As we're learning more about the strange, explosive birth of Earth's moon, let's return to a more fanciful version of lunar history. This short film animates Italo Calvino's short story "The Distance of the Moon" about a love quadrangle involving two men, a woman, and the moon.

The story, from the 1965 collection Cosmicomics, is set during a time when the moon was much closer to the Earth, so close that Calvino's not-quite-human characters could reach it with a ladder. "The Distance of the Moon" was one of the inspirations behind Enrico Casarosa's gorgeous Pixar short La Luna. Here, Israeli children's book author and illustrator Shulamit Serafy brings to life the story of unrequited love and a widening orbit.

[via Brain Pickings]