text: [Themes: edutainment, true story]
  
  The first thing you need to do is get this idea of the planets being lifeless rocks out of your head. The Earth is also not a rock that just happens to have plant and animal life on it. And all of them suspended in a dark, cold, airless, nearly endless expanse? Freezing black space that our tiny rockball is somehow kept warm and protected against?
  
  Think about it a moment. Think about how unlikely that is.
  
  Does your mom keep a bag of peas in the freezer? Take one of those and feel how hard and cold it is. That's what the Earth would be like, if the 'freezing empty void' theory held any water.
  
  No. What's actually going on is this: The world is made from a giant turtle. And it's sitting on the back of another giant space turtle.
  
  > tell you more about the space turtles.
  We live inside the remains of a massive World Turtle. This is the Turtle Mother, and she passed on many eons ago.
  
  When you look out at the sky and the horizon you can see the curve of her shell. It is so old that it's worn thin in many places, and at night little pinpricks of light shine in. These are what we call the stars.
  
  As for the moon and the sun...well, let me tell the story this way.
  
  The Sea of Light fills the whole universe. World Turtles, and many smaller creatures, swim through it or are carried along by its currents. The waves glow with joy and gentle warmth, carrying along the souls of all who have ever lived.
  
  Terra was a World Turtle who in her millions of years of life had hatched many children, and all of them but one had swum far away to other galaxies. This last and youngest child's name was Atlas.
  
  "I have one egg left," she told him. "I will wait till it hatches, and then I will pass on and join the other souls within the Sea. You will have to go out and make your own way through the universe then, but by then you should be old enough."
  
  "I'll never leave you, Mother!" little Atlas declared with great emotion.
  
  "You are not the first of my children to make that promise. But it is the way of us World Turtles to endlessly traverse the Sea, and in time they all grew restless. But I've been so tired lately, and so I'm happy you're still here, my son. Although...I do wonder what has become of the others." Terra sighed a little and mulled this over for a few centuries, and then she spoke again. "Atlas?"
  
  "Yes mother?"
  
  "While I wait for this last egg to hatch, I believe I shall make one last journey, to try and find at least one of my other children, and see how they're living now. Will you come with me?"
  
  "Of course! I wouldn't dream of letting you go alone, and to travel will be fun. It will be an adventure!"
  
  "Ah, my dear, faithful boy. Then it's settled. Let us be off!"
  
  > search in the direction the last child left in.
  Terra remembered a daughter calling goodbye as she paddled her small form swiftly through the radiant waves, and so she turned her own ponderous, planet-sized bulk to swim in the direction she had seen her glowing trail last disappear in.
  
  For many many years she swam, from the warm light teeming with souls and activity she had been resting in for so long, through the austere, colder light that drifted in silent waves between the galaxy.
  
  This last part of the journey was the most difficult. She felt her own strength waning through each millennium, but she struggled to continue on. For her last hatchling still grew within the egg inside of her, and she wouldn't dream of letting it be born in such an empty stretch of the Sea.
  
  > But finally, it was all too much for her...
  "Atlas," she told her son. "It's time for me to go now."
  
  He swam anxiously up to her. "Mother, but if you can just hold on, the next galaxy isn't far at a--"
  
  "I've held on as long as I can. But my body is too weak. Atlas, you have been so faithful, but I must ask you one last favor."
  
  "Anything, Mother."
  
  "Don't let the egg hatch out here, and don't let it hatch alone. After I'm gone, please take my shell to a part of the Sea filled with warmth and life and stay with it until the hatchling is ready to emerge, and then to travel the Sea on its own. I can feel already it is so close to hatching...it just needs a few more million years."
  
  With that, she breathed her last, and he wept as he took her up on his back and carried her onward toward the nearest galaxy.
  
  When next Terra became aware, she was her soul, inside herself. All around she could feel the tugging of the Sea of Light, but as they swam through such a cold region of it, she resisted. The sight of her egg, as well, filled her with such love that she became determined not to leave just yet.
  
