She was the healer. The silent observer. The glue that held it all together until the very end. Great fires would rage and she would drag the ocean down from the heavens. In times of famine, she would summon wilted crops from their eternal slumber and breathe life back into the fields. The ground would shake with thunderous roars, and she would rip the tectonic plates back together.

I hopelessly watch as they depart by the thousands heading for the red planet. I am reminded of an ancient story the inhabitants used to pass on. Its name translates to “The Woman Who Swallowed the Sky.”

Where they lived was a utopia. The kind you hear about in stories and can only see with your imagination. Dense green jungles framed every village, yielding the fertile fruit of prosperity. Each tree stood mightier and taller than a hundred men. A single harvest of sap could feed the village for a year. In every direction, vast oceans stretched across the perfect landscape as far as the eye could see. It was said that if you gazed into the depths of the Crystal Sea, you could see all that was and ever would be. And the creatures that roamed its waters were enormous, gentle beasts who lived in total harmony with the inhabitants.

And they never grew bored of their simple, harmonious lives. And patiently, she always watched over from her palace among the clouds.

When they weren't tending to the jungles or livestock with whom they peacefully coexisted, they would construct grand displays as a gesture to her. Mile-wide temples filled with shrines and sculptures in her image, where day and night they would go to worship her. A gratitude for the protection and tranquility that she granted them. Flattered, she would thank and remind them never to take more than what they needed, even if it was a gift to her.

This went on for many years, and the gestures would only get more extravagant as time went on. Eventually, they set their sights on their magnum opus. It was a project that spanned many, many centuries. It began long before the technology existed in the first place to reach such heights—a project to infinity.

Their first attempt came at the cost of their precious jungles.

Year after year, the noble goddess watched in horror as the lush landscape gradually faded into extinction. With each fallen tree, she felt a part of herself wither away. Never did she stop warning her inhabitants of the repercussions of their actions.

But the view from the tower was magnificent. It was built just at the edge of utopia, where the land met the Crystal Sea. It reached so high that the sea looked more like a mirror than glass from its peak. They used to say there were two towers: one to the top of the world, and the other to the edge. Still, there was a long way to go before they could achieve their goal of ripping through the heavens and dipping into infinity.

One lonely moonless night, their goddess grew overwhelmed with a feeling of imminent danger. Wasting no time, she snuck into what remained of the jungle and dug up a seed for safekeeping. The next morning, before the sun even had a chance to grace the landscape with its warm embrace, the great fires erupted. It felt intentional, like a cruel lesson that Mother Nature was trying to teach. The flames raged like a blight that spread through the land, indiscriminately devouring anything they could sink their teeth into.

Tirelessly, she fought with everything she had to extinguish the beasts of destruction. Churning up the mighty Crystal Sea, she sent a storm of mile-high waves over the shore. One after another, the waves would crash against the impending wall of fire which would briefly settle, only to rise again angrier and stronger. With all her strength, she reached high into the sky above and ripped down clouds, wringing them out over the land. She fought with everything she had, but the blaze eventually grew too intense to resist. In a final act of desperation, she draped herself in as much of the heavens as she could bear and latched onto the Tower of Timber. The fires raged on, nipping at her heels, burning any bit of exposed skin they could find. Yet still, she endured. There she remained until the beasts ran out of fury.

When the dust finally settled, the beautiful, lush green fields and jungles were reduced to a graveyard of charred skeletons.

All they had left was their tower. And their wounded goddess, who slipped away before anyone could see her.

Sentiment for their goddess never fully recovered. Unaware of the unrelenting battle she fought through the night, “How could she let this happen?” they would whisper to each other.

“The goddess has a plan for all of us,” her loyal supporters would object. “Do not question her reasoning.”

Despite this major setback, the increasingly poor living conditions, and the growing resentment festering for their goddess, they picked up where they left off. This time, they would fortify the tower with stone to resist the flames.

