Sunlight

There is a place that is now a quiet but busy tourist town, where pretty gift shops follow the curve of Main Street, and baskets of flowers hang from the street lamps. The beaches here are rocky, and not good for swimming, but couples come to hike and shop, and reclusive artists come to write and paint in peace. Long before that, though, the place was a small village named Dragonwell. There is a story of a child from that village, born long after the dragons had left and the reason for the village's name forgotten, just as this story and the girl who lived it is forgotten now.

During this time, when the village was named Dragonwell, but all had forgotten why, there was a woman who was with child. When she discovered this, she walked down the packed-earth street to the midwife while her husband worked. He was a tailor of sorts, who made who made cloth and fashioned it into clothing. She had learned the trade, and now worked alongside him. Now she walked to the midwife's door, contemplating on how the child was unexpected but welcome, right up until she was welcomed inside by Elsa Coop, who looked and clucked just like a hen.

"Come in, come in, child," Elsa beckoned and led her to a padded seat which only pregnant women were given the honor of sitting in. The woman smiled as she sat. She had stitched the cushions on the chair, never imagining she would be sitting in it. Elsa gave her tea while the women talked and established that she was one month with child. After they were done drinking, the midwife poked and prodded her, and as she did, her face turned grave. She laid her hand flat against her womb, and frowned. "This baby should be warm inside you with its life growing, but there is no heat from your womb. And here you are," she added, "in the middle of summer, wearing long sleeves. You should be burning up in that." But the midwife patted her cheek and comforted her. "Go and see the fortune teller. Perhaps it is nothing at all, but she will be able to tell."

So the woman rose and sniffled once, and promised Elsa curtains and a new dress in payment for delivery of the baby. She left with instructions to keep warm at all times, and eat much hot food and drink. The fortune teller lived further down, near the edge of the village. The woman sat outside her home on her small porch, waiting, and rose as she approached. The fortune teller was younger and thinner than Elsa, but still the wisest of the villagers. She was called Delphin by the others, but no one knew her real name.

Delphin offered her a seat at a wooden table, and sat down across from her. On the table was a large dark bowl of water, around which she surrounded with lit candles. For a moment, Delphin only looked at her, but then spoke.

"You are with child. The midwife has told you to come because she has found something unsettling."

The woman nodded, and the fortune teller turned her attention to the bowl of water as the flames flickered on its surface. She stared for many minutes before she spoke.

"The child is a girl, and she is born under auspicious signs. She will bring much heartache." Something in the water caught her attention, and her mouth turned down in a grim line. "I see a curse in your daughter's future, and I cannot tell you how to be certain to stop it. Take her, perhaps, to a temple of the monks. There, she may learn to quiet all feelings of desire and live in peace. Perhaps in their sanctity, the effects of the curse might be limited."

The woman walked home in great sorrow, and shared the news with her husband. After the baby was born, she was immediately taken from the midwife's arms to those of a messenger boy. Husband and wife stayed together as she lay feverish, and the boy was sent up the mountain with instructions to deliver her to the temple. It was a small mountain, but that baby was like ice in his arms. He would have thought her dead if not for her crying, and that was why, along the way, he sold her to the gypsies. No natural child was so cold, and no temple should have her. Besides, the gypsies called her an ice princess, and marveled at her from their bonfires along the path, and pressed a small gold coin into his hand. "No one will be the wiser," a gypsy woman whispered from within her veils.

And that is where the child grew. She left her parents home before ever being named, and the gypsies called her "the girl" even after she was well into being a young lady. She never thought to ask the gypsies where she came from, and they never volunteered to tell her. She concerned herself with other matters, and when she was old enough to love, she concerned herself with the sun. She greeted it in the morning, and watched it fade when it went to bed. In the time between, she laughed for the sun, and danced for it. She would wander away from the gypsy camp to lie in the grass beneath it. When its rays were the warmest, she would close her eyes and sleep in the caress of the sun, and she would dream of it. In her dreams, the sun could come down to the earth. He was a man with a spirit of fire and eyes that were full of life. He was all warmth and strength, and as he held her he could heat her bones that had remained chilled since the day of her birth. Some days in the mornings she would wake before he had risen. She would peak through the cracks in the trailer, anxious for him to free her from the cold that came with the night.

At this time, there were no lights to brighten the world when the sun had to recede to sleep. No moon yet glowed, and no stars watched the world from far away. There was only the sun, and so the girl loved him with all her heart.

When she was old enough, the gypsies began to send her to the villages when there were supplies to buy or sell. By that time, the gypsy who had bought her was growing too old to walk the path, and the girl became her replacement. In the village of Dragonwell, no one knew her except as a girl from the camp in the mountains, noticed only because of the laces and colors of her dresses and veils draped over her hair. She did not linger long with them, for they were strange and quiet, especially one young man. He was an apprentice at the blacksmith's, where she was often sent to pick up bits of scrap metals from which tools and jewelry could be made. He always stared at her for a very long time, but she did not know why. Nor did she care. Once she was free of the people, she could take her time back up the path. She would sing to the sun while she walked, and dream of the man with its warmth holding her.

