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Being a goddess did not come easily to Chang’e – or so it had been for the first few centuries. Time moved so strangely on the moon.
The lunettes, her adoring followers, flocked around her and made her feel like a queen. The only one who stood apart was a green little blob that called itself Gobi. Unlike the ever-cheerful lunettes, Gobi was a strange one: he was no sycophant, though he did trail after her as if he were a self-appointed advisor – or perhaps a groupie would have been more apt, at least from the modern slang that traveled to Lunaria through radio signals and wavelengths from earth.
One morning, while Chang’e sat in front of her vanity in her chambers, Gobi stood off to the side. Chang’e hummed a melody to herself as she ran a brush with blush over her cheeks. With the strength of the magic flowing through her as well as the help of Jade’s potions, she was able to procure different beauty treatments and the like to keep up her appearance.
“You should do that more often,” the green creature said, his voice held a bit in awe of her (and she might have smiled at that if she hadn’t been in danger of smearing her make-up).
Chang’e’s eyes slid to Gobi. “What do you mean?”
“Singing,” Gobi said. “Your voice is ah-mazing.”
This time, Chang’e did smile. “Flattery, Gobi? You’ll make me blush.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true!” the green blob crowed.
Sometimes she was really glad she kept Gobi around.
“And what difference does it make?” Chang’e asked, setting down her powder brush. “Am I a songbird, Gobi?”
“No, but – you could have an audience. What are the words? ‘Put on a show’?”
Chang’e laughed. “Me? Sing in front of an audience? You’ve been watching too much television from earth.”
“Just think – a few costumes, a couple back-up dancers, some fancy lightwork. You’d be perfect, Chang’e!”
Now Chang’e really couldn’t help the smile blossoming on her face. “A show, huh?” She looked at the mirror and stared at her own dark eyes. “Maybe that would do me some good.”
“YES!” Gobi lifted up his arms. “We should plan right now!”
Sometimes that little green blob really did make her laugh.
*
“Don’t be nervous,” Gobi said on the first night of Chang’e’s scheduled “performances.”
Chang’e gritted her teeth as she stood in a beautiful glittering dress that showed off more skin than she was usually accustomed to, given her usual traditional clothing. “I’m not nervous.”
“Just close your eyes and imagine you’re singing to me! Just like old times!”
That would definitely not help.
Chang’e took a deep breath as she wound a strand of her hair around her finger. “Do you think they’ll like it?” Do you think they’ll like me?
Such a strange, unfamiliar, human question.
Chang’e hadn’t been human for so long, yet emotions still had a pesky way of weeding through her heart as if she were that same mortal woman who had helplessly seen her husband off to war.
Houyi loved to hear me sing too…
Those were memories she tried not to touch, at least not often – especially because there were hurt feelings there of loss, of bitterness, of have-beens and what-ifs.
If only she had awaited Houyi with patience as she had been told, maybe she would have lived out a life as his wife, the mother of his children, rather than sipping an elixir that alighted her past the heavens and to the moon. That one choice had made her become other – once-mortal, once-beloved, once-normal.
But those were flyaway thoughts, ones she shook off as if they were a cloak that was stifling her movements. She was moon-bound now, a luminary, a beacon, a goddess to the people of earth.
These songs would be sung to the lunettes, but they would be hers too. If she could not voice aloud all the stirrings of pain that still plagued her centuries later, then she would pour those feelings through the power of her voice.
“They’ll love you,” Gobi said, a wide grin upon his face.
And perhaps that would be enough.
Chang’e lifted up the microphone, an alien object she had constructed from magic and modeled after the pictures of them she had seen from earth, and strode out onto the stage that would someday feel like home.
*
That first performance was the start of a new season upon the moon. The illumination upon the moon became neon, brighter even than the stars or the lights that filtered from earth, and the lunettes screamed with delight as they stood in the audience.
Singing brought out what warmth was left in her. Each song lifted some hope from her and quelled the sadness that sometimes followed her like a shroud.
Singing made her feel alive in ways she had never even felt when she had still lived upon the earth.
Every night, Chang’e strutted like one of those earth girls who swayed their hips and moved in motion to the rhythm of a song. Every moment felt like she was on earth, a simple pop star performing in front of an excited crowd, and in time she grew the ego to go along with that kind of reception.
She waved to the crowd of lunettes as she used her magic to fly up, her skirt elongating into a flowing gown that trailed behind her as if it were the tail of a comet, and she lifted the microphone to her lips to send one surge of sound outward – a triumphant sound, so freeing, so invigorating.
If Houyi could see me now, would he love me even more?
Rainbow lights exploded around her as the song reached its crescendo, her voice rising above till she imagined even the earthians below could hear her.
Once, she had been a woman cast asunder, stepping foot on a barren moon that was like a bleached desert that offered nothing except darkness and coldness.
Now Lunaria was lit aflame with vibrancy, the home she had made for herself, and Chang’e sang to claim the moment as hers.
Nothing would ever keep her from this pinnacle again.