The Moon, the Yune, and the moons
sprites by me
The moons
The Moon is the big sister, and the Yune is her little sister. But they're both "moons", not "yunes". Why is that? It's theorized that the Yune was believed to be a great planet in nascent times, and only during the Dynastic Age did people discover that she orbits the World just like the Moon, only at a much, much farther distance. And so, "moon" was demoted from name to designation. Perhaps it is around then that we started calling them the Moon and the Yune; a portent of their decline as deities amid the twin dynasties' push to glorify kin.
The Moon
The Moon shows her pearlescent face and hides again in a dance with shadow. This quality connects her to the changing, the hidden, the tides, the liminal. Moonlight lights the eyes of animals, and she alone bears witness to trysts. Ill deeds are undertaken when she is not looking. She measures the pregnancies of cattle and the march of the seasons. The big sister watches and knows.
Her seas of azure, aquamarine, and salt pink divide lead-white continents. It is known that the kin who dwell upon her are few but hardy and wise. The paths to reach her have been closed for centuries, but edifices from her skin remain: the Celestine Spire in Lilaia is formed of the self-same dust of the Celestine Sea so easily seen from below.
All of this we glean from her, and yet a whole half is kept secret. As she circles the World, the Moon only ever shows her face. The sidereal side of the Moon is forever a mystery, her modesty forbidding our glance. It's no wonder the Moon is the chief spur of poets and romantics.
The Yune
The Yune races and twirls across the sky, hounding the constellations. She is ruddy and bright, at times appearing brighter than her sister, and indeed at all times brighter than any star. In a month the Moon returns to her place, but in only ten days the Yune leaps past where she started. And so, she is connected to the hunters, the riders, the birds, the burning, the lost. The little sister prances and leads.
Though she be diminutive, instruments of magnification reveal her seas to be rusty and her shores forests of orange and yellow. The Yune is a temperamental kind who did not suffer many visitors. Indeed, almost no records of travelers to or from her face survive to the modern age. Still she inspires the wolves in the woods to action and warns the shepherd of sickness in the fold. When she hides her face in shadow, it is only to sleep a short spell, and then she is up again before the sun glows the high paths.
Some call her naked in her whirling round, but is the waterfowl not similarly clothed in panopticon? As the fowl spins and shows her tail to the sky, yet cannot be crept up upon without befalling its gaze, the Yune spins and sees every which way at once. I should think it is the human who is always naked, seeing at most only half the world at a time.