Once upon a time, long before the world was made, there was nothing in the heavens save for the sun and the moon and the stars.

The sun was happy, for there was only one of him. Thus, he was the biggest and strongest and brightest of all.

The moon was happy, for there was only one of her. Thus, she was the most beautiful, the most charming and the most intelligent of all.

The stars, however, were not happy. There were many of them, all sorts of colours and sizes, spread all across the sky.

The constellations of stars were always at war with each other, because although they had a king to rule over them all, he was old and cares little for the squabbling of his kind. The king had a daughter and a son. His daughter was strong and courageous, but like her father she was annoyed by the warring of the constellations and ignored it whenever she could. His son was kind and gentle, and he cared for the other stars and wanted the war to be over.

Though the daughter was the elder of the two and so would be the next ruler of the heavens, the son saw that her rule would not be good for all of the stars. For years he strove to usurp the position of his sister so that he could rule instead. As each of his plans failed, so the next became more and more direct until at last his sister realised what he was doing. She spoke to her father, who by this time was too weak and feeble to make decisions as king, and passed her own judgement off as though it were the king’s.

And so, by his sister’s decree, the kind and gentle prince was cast out of the heavens.

At around this time, the sun and the moon grew bored with their lonely lives in the sky, and created the world. Mountains and seas they created, and villages and towns, and they filled them with people. The sun and the moon sent out part of themselves to the world, where they lived as human beings and were never bored again.

It was to this world that the prince of the stars was exiled. He lived happily there with the sun and the moon; while his sister and the rest of the stars were the ones that felt lonely and were jealous of him.