Soluna

Author’s Note — Skylar Wryn: “Soluna”

When I was eighteen, on a brisk summer evening, an old friend took me somewhere up north. In an empty field, we laid our backs against the dew-damp roof of her car and stared at the moon for three hours straight. To her, this might not have been much. But, for the first time in my life, I saw a midnight sky glistening from horizon to horizon with trillions of stars illuminating the blackened void. I was mesmerized. We found shooting stars (err, satellites), dreamt about the lives on other planets, and considered how lucky we were to exist in a time when the night sky could be so luminous. The scale and size of the universe dwarfed our worldviews down to an atomic level, yet somehow, being the size of a quark never made me feel so full and united with myself and everything around me.

My friend asked me to find a constellation in the cosmos. To pattern perimeters with invisible strings. But, somehow, I couldn’t see anything, even with the trillions of stars before me. I started to question if it was possible to see the shape calling for me. She could see them, why couldn’t I? Is there even something out there, or am I just not looking in the right direction?

Almost three years later, a song was born out of my inability to see on this star-seeking night: “Soluna.” The song details a sorrowful partner recalling their unrequited love and vehement cries for reciprocation. The verses tackle different aspects of their relationship, woven together by a weeping chorus and astral metaphors that lyricize the narrator’s mournful requests.

Initially, I wrote this song in heartbreak; a narrator addressing my previous partners. However, as I continued scripting the lyrics, I realized I was not the sole participant in the song’s narrative, rather, I was both the narrator and lover. By understanding I was both perspectives, this song became both of them, then “them” became two characters, and two characters became a solar eclipse.

These two characters, Alice and Xandra, are tails of a comet. Alice perplexingly writes “Soluna” in a critical moment of her life, and in a near biographical journey, Xandra painstakingly dissects their relationship to understand why the song exists.

“Soluna” was merely a song before two characters birthed a universe. Through writing the song “Soluna,” I healed, and through writing the story of “Soluna,” I processed. While I stated earlier Alice and Xandra are both partly myself, I refrain from calling them that entirely. They may experience things as I have, but they love far more intimately than I ever could, and to love someone is the most beautiful thing in existence.

—

Sol of lune

Hide behind the crescent tide

Flutter beneath the fluorescent high

Can you shine beneath the eyes of me?

Soluna

♪

Sol of lune, sol of Luna

Astral leaves, beneath the sea

Sing to me on your comet’s tail

Zenith, won’t you be kind to me?

Soluna

♪

Revel me, revel me in your clouded eyes

Would you climb to the top of the spire and revel in its pit of tar?

Cause I have to ask

Was Icarus just a narcissist who flew too high?

Or did he know his wings would sear and tear to the ground?

That he’d fall to the sea and drown within

The glimmering lake of I

Oh, Soluna

♪

Sol of lune, sol of Luna

Astral leaves, beneath the sea

Sing to me on your comet’s tail

Zenith, won’t you be kind to me?

Soluna

♪

I always weigh and poison what’s around me

And l tried so hard with this one

I wanted to believe I could finally love again

But when you bleed from your legs and turn to stone

I’ll write I love you with my thundering eyes

So when Luna drifts afar, the ecdysis of our archaic, broken minds will find our trails

Oh, Soluna

—

Alice,

Five years ago today, I attended our first show together. You were the lead singer of some shitty hardcore band that commanded our local scene, performing inside the abandoned St. Elizabeth church. Hardcore shows were never my forte, nor was I acquainted with your band, but my friend, Veli, was obsessed with your band and begged me to come with her. But, I didn’t want to go with her. I had no connection or desire to. Larger crowds always make me anxious. Veli loses herself and others in the pits. Live music never satiated anything within me. Yet, somehow, despite everything, some invisible thing drew me to this specific show. Electromagnetic auras, the band’s explosivity, the effervescent crowds — I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but something heard me — saw me, even.

We arrived at the venue an hour before your set began under a moonlit sky. Immediately, the venue baffled us; it was an abandoned church from the 1800s in an empty prairie, hours away from civilization. In the most literal sense, it was a puzzling venue location, one forgotten through the sands of time, but perfectly adequate for the tectonics of rotting metal music.

We sat on the lower treads of a staircase while Veli lit a cigarette. She kindly offered me one, but I declined, opting to analyze the dozens of people around us — perhaps I should have taken it instead. The anxiety I feared was slowly clouding my body and only worsening as I gazed upon the evening scene. Dozens of smaller groups, all dressed like me, crowded the venue entrance like prey sewn to a web, but Veli and I were inedible debris. I felt lost and alone here. Veli sensed my discomfort and offered the rest of her cigarette, and I reluctantly finished it, shadowing my heavy exhales with discussions of my unease.