There was no winter in the village of Dragonwell, but there was a time when the days were shorter and rainier, and her sun would have to struggle from behind the clouds. During this time, the girl would grow so cold that her body would shake, and the others would wrap her in blankets and keep her by the fire, for fear of her freezing to death otherwise. At those times the girl cried and moaned for her sun to come back, and ached until the sky cleared and he returned to dry the world.

It was the day after one such rain that she was sent to go to the blacksmith and inquire about lengths of wire. She rejoiced at having the sun back, and was as happy as she could ever be, for one can only be so happy while loving something as distant as the sun. Upon reaching the blacksmith's, she felt dread and could not tell why. The big man was not standing over his anvil as usual. Instead, there was only his apprentice, working with a sheet of metal. His name was Emil, and the girls of Dragonwell fawned over him. He was handsome, and the blacksmith was one of the most sought after people in the village. Whomever he married would always be taken care of.

The girl had never really looked at him before. There was something stern about his face, his features looking like they had adapted the hard quality of the metals that he worked with, and his eyes were dark, staring at her. She felt nervous talking to him.

"I'm looking for the blacksmith."

"He is not well. Today, I am the blacksmith." And the young man came around the anvil to stand closer than she would have liked. "I can help you."

Taking a step back, she described what she would need, and then watched him gather the lengths of thin chain. As he did, he began to speak again.

"I am actually no longer an apprentice here. I am an assistant, and will either open my own shop or inherit this one. I have come to a position where it is time to be married. You are very beautiful. I have chosen you."

"I have never seen myself," she replied, "so I cannot speak to that, but I cannot marry. I do not have a name, and the ceremony is not binding unless a name is spoken."

He stopped, and looked at her, and his eyes were almost frightening.

"Then see yourself now." He guided her to a mirror tucked into a corner of the shop, something the blacksmith had intended to take home to his family. It was true, she had never seen herself except in the scattered reflection of pools. She had never before seen how pale her skin truly was, almost white. She had known her hair was black, but never had she seen it stand against her skin before. And she had never looked into her own eyes, which she discovered were more frightening than the young man's. They looked like the sky at night, and nothing reflected in them the way she had seen it in other people. They were like two lava rocks set black and cold against the pale sands of the beaches.

Perhaps she was beautiful, she realized, but she was not like the sun. If he was a man that ever came to the earth, he would not love her. She looked so cold and dark. She looked like something cursed, something that did not belong in the daylight. Crushed, she ran from the mirror. She quickly gathered the chain and threw down a coin. The young blacksmith tried to stop her, but she jerked away from his grasp.

"Don't touch me," she demanded, hating the one who had shown her what she was.
Up the path of the mountain to the gypsy village, she kept her head down and cried, and the tears felt like ice on her cheeks. She felt the sun on her back, but it could not make her heart feel any warmer. She spoke to no one in the camp, and throughout the day she lay and slept in the sun, where her dreams were of storms and days when it was replaced by ice.

While she dreamed, the young apprentice grew bitter. By the time the sun set was just a few hours away he had decided to visit the woman in the caves. There was a place along the shore where the rocks grew jagged. People almost never came to this place, and when those few did, it was only out of desperation. Here the rocks were slick and dangerous, and the spray from the waves grew harsh. By day, seagulls and carrion birds feasted on carcasses and each other, and by night moths amassed here, bringing with them flocks of bats. In a cave in this place, a woman had built her home. It was whispered that for the right payment, she could cause almost anything to happen.

The young man was angry and desperate, and so he crept up to this cave. There was no door upon which to knock, so he stood at the gaping black mouth and called. There was no answer after he had waited and still called again, so he took a deep breath as if the cave was a portal to the ocean depths, and stepped inside. At first, the young man discerned very little, except that somehow things were strange. Then, little by little, he began to notice. First he realized that, while he could hear the wind howling across the mouth of the caves, not even a slight breeze stirred while he stood just inside, and no spray from the ocean dared enter either. Next, he noticed how strange it was that the fire burning in the pit in the cave released no smoke, even though there was no chimney, and how odd it was that the flames glowed red rather than yellow and orange. Then, he considered how odd it was that the witch's skin could be so smooth while being so gray, almost like she was a statue carved from limestone. From the table next to the hearth, she looked at him, or appeared to, for her eyes were bleached white from viewing too many secrets of the other worlds. A white plate and a small dagger sat on the table in front of her, but otherwise it was empty. She beckoned for him to sit across from her.

Once he had, she said, "For a price, I can tell you what you wish to see. For a bigger price, I can make it what you wish it to be. Shall we begin?"

The young man agreed, and he began to tell her of the gypsy girl and his desire to have her, but the witch held up her hand to stop him.

"I already know all your secrets, apprentice blacksmith. Now it is time to discover hers."

The witch looked past him for a moment, and in from the twilight flew a brown bat. She caught it in the air, brought it upon the plate, and sliced off its head. She poured the blood onto the plate, threw its body into the fire. She stared into the patterns formed in the blood.