  Summoning up every scrap of power and will, she pulled herself together, gathering her entire soul...into a great ball of blinding yellow light! It was this form she would keep, from then until now.
  
  Her warmth poured down on her egg, and a million years passed as her body broke down around them both. Not being restrained by physical barriers, and never again able to grow weak or weary, she settled into a routine of constant motion, flying up and across the top of her shell and then down and out beneath it to glow approvingly at her faithful Atlas. As her bones became mountains, and blood and flesh the sea and the land, myriad creatures would crawl up on the land, Many, many years after the events of this story, one of them would one day look up and label her times in and out of the shell, as day and night.
  
  Once she noticed those creatures...
  
  > Terra wanted to look after them.
  "So many odd little creatures are living in my shell now," she commented to Atlas one day, once she'd relearned the ability to speak, and long after they'd reached the new galaxy. "I don't understand at all where they came from."
  
  "I believe I read something about the digestive tract," he mumbled.
  
  "What was that?"
  
  "Ah, nothing. But yes, they're fascinating little things. I've grown quite fond of them," the Turtle said, then continued with a regretful sigh. "Though, I do wish they didn't seem so dependent on you."
  
  "And why is that?"
  
  "Well, don't you think they might all pine away and die? You've been with them since their beginning. I'm not sure how they'd adjust to being left alone. Everything would become quite meaningless."
  
  Terra's soul shone onto her son with a strange sort of emotion, a sort of loving sadness after that, and for her next thousand spins she mulled the problem over. It wasn't long before she spoke to him again. "Atlas, I'll bring the Starflies in on this question of what to do with your little pets."
  
  The Starflies were known for having unusual ideas, and at any rate they loved to see and gossip about new things. So much so that the first one she called over to look at all the new things living in her shell, blazed down with such force and speed that it rocked the whole thing, so hard that even Atlas felt it.
  
  "Are they okay?" he called up, in a worried tone.
  
  "It...they're fine dear," Terra reassured him while surveying the crater and thick clouds of dust, and not sounding reassuring at all. "Just...give them some time to recover."
  
  Thankfully their worries proved unfounded, because while it did take a bit of time for the dust to clear, eventually more life than ever was teeming below. The Starflies became quite fascinated with them all, five of their number taking it upon themselves to patrol along the top of the shell every single night so that they would always have fresh gossip in the morning. These were known as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--what the Greeks would later call the wandering stars. Other Starflies would simply be called shooting stars, whenever we caught a glimpse of them.
  
  But Terra had made it very clear she had no intention of staying forever, and the problem of what would happen once she left was never able to be solved. They did however, manage to hit upon a compromise.
  
  > The Compromise
  "So, you said you would leave once your egg was ready to hatch and swim out into the galaxy on its own?" one of the lead Starflies asked, after whispering away with the others awhile.
  
  "That was the plan."
  
  "But you're not in any particular hurry to leave, are you? You've got two of your children right here, in a very nice location, and merging with the Sea...well, all souls eventually do it, but it isn't exactly going anywhere."
  
  "I suppose. But what are you getting at?"
  
  "Well, what if the egg also decides it's in no hurry? We will just keep him comfortable and sleepy, so that it will be a little while longer before he wants to leave his shell. And maybe we can figure out a better solution in the meantime, or maybe we'll turn out not to need it after all."
  
  Terra spun along her usual arc following the curve of her shell, again and again as she mulled that over. "Hmm. I can't pretend I have any better ideas. But only as long as my baby is content inside the shell. If he ever decides he wants to leave for good, then that's it. We can't put this thing off forever."
  
  And so we arrive at the state of things today.
  
  If things had proceeded normally the hatchling would have left the moon many many thousands of years ago. Every month he picks away at the shell until its nearly gone, and whenever the Starflies see this happening they sing sweet, soothing songs to him until he builds it back around him and settles down for a short nap.
  
  But like dear, faithful Atlas, we must be prepared for the day he decides enough is enough, leaves his comforting shell behind and swims out into the galaxy on his own. Then Terra will merge into the bliss of the Sea, and we will be left with no sun and no moon.
  
  Atlas, however, will be the loneliest of all.