Without their lush forests to bear fruit and sustenance, it wasn’t long before they turned to eating the wildlife they coexisted with. The same wildlife they swore never to consume. Day in and day out she watched in disappointment as they carved every bit of stone their precious utopia had to offer. They would construct elaborate pulley and roller systems powered by thousands of men, dragging away chunks of utopia to feed the tower’s unending hunger. Time previously spent tending to the jungles and wildlife was now spent excavating and consuming the wildlife. Her warnings fell on deaf ears as she watched the inhabitants devour every last animal in utopia, leaving only two behind, which she cared for in her palace among the clouds.

But the tower was even more magnificent than before, its slate gray exterior sharply contrasting with the pale blue sky behind it. It reached so high into the heavens that the fluffy white clouds danced around it like cherubs. From the top, it was whispered they could ever so slightly make out the silhouette of her palace. Like an ancient beast that had always existed, it looked immortal.

Undying as the sun that would burn with unprecedented fury, so too the great fires would rage on. Yet, unburdened as the bedrock that held their quarries afloat, the stone exterior would resist. Despite the tower’s resistance to the flames, she always intervened to protect her inhabitants. That was until the tremors came.

After centuries of digging and quarrying, the natural order that held the ground intact had become irreparably damaged. Her poor utopia had grown epileptic. It would shake and shake uncontrollably, crying to its mother to stop the convulsions. When the ground storms would rumble, she would rush to the tectonic plates and with all her strength rip them back together. There she would endure for as long as it took waiting for the storm to pass, fighting the endless battle to hold the world intact.

One day, the ground trembled with a vengeance. A spiteful, roaring tremor set forth with one goal: total devastation. It erupted like a supervolcano from every corner of utopia and spewed its hatred through its booming echos. She rushed to the nearest plates to the tower and squeezed with all her might. She fought that unending battle for days, her muscles tearing like fibers on a rope as she struggled to keep the world from tearing itself apart.

In the end, she was not enough.

With a loud creaking whine she watched as the Tower of Stone came tumbling back into the ground from which it came. An enormous pile of rubble and bodies filled the quarry from which it was birthed.

When the other inhabitants arrived, they found their goddess alone, clutching the rubble at the tower’s base. Her hands trembled, and her face was frozen with a look of shock. The sight was ominous—as if she had been caught in the act. She slipped away before they could question her.

It didn’t take long for them to jump to their own conclusions. To them, all the destruction—the fires, the tremors, the famine—was her doing, a punishment for their failure to heed her warnings.

And they never forgave her.

Slowly, over the decades that ensued, they built themselves back up. They fished the Crystal Sea for food and scavenged amidst the rubble for materials to fortify and restore their colony. Each body they uncovered in the wreckage only fueled their hatred for their fallen goddess further. The old shrines and temples erected in her name were demolished and plundered for resources.

As years passed, pressure on the leaders to act was growing insurmountable. Thousands marched, demanding the execution of their leaders for their failure to take action against the atrocities of their former goddess. All across utopia, violence escalated; anyone suspected of any association with her faced execution.

With unrest spiraling out of control, the leaders hastily devised a plan no one anticipated. They would rebuild the tower—but this time with a far more sinister goal.

In their many excursions across the Crystal Sea, the inhabitants had long ago discovered a strong, resilient metal and reserves of fuel they could use to power their forges. While they previously had little use for this material, they had recently devised an alloy that stood up remarkably well against the ground storms—a new blend for which they had their fallen zealots to thank.

And so, they pumped the sea for everything it had to offer and watched as it regressed into an opaque sludge. The pumps endlessly churned and spewed dark toxic clouds into the air. The forges raged with the beasts of destruction, and the heat only grew harsher. Despite their deep hatred for her, she still warned them. Some things are beyond even her control, she would tell them. The natural order is not to be tampered with. These well-intentioned warnings only angered them more. “Your threats don’t scare us!” they would scream back up to her.

With each trip around their Stellar Guardian, it seemed to grow closer and closer, hotter and hotter. Helplessly, she watched her inhabitants sit idly by as thousand-year storms became ten-year storms, ten-year storms became five-year storms, and five-year storms became one-year storms—architects of their own destruction. When the heat grew too much to bear, she watched what was left of their once beautiful sea evaporate into the cold, dark expanse above.

She took one final scoop with her mighty glass before the sea vanished into oblivion.

