They Ate the Sun

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But then again, there weren't always that many bodies in the Gorge, either.

The beasts had come when the day had met its end, submitting defeat and dying out behind the cold-shouldered mountains that surrounded the abandoned village. They had moved in with the night like the wind from the Eastern shores, bringing about a chill, which was expelled just as fast.

Some said they had eaten the sun, and used it to lay carnage to the village. Those who survived the fires and maws of the hungry serpents escaped into the mountains to hide in the Caves. Most didn’t make it through the first night, the cold freezing their bones and blood.

That had been years ago, maybe a decade. He wasn’t quite sure, there was no changing of the day to keep track. They seemed to be forever trapped in this eternal night, like the eyes of the world had fallen shut and refused to wake, no matter how loud the people cried. Still, he often dreamed of the sun. He had forgotten the warm caress of its rays on his face, like how his wife used to kiss him in the morning light. He hadn’t felt that in a long time either.

But he was old, and that’s the kind of loneliness that came with age. And like a world without a sun, who needed his cold, decrypt bones?

The Elders certainly didn’t think much of him, since they had pulled straws and sent him down from the Caves to face the creatures. None had dared to venture to the Valley, but when the creatures had raided their encampment on the Southern border, people began to fear they were next. So they sent him, to negotiate or to be sacrificed, it wasn’t clear. But someone had to go.

Not one had said goodbye or shed a tear when he left. His only and last request was that they would care for his daughter. Though he didn’t think they would grant him even that.

Like a lamb to the slaughter, he climbed down the mountain, pebbles sliding into the soles of his shoes, the crags of the rock face digging into the skin on his calves, leaving a dotted trail of blood behind him. He carried no torch, he didn't want to alert them of his presence.

He looked to the South, where the empty Gorge lay, the once flowing river now dried up. Instead, charred bones sat on its banks. Beneath the moon, the floating ash laid gently over the remains, like tiny stars carried in the wind.

It took him what he could guess was hours for his feet to land on the dried grass at the edge of the Valley. He crouched and let his knees sink into the dirt, his body aching and screaming at him to rest. So he did, letting his eyes drift shut and his hands lay flat on the ground. He remained frozen like that, head bowed, looking like a man in prayer before entering battle. But he prayed to no one. He stopped speaking to the gods the day his wife left to meet them.

He thought about how he might become like those many bodies in the Gorge. He wouldn’t be so lonely then. At least there would be peace. The kind he wasn’t sure he had even before the dragons came.

The thought motivated him to stand. Yes, his own peace is what he was here for. Call it selfish, but when was dying not a self-serving endeavor?

So he crept into the open maw of the beast itself, ready to snap him up in those mountainous jaws.

There was little left of the village. Some of the building foundations remained, broken brick and stalks of blackened wood stood from the ground. He tried to block out the memories, sunny days, and laughter of life. The sound of home and warmth filling his lungs. No, no he would not remember those things.

He had spotted the shadows of their figures from the mountainside. It was fitting that the beasts would nest where the church had once been. They were their own deities, in a way. He approached slowly, darting from one broken building to another, not daring to look, to breathe.

He crouched behind a broken rock and mortar wall, all breath seeming gone from his lungs, his heart pumping so fast he was convinced it was curdling his blood. Peering over his shoddy hiding place, he dared to gaze in a reverent fear upon the dragons.

There were two, intertwined around one another, their bodies long and lithe, scales like tiny tears. Their colors were hard to describe. As they breathed, their bodies moved, and it was like staring at a mirage. One appeared to be… dark. Dark like the singed hands of men covered in grime. Dark, like the smoke that had blanketed the sky and brought him to his knees.

The other was the opposite, like white trails of tear stains that ran through the black soot on his wife's crying face. The hands of his sick child, holding his own. They were beautiful.

He turned away and vomited. Dizziness had come over him, vertigo rocking his senses. To look upon them, their ever-moving forms, was almost too much.

Once the contents of his stomach had been emptied, he wiped at his mouth, shaking his head to focus his eyes. When the world became right again, he pushed off his knees with his hands, turning back to the creatures.

And found four sets of predatory eyes watching him.

