Once the Sun lived with her brother the Moon, and at night when the lamps were blown out somebody came to her as she lay on her deerskins and made love to her. There were many other people who lived in the house, although they were shadowy inferior souls whose best aspiration was to become planets. In the meantime, since they had not yet decided how to climb into the sky, they lay around the house, year after year, and the Sun was constantly cooking for them and the moon had to go out hunting - how dreary it was! When her work was done she blew out the lamp and rubbed the soot on her hands, wrapped herself in deerskins and lay down with a bitter beating heart. Presently the man came to her in the darkness; his hands on her body, his hot breath in her face; and she endured the inevitability of it.
"One of you has soot on his shoulders,: the Sun said the next morning when she lit the lamp. "Who, who, who," cried the guests stupidly. She made them strip off their skin shirts, but their shoulders were not dirty. Finally only her brother was left. He wept; he hung his head.
"Show me your naked shoulders or I will stab you with my Ulu," she said. He wept; he hung his head.
"Strip off your shirt or I will run away into the snow," she said. He wept; he hung his head; he stripped off his shirt, and there were sooty finger-marks on his shoulders.
He could think of nothing to say or do but point at her, crying "You have black hands, sister!"
She did not clean her hands. She sharpened her ulu; she cut off her breast and threw it into his face. "As you seem to be so fond of me, eat me, then!" He wept; he hung his head.
She took a stick, stuck lamp-moss on it, dipped it in seal-oil and touched it to the flame of the lamp. Then she ran away into the snow. As she ran, she began rising into the air.
The Moon stood in the doorway of the house watching her as she rose up glowing and bleeding. He took his ice-scraper, skewered the lamp-moss and lit it. The he ran after her. But his torch did not burn well. As he ran up into the sky, which was frozen and black, and rang under his feet, the flame went out. Nothing was around him but darkness; he could no longer see his sister's light, for she was too high above him. There was only a fading coal on his stick. Frantically he blew on it, and sparks flew out to become the stars. His clothes froze on his back; his shoes became like horns on his feet.
Ever since then we have seen his glimmering night-gleam, the roundness of his naked belly which wavers and waxes and wanes and sometimes vanishes when he must go down to earth to hunt seals, and we see that just as he was alone on this crowded earth, he remains alone in his nights of fiery unbelief, but his sister is always bright and warm, because her lamp-moss was burning when she came up into the air.