But the Tower of Metal was even more magnificent than its predecessor. It was a glittering, shiny chrome that could not be directly observed in the daylight. It looked biblical, like how angels should look. It was so tall and imposing that it seemed to curve in on itself. As the hellfire seared the ground it stood on, it remained unburdened and unscathed. Not even the mighty tremors that rattled within the core could shake this chrome portal to the heavens.

Each day, the tower grew closer to her palace and the pale white clouds that framed it slowly faded to a repulsive hue. They had a thick, blinding mirror-finished yellow that reflected light in all directions. She was growing very sick, bedridden most days with a foul cough she could not shake. Her lungs would fight for any bit of oxygen they could find among the poison.

The fires continued to burn, the ground shook with force and purpose, and the tower endured, growing ever closer. Just as they could see the entrance to the palace from atop their Tower of Metal, so came another thousand-year storm. This was not a typical thousand-year storm, however. This one was fueled with the venom and hatred from the tainted clouds above. The inhabitants watched in horror as the yellow drops of acid burned holes through the metal exterior of their tower. The storm was as vicious as it was unending. Like the inhabitants from within its walls, the tower screamed in agony as its flesh melted away. Those who could still walk cried for help as they evacuated in droves through the tower. It was so tall at this point, that a trip to the bottom would take days. For some, it was quicker and less painful to jump.

Then came the lightning screaming from the clouds above, striking the metal surface like it was drawn to it. Each strike would bring the passion of their Stellar Guardian to the night sky for a brief moment. The electricity would course through the structure like the rivers that once carved through their utopia. Anything that stood in its path would burn and seize with unimaginable pain. The jolts would stop their hearts, only to start them back up again with ensuing pulses. A never-ending cycle of life and death. The torture of thinking one had finally escaped the agony only to be brought back just before they reached their peace.

She could not stand to watch them suffer any longer. With the little strength she had left, she rose from her resting location. Her lungs were tight and overinflated, like balloons ready to burst. She dragged herself to the courtyard and carefully exhaled, briefly expelling the poison from deep within her lungs. And with a deep, wheezing breath she drew in with every fiber of her being. The clouds whirled like the end of days and spiraled on their way through her gasping breath like tornados. The lightning zapped to try to stave her off but she resisted. Her skin burned as the acid from the clouds fell upon her. She heaved for an eternity.

Eventually, devoid of sufficient clouds to keep afloat, her palace came crashing down onto the creaking Tower of Metal below. Still, she continued to heave for an eternity longer.

When the storm finally passed, so too did the faint blue backdrop, all the poison, and all the other innocent clouds that framed the sky. All that was left was a stark, empty black backdrop. Somehow, with a deep, prolonged inhale, she achieved the impossible. She swallowed the sky.

The inhabitants gathered themselves and made what repairs they could before celebrating their apparent victory. To them, they had bravely withstood her relentless onslaught. Nothing she could throw at them could stand a chance against their Tower of Metal. Not the poison, not the lightning, not the tornados. More determined than ever, they marched by the thousands through the ruins of the palace that once rested among the clouds. Fully prepared to exact their vengeance, they forced themselves through her living quarters only to find her on her deathbed. Beside her, the two livestock stood as silent companions, comforting her on her way to the other side. Clutching her glass of water and the seed in either hand, she softly asked for one final wish.

No one knows for sure what her final wish was, or whether the inhabitants even gave her the chance to fulfill it.

I like to believe that, blessed with the opportunity to begin anew, she musters the little strength she has left and travels to the rocky shores of the twin sister planet with her two companions. She walks for a while along the bone-dry landscape in silence.

Eventually, she kneels at the edge of a dried lava bed and gently empties her glass. Before her eyes, she watches the ensuing flood wash over the desolate rocky planet, transforming every far-stretching crevice and valley into mighty raging rivers. Armed with the seed of life, she digs a small hole and nestles it in, taking a small scoop of the raging river with her cupped hands and drizzling over the soil. With a sigh, she takes it all in one final time before she sees herself off to face her fate, bidding her companions farewell.

It is said if you gaze above in the night sky you can still see her forgotten kingdom on the Morning Star glowing with a peculiar blinding light so intense that it outshines all its neighboring stars and wanderers.