He fell back onto his backside, his open mouth snapping shut. It bit down hard enough on his tongue to draw blood. He pushed away from the dirt with his heels, and it was as if he couldn’t feel his own heart anymore. It had stilled and gone flat in his chest. He was dead, he was dead, he would burn like his dear Maisy…

He watched, wide-eyed. But they made no move. Their slender necks remained still, poised over him, watching him with emotionless regard. His mouth opened and closed like a door with a loose hinge, the scream knocking at it to be released. And yet, nothing moved.

The wind seemed to drift over his ears, no, through them, tingling his very skull. And with the breeze, came a voice. A melody.

“Who are you?”

Who was he? A dead man, that’s who. A dead, old, forgotten fool.

The wind was insistent, battering around in his head, chilling it to the bone. He remembered something Maisy said to him, the day the beasts came.

"Never give them your name, the extent of its size or shape. They will steal it, and you will forget its sound."

“I… I know not who I am, simply what I will become. I am the Old Fool.”

His voice was like a rushing river, garbled and broken. The wind ceased its torment for a moment, still as it took in his words.

“What is it you desire?”

To not be here. To have back his wife, his village, the life before they took it all.

“To understand.”

He spoke with a conviction surprising even to him. There was a certain kind of calm that came with knowing the reason for your own demise.

The wind stirred. Moving, swirling, encapsulating his senses, growing into what he could only call a screech. It became so loud in his ears, that he thought his head would split, its roar would cleave him in half.

And yet, through the noise, a voice like a song.

“Her eyes have gone black

A lover's heart is dead

Charred with no flame

The world is bitter, the vessel is unclean

Sheltered away, it rots

New breath must fill the space

Must cleanse the new being

Pour out the living nectar

Find and bear the new fruit

The dragons' era is coming

Purify the stain of iniquity.”

The wind faded, the only thing left was that melodic sound lingering in the air, like the smoke of a match after it burnt out.

He fell forward, tears streaming down his cheeks. Pain gripped him, his temples throbbing with pain. His throat felt hoarse as if he had been screaming.

Lifting his head, he looked at those four eyes, like pools of holy galaxies, staring at him. Ready to feast on his flesh, deem him unworthy of life.

And he understood then, that it was the same way they would view the rest of the world if everyone had such selfish intentions as him.

A submission, a promise, and a death sentence tore from his chest.

“What do you need?” He whispered.

Something in those ancient eyes flickered. Approval.

“A catalyst.”

Their still figures moved, their heads tipping toward the sky. Both tails moved, intertwining, merging, spiraling up, up, up. A flash of light came from their tips, a spark.

A single silver scale drifted toward him, coming to rest in the grass at his feet. It was no bigger than his hand.

“Take it.” The words echoed through the empty Valley, through the remnants of the burnt village, into the death that covered the expanse of the Gorge. Into the Caves that littered the mountainside.

He reached out. For peace, for freedom from this darkness. To see the sun, to see his wife, someday. For the fate of his child. His fingers touched the soft skin of the scale.

As darkness closed in, a song of the world was threaded into the remnants of his broken soul.

And he knew no more.

***

In the midst of another endless night, the Old Fool walked through the halls of the Great Cave. He wasted no time, he had none. The vessel must be found.

People looked upon him with horror, scattering away as his form was illuminated by the torch light. He did not bother to look at them back.

The young girl sat sheltered in a corner, clutching a corded necklace, a single shell hanging on its end. She looked upon the Old Fool with recognition, but it quickly shifted to horror at the warped being that had come back from the Valley.

“Papa…” She cried, hands outstretched to the burned figure that stumbled toward her. The Old Fool wasted no time, gripping the child in his arms and lifting her to sit on the work table that was covered in inked paper, stories of the past that he had once poured over. All that was forgotten now.

“Listen carefully to me now, child.” The Old fool said. His voice was not his own anymore. “We do not have much time.”

“You are scaring me, Papa.” She cried. The young girl gripped his burned hands, tears falling onto his fingers as she kissed them gently.

“Quiet!” He said, tearing his hands away as he shook her by the shoulders. He did not have time.

Time, what was time? What was this child? It was no longer his, he did not know her. She belonged to the wind now.

She quieted, patiently listening to this man who she still gazed at with all the adoration in the world.

She would learn, she would come to understand. She, as she was now, would have to die, to live again another day.

He opened the monstrous burned thing he called a mouth.

“Let me tell you about the day the sun died.”