“You’re goth yourself, Xandra,” she said with a reaffirming grasp of my right hand. “Yet, you feel lost around so many people just like you. Nobody cares who you are here.”

She didn’t understand my discomfort. My appearance did not trouble me; I felt invisible around people like me. Every alternative subculture imaginable surrounded us–from piercing punks and moshing metalheads to ghoulish goths–yet it gave me no satisfaction. The crowds were transparent rivers while I was an opaque dam, and I struggled to find what immaterial compulsion could have propelled me here.

Eventually, after Veli demanded we tour the venue, we situated ourselves within the nave. A broken ceiling illuminated the center stage with a makeshift spotlight and dimly lit surrounding debris. Dozens of silhouettes surrounded us, antsy to form a hurricane. I swallowed my breath, and Veli held my hand to soothe my anxiety. She looked up at me and acutely reassured me.

You opened the set with “Halley,” and just with its first notes, the crowd lit ablaze. Shrieking sonics, discordant drums, visceral vocals, and a grating guitar glided your metallic orchestra of a band through the set. Waves of people immediately formed a cyclonic moshpit around me, and Veli soon lost herself in the crowd, but I stood in the centre, unwavering and enamoured by your performance. The way you soared across the stage. The way you beamed with confidence and energy. The way you flew with each note. Your body was ascendant, and even with the hurricane around me, something about this cacophonous set was calling towards me. I felt your voice melodically sinking its teeth into my skin and singing to me alone. I finally found this “immaterial compulsion” I was looking for. The second tail of the comet you sang about. Nobody else was here in this room–only you and me, Alice.

As the set concluded, various lights shut off, and the spotlight shined centerstage. As your final gesture, you jumped on the front speaker and basked in the moonlight. Dozens roared for another song as you pivoted your eyes across the nave and silently thanked us, but in its centre, I stared into your eyes, transfixed by your beauty. The moon glistened your sweat-soaked skin a luminescent blue. Your hair glimmered in the light. Your eyes glowed a reflective hue, and we locked irises from seconds to millennia before you returned backstage.

Veli grabbed my arm as the crowd dispersed. With the sweaty skid marks smeared across her body, she looked eerily reminiscent of marinated roadkill instead of the leathered metal she was, but she was ecstatic. Hoarse in breath, we followed the sea of other skid-stomped moshers outside. All crowds assumed original positions as we returned to the stone staircase, except now, your band stood beneath the only working lamp. You leaned on its trunk, struck in silhouette, and conversed with dozens of groups while–afar–I watched a cornsilk luminescence colour your body and dilute your lavender blonde hair. Yellow was as gleaming as blue.

Veli sat on the landing and offered another cigarette. I looked at her, and momentarily, amid Veli’s totally planned distraction, you prematurely ended my one-sided staring contest by leaving the light.

“I saw you staring at me, bat.”

Startled, I jumped backwards and nearly fell down the stairs before rebalancing on the landing. I shuttered as I stood below you, avoiding eye contact.

You raised your right hand to my chin before cradling my left ear. “You’re cute, huh… Your eyes refer the sky… Err, reflect, you know…” we laughed before you sniffled and wiped your nose. The malapropism made me smile. Veli soon requested we leave, but you quickly slipped a lipstick-scribbled metal foil between my fingers. In it, crimson hieroglyphics scribed your phone number and a near-ineligible request: “Call me.”

A swiftly planned date soon evolved into three, then three became six, and six became a relationship. I felt monstrous before your show, but now, as your girlfriend, your presence sieved me until I was smaller than atoms, the pores of your skin, the blood in your circulation, the dust between threads, and the varnish on your lips. We were two tails of a comet intertwined by cosmic ties, and if the Sun turned supernova and killed the Earth in a pitiful demise, it wouldn’t matter because there would be just one survivor. The memory that I was yours and you were mine.

As programmed in your lyricist-coded heart, you began writing songs about me for your next album. Every song remained pious to your astral leitmotifs and captured that “Alician” essence everybody raved for. You spent months perfecting everything, straining your eyeballs from late-night-high-brightness sessions and screaming demos on a guitar you didn’t know how to play, but you suddenly ceased production. You cited exhaustion and writer’s block as the reason–that some unknown thing was missing–but I always felt there was more to it. Songs were taking progressively longer to make, and lyricism was increasingly tedious for you, sure, but these issues wouldn’t warrant abandoning something like this. Something was happening to you, Alice, and you weren’t allowing others to see it.

