Selene

Selene

Selene was one of the ‘others’. In the beginning, God created all manner of species that never made it into the biblical accounts of creation. What man cannot see, he rarely believes, and there are few left who are capable of seeing others. Before their fall from grace, Adam and Eve frolicked in the garden with fairies, bantered with gnomes, danced with dryads, and expounded on the glories of God with Selene and the other divine immortals. But while the first man and woman were cast from the garden, the others were allowed to remain. Selene loved Adam and Eve for their humanity, their free will, and intelligence. Heartbroken that God chose to cast them from the garden for the very reasons he had created them, Selene chose to leave the garden and follow the humans.

As Adam and Eve created a new home, Selene watched over them, protecting them from the evils beyond the garden. Shining in her glimmering opalescence, she was a beacon in the night providing light and reassurance. At the birth of their sons, Cain and Abel, Selene sent up circles of light around the sun and moon, a halo signaling to the others remaining in the garden of the joyous occasion.

When the evil one appeared as a messenger of God, commanding he kill his brother, Cain complied, fearing retribution reminiscent of the sword of fire. In a raging anger, Selene appeared before God demanding vengeance and restitution. Taking pity on the boy’s anguished soul, he allowed Selene to mark Cain with a kiss, a glowing sigil of protection.

When Cain exiled himself in shame to the ends of the earth, Selene once again followed her chosen human. Upon his death of old age, she held him to her breast and wept, her rocking body causing the sea levels to rise and fall with the pitch of her sway.

Selene carried on in this manner for many eons, following and protecting the humans that exuded the same vitality and thirst for knowledge, life, and passion as the first man and woman. But as the years passed, hatred and violence began to consume humanity, and Selene found herself weeping in sorrow. Watching the tides rise and fall with her emotions, God’s own anger arose and overtook the seas and poured from the skies, covering the land in a great flood and cleansing the earth.

With the renewal of humanity resting on the shoulders of Noah, Selene knew she could not watch these people rise up only to fall again. So she removed herself from the earth altogether, making her home in the moon. But she continues to look down on humanity, shining her light in the darkness, providing a path to safety for those who would follow her shimmering beacon. And when the tides rise and fall in the light of the moon, it is Selene, crying for humanity, pulling the earth into her gentle embrace.