannot catch," she whispered.
The Lunar Veil
She waved her hand. Lunar Veil.
A soft, silver light spread across the sky. It wasn't an attack; it was a lullaby. The hard edges of Baiame’s world softened. The stern Sky Father felt his eyelids grow heavy. The moonlight was hypnotic, peaceful, urging him to rest, to let the night take over.
"Unruly..." Baiame muttered, his staff lowering. "But... quiet."
The Sky Father sat down on a nebula, deciding to deal with the anomaly later. Chang'e drifted higher, towards the moon, safe in her isolation.