One full moon, a year after the last completed song and almost four years after we met, you asked me to meet at St. Elizabeth’s church. It was our first time here since the night we met, but it was like walking through elementary school halls. Memories of Veli’s haphazard tour guided me as my every step creaked the string-held wood, and I popped out of the graffitied roof debris like a mole. You were leaning against the slate roof tiles and striking a few guitar chords. Woozily, you asked: “Have you ever noticed there’s a lake over there…?” as you stared into the horizon.

“No, not really,” I looked and giggled. “You know we haven’t been here since we met?”

“Y-yeah…” You sniffled, “It’s… It’s why I asked you to meet here.”

I laid down with you and stared beyond with you. I suggested we visit the lake, but you didn’t acknowledge a word I said. I kissed your lips inquisitively, and your thunderous aroma and drowsily tinged breath tensed me.

The silence remained before you said you wanted to show me something–a song! — the missing piece of the album. Relieved you escaped writer’s block, I quickly assumed position, ready to listen, but my excitement faded shortly. While the lyrics were astrally aligned as always–albeit difficult to understand–the passion behind your voice was gone. Your stomach writhed with every word, and each part of the song was grating, barring its second last line (which you spoke, not sang). You used to be electric, but now you were this husk of anguish.

You tightly held my hand. You called the song “Soluna” and said you wrote it from an unknown perspective. About someone incapable of expressing love to their partner and how their partner wished for better. That this song was near-impossible to write and performing it was the scariest thing you’ve ever done. I sympathized with your fear, but I pushed for details–asking what it meant to you, why you wrote it, why it was written now of all times–yet you gave no answers. I pressed your silence even further, but you just absently stared into the sky without even acknowledging me. The silence festered my anxiety. Your near-bilious performance terrified you, yet you refused to answer why it was like that. What did you mean by “a partner incapable of expressing love” if it wasn’t you? You showered me with dozens of gifts, took me to every show you played, proudly introduced me to everybody you know, and pulled me out of the water, yet you somehow think you didn’t express your love to me?

I was spiralling in the silence. I was ravaging my nails and flashing thousands of possibilities through my eyes while you just stargazed. I hastened my breath as HowCouldYouDoThisXandraWhatIsWrongWithYouWhyAreYouSoShitty became an echoing mantra. I didn’t know who I was. I began blaming myself for everything potentially wrong because it felt like I was losing you, and you were no longer mine and–

“What do you think of this constellation, Xan…?”

My thoughts and voice harmonized, “…What?” I gulped.

The silence hissed for a few excruciatingly long seconds, but you inadvertently ended a hurricane within me. We tilted our heads together and locked eyes. “Up there…!” you said blissfully, pointing your finger to the sky with a sniffle.

I followed its dotted path and stared into the cosmos. It was–

“An X-shaped constellation…!” you said, reading my mind. Distantly cheering behind thunder, you grabbed my hand. “It’s you, as a star… Err, I guess that’s five stars, technically… You should find me one as well, Xan…”

I didn’t know how to respond. Why is this your only takeaway after that song? Did you just forget what happened?

I looked into the sky, uncertain of everything.

My eyes drifted to the full moon, a vast yet familiar subject, and it coruscated a sapphiric blue. I thought about how it reflects the Sun’s light and illuminates the night sky, and then I thought about the Sun itself. I wondered if the Sun was the finishing piece you were looking for, and in a faraway system, it finishes someone else’s puzzle. But, because I orbit the Sun itself, thus I could never see its constellated existence from afar, I could never find your piece. Trillions of stars illuminated the midnight sky, but I only had one grain of sand within an infinite desert.

Our gazes locked once, and you followed my shaking irises. I whispered I couldn’t find anything.

Oddly, you kissed me on the lips. I was taken aback as I expected greater disappointment, but you smiled and looked at me, not my eyes. “X-Xan, that’s… that’s fine…” you drooled. “I don’t care… about some stupid stars…” but I wanted you to care. Why didn’t you?

You kissed me again, except this was somehow softer and more intimate. Your mouth was drier. You stared into my irises and laughed, “…Because… even with… a gazillion stars up there…”

You wiped my cheek with your thumb, “…nothing glimmers more than your eyes when we kiss. They’re blue like the moon, Xan… I’m like Sol… and you’re Luna… a solar eclipse.”

A… solar eclipse…

I wanted to believe you here. I tried clinging to any hope behind your words. I tried believing we were this fantasy. I wanted to think, trust, believe we could be Sol and Luna, finding the light in each other in the most fleeting moment of our lives, and beneath your breath, I felt the same scarce truths you whispered, but “Soluna” betrayed this trust. It felt like everything we knew and experienced together didn’t matter anymore. Like you just forgot you wrote the most heartwrenching song ever to me, refused to explain its existence, kissed me, and called us a solar eclipse to quantify our love. Fuck you, Alice. I didn’t care how bad you had gotten or how lost you were anymore. To this day, this moment hurts to relive. If our love was the Sun, then the moon was poisonous air, and we were two civilians on this shadowed, lonesome planet. And while atop this church, you encouraged me to gaze into the cosmos for kisses and praise, in this barren world–our relationship–I’d force you to stare into the sky and burn your retinas to ash.

