Handong regretted the day she’d met Gahyeon, for it had set her fate into motion. Back then, so many years ago it felt like millennia, Gahyeon had been just a princess of the Elis people, who spent her days asleep and her nights partying, rambling drunken poetry to the moon. 

Was it weird, was it odd, for her to fall in love with a mortal who, every day, would gaze upon her chariot and shout out poems that, in the retrospect of a clear morning, wouldn’t make sense, wouldn’t even rhyme, but they were for her only.

No matter. One night, while the princess walked home, Handong got down from her silver chariot, the moon hung in one spot for a long while. She looked at the princess, snapped her fingers, and that sobered her right up. Then, Gahyeon kneeled.

“What - what can I do for you?” She asked, head down, and Handong put a hand to her face, making the princess look at her. She was beautiful, this princess of the Elis, and Handong smiled at her.

“Another poem, please. They’re the highlight of my nights.” She said, sitting down on a rock, hands in her lap, and Gahyeon shot up, eyes as big as - well, as the full moon. 

“You like them? They’re - they’re awful, and made up, and I didn’t think anyone was actually, you know, listening.” She scratched the back of her neck, and Handong waited, patient. “But since you want it, here we go.”

Gahyeon took a deep breath and composed a poem, on the spot, and Handong could feel herself falling in love.

The moon started to hung in the sky at the same spot for an hour or two every day, after that. Handong didn’t have to strain her ears for Gahyeon’s poems, and gave her wine and grapes for her troubles.

One particular night, the astronomers would find that the moon stayed in place for far longer than before. Handong doesn’t know and doesn’t care what astronomers think, trying to calculate and measure the meaning: she’s busy, pressing her lips against Gahyeon’s in a desperate, almost animalistic, manner.

The power of a goddess is too much for her: Gahyeon fell sick, spurting blood. Handong took her to the royal palace - causing a commotion, surely, but Handong barely thought about it. She left Gahyeon in her bed, took the stray strands of hair from her sweat-covered and flushed face, fighting the fever Handong had given her, and went straight to Mount Olympus.

Minji was sitting on her throne, admiring the lightning bolt, looking to the mortal world with a glint in her eyes that Handong knows. 

“Help me, please. Make her immortal.” The words taste bitter on her tongue. She’s a primal goddess, older than Minji, but she still has to beg: the division of powers had not been fair to her.

Minji cocked her head, smiled like a snake before its prey, and sealed Gahyeon’s fate.

She rushed back to Gahyeon’s side, and the queen told her that the fever had broke, but Gahyeon did not… Wake up. The moon hung heavy in the sky, even during day, and Gahyeon did not wake up.

She heard Minji’s malicious laugh, like this was a play. So her lovers get to be immortal, and Handong’s sole love in millennia was frozen in eternal sleep.

Handong destroyed Elis without meaning as she grabbed Gahyeon’s body, sagging lifelessly; weren’t it by the gentle rising and falling of her chest, Handong would’ve thought her dead. 

Mount Latmus became a holy place, the place were Gahyeon was destined to sleep forever, and Handong wept every time she visited, regretting everything.