For A. and B.

When the world was new, the air was so clear that you could see all the stars that are missing from our constellations, and the sound of laughter carried all the way to the moon, which in those days never waned. At night there was always plenty of moon- and starlight, so nobody had to worry about tripping over a tree-root in the dark - this was before the need for, and invention of, fire, and the subsequent hasty departure of the first woman and man from the forest where they had lived.

One night they were walking through the forest, looking for a suitably soft patch of moss or pile of leaves, when they came upon a beach. They had only been created recently, and really didn't know very much - they were later to come up with fire, and the wheel, and agriculture, but so far had only discovered one useful thing - and so couldn't swim, but they soon noticed that there was something irresistibly romantic about a beach in the moonlight, and that sand was as good as moss any day. They began to make a lot of noise, and because of the clarity of the air the moon eventually noticed them.

Now the moon had been created very recently too, but was already desperately lonely. Seeing the lovers together paying no attention to her and her silvery light, which she considered her best feature, she became enraged. She exerted all her power and drew the water of the sea - which until then had rested quietly in place, once in a while playing with a wave or two - up onto the beach to drown the couple. In those days no one had yet thrown a beer can into the sea, and it had no intention of killing anybody, but the pull of the moon was too strong. Still, as the water rose closer to the first man and woman, the waves broke against the sand and hissed a warning. The pair noticed this, and although they had not yet invented fear, decided to go find some leaves after all.

The jealous moon has never been the same, but men and women haven't learned much since (except how to make fire), and still find something irresistibly romantic in beaches and moonlight.