I returned to the church a year later–alone–on a clear night. Veli’s instincts guided me along the string-held wood and cobweb-infested interior towards the roof, and the graffitied debris remained untouched from its last intervention. My skin coloured a brilliant blue from the sapphiric sky, I laid where we lay: atop the slate.

I stared into the sky without a thought. An “immaterial compulsion” willed me here again, but this time, I didn’t want to admit I knew what it was. I just wanted to look into the stars for a few hours and forget, but instead, I watched a half-inch-wide spider crawl onto my knee. It moulted its cuticle, drifted the translucent skin-shell into the wind, and completed ecdysis by crawling back into a crevice. I looked back up, and the moonlit skies were tinged with the slightest red.

I thought about the spider, its ecdysis, and how I have evolved since leaving. I thought about who I was when I was with you. I thought about how viscerally I reacted to you. I thought about “Soluna” and how it still puzzled me. I thought about “Soluna” entirely. Time hazes my memory of the song, but I thought about its final lyrics–the only lyrics you spoke and not sung:

“So when Luna drifts afar, the ecdysis of our archaic, broken minds will find our trails… Oh, Soluna”

I say the lyric aloud for the first time, whispering with a slowed breath.

I do it again but with more confidence.

Two whispers become three. Three become six. Six is a voice.

I crescendo each take, shouting each word into the field.

I shout until I champion the words as anthems.

I champion until the words soar without me.

“So…” I soar.

“When…!” I fly.

“LUNA!” I cheer.

“Luna…!” I speak.

“…Lu…na…” I slow.

“…drifts…” I whisper.

“…afar…” I close.

I finally understand.

“I’m like Sol… and you’re Luna… a solar eclipse,” a memory repeats.

Sol of lune. Sol of Luna. Soluna.

“Sol…lu…na,” the syllables murmur.

I gaze into the prairie. My eyes travel inwards from the unofficially dubbed “horizon lake,” down the arable fields, to the dusted church entrance, where a trail of footsteps is carved. Except, they are not mine. They follow a different path. They are new. Immediately, my eyes travel in reverse, following the haphazard trail stretching from the church entrance to the horizon lake.

I leap off the roof and sprint across the dew-damp grass. The night may still be young, but adrenaline surges through me and the trail is quickly aging and near-infinite, like specks of a black crayon drawing dots across a football field. I need to see if you, too, came back. If you, too, realized it’s now been five years since our first show together. I am a moth looking for my bonfire in the darkness, and, as the horizon reaches further and the shores of the lake become louder, I see your beacon of light.

You stand tall before the calm shore, staring into the reddened sky. You float like a wispy shore as the moon blushes your skin a reddish tint.

I whisper, “I know, Alice…” with a heavy breath. But, you don’t respond. I don’t know if you heard me, but I knew you felt me. Transfixed by the cosmos, you nod off, and I hug you tightly. I kiss your lips, and they are dry like flaking wood; drier than ever.

You faintly ask if we can go “trimming.” I want to laugh with you at your malapropism like we used to, but instead, I withhold a dam of tears. I wish we could go trimming, Alice.

I quickly discard my clothes and dig my feet into the shore. I curl my toes inside the water, feeling the pebbles grind and submerge my feet into sentiment. I turn and watch your wispy body enter knee-deep water at a sluggish pace. You move as if you were watching from the third person and you collapse to your knees.

I kneel in the lake, holding your limp body up through its shoulders as you look up at me. Your irises are blanking and shaking the sclera as you look through mine — behind them, not into them. You are losing composure, heaving breaths, and briefly alive in the empty spaces between blinks. Crawling your upper torso out of the water and tightly grasping my arm, you raise your right hand to my left ear and cradle it.

Your hand drifts down my cheek, faintly sweeping your thumb against it as you struggle looking into my irises. You speak, but every word whispers an increasingly weak pause. “Xandra… I… I just… I wish I could see the stars again…”

I hold your distant body in my arms as your head buries against my chest. The tips of your lavender blondes soak themselves in the lake, and I grasp your hand. The water pruned it, and I think about how I wished I could’ve seen it wrinkle with age instead.

I kiss your scalp and place a single grain of sand in our combined grasp. I used to float above the stars and think about our cosmic ties, but now, here, I stare into the stars and reddened sky, sing your lowest note beyond the heliopause, and beg for an answer. But, if there ever was an answer among the stars, I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything anymore.