"For the cost of your silver ring, and a lock of your hair, I will tell you why she does not desire you, and why she ran from you today."

He agreed, and this is what she told him:

"Your gypsy girl is not a true mountain person. She was from this village, but sold to them on the night of her birth. She was given up because this child was born with a black spot upon her fate, and this ill omen has kept her cold all her life. She has been cursed with a heart large enough to love only one, and that one she loves will never come to her. That is why she has no eyes for you. From the day of her birth she has been destined to love the sun, and so she has fawned for him for as long as her cold heart has beat. There is only one way I can see that may give you a chance to take her from the sun. But it comes at a price both for her and for you."
With eager eyes, the man pleaded to be told what it was.

"It is a curse upon her," the witch said to him, "she would be able to wake only during the night. While the sun is between rise and fall she will be cast into a deep sleep wherever she stands. It is possible that, once she is kept away from the sun, she will forget her love for it, and be willing to be your bride. Either way, she would never again see that which has kept her away from your home."

"What is the price?" The young man asked.

"This will cost the gold ring that you have hidden in your pocket, and your blood."

The young man paled at this, but she promised that the results would be dramatic, and so he agreed. He set his ring upon the table, and, using the same knife that she had used on the bat, she sliced his forearm. She squeezed the blood into a glass vile, corked it, and withdrew it into her robes.

"The price has been paid." She smiled, "Tonight will be the last night in which she sleeps. Tomorrow she will not wake until sunset." She offered him nothing to stop the bleeding, which burned more than when he had accidentally touched a glowing red iron. As he left, he bound it with a handkerchief and climbed along the slippery rocks.

When the girl woke, the sun was just about to fully set. She sat in the grass on a curve of the mountains, and watched it make the clouds glow while she shivered in the chill. She cried while she watched it leave her, berating herself for being the fool who loved the sun. When the last of the light began to disappear, she wiped her eyes and trudged back to camp, where the carts were arranged in a horseshoe with a bonfire in the center. In the twilight, she helped prepare the night's meal, and then she herself sat down to eat a potato that had been heated in the embers. She was in charge of retrieving anything that had been in the fire, for she could reach almost into the flames without the heat being too much for her. After she ate, she swept out several of the trailers and shook the rugs for the old woman.

That night when she slept, she dreamt of ice. She had never seen ice before, except as white splotches on distant, higher mountains, but a member of their tribe who had been many places had told her of it. He had said that it was water, but that it was as hard as glass and even colder than her own hands. In her dreams, she was trapped beneath the ice, and she pounded against it. She could hardly breathe, and she could feel her heart beating so lightly and so quickly. From far above her, she thought she could see weak rays of sun, and though she struggled to reach them, the flat sheet of ice pressed upon her and held her down.

Sometimes in her dream she felt the ice shift back and forth all around her, but though she felt it shaking her, she was not freed. She was trapped in her dream for an eternity before, finally, she awoke in her bed on the floor of the trailer that she shared.

In a wooden chair nearby, one of the old gypsy men sat and smoked from a long pipe. "We almost thought you dead," he said in his deep bullfrog voice, "except we could still feel your breath."

"When is it?" she asked.

"It is just after sunset. You slept all night and could not be woken all day." He rose from the chair. "Collect yourself now, girl, and then come to help prepare the meal."

As the door closed, she began to cry and could not tell why. She could feel in her bones that something dreadful had come upon her, and now she would have to lie awake in the cold all night. But she pulled herself together, and went to bring the potatoes from the embers of the fire. While the night grew dark and colder the others one by one went to sleep. All night she paced around the camp, and looked at the empty sky, and waited for the sun to come back.

After hours, the sun showed the first signs of meeting the horizon. As the sky was just starting to brighten, she walked to the east side of the mountain so she might be touched by its very first ray. She sat with the dew on the grass and waited. When the sun showed its first glimpse, though, she was asleep. In her dream, it rained. Each drop that fell on her hurt, as she trudged through a gray forest.

When the others woke to find her missing, there was much debate about whether she was dead, run away, or stolen. At midday, though, one of the hunting parties returned. There were three in the group. One carried a fawn, its spots just starting to fade. Another had a line of rabbits and birds draped over a shoulder. The third carried the girl, draped just as limp as the animals, across his arms. She slept like a dead thing, all the way until the sun was set.

She left for the fire pit in the middle of the camp. A stew had been started, and she was able to life the iron pot from the fire without burning her hands. After eating, she cleaned their trailer until the old woman came to sleep. As the camp turned to rest, she left to wander. Though the sky was like pitch overhead, she could see the world around her as if it were cast in a strange light. The world was black, but things stood out against it in shades of gray and white as if they glowed from the inside. She walked, exploring her new vision though her bones felt colder with each step.

Something caught the corner of her eye as she wandered, something small that seemed to glow for just a second. She scanned the brush. She it move, and then the glow again. She peered closer. There were actually two small orbs, only a foot above the ground- eyes. They were gone and back again when the creature blinked. As the girl looked, she recognized the rest of the form of a coyote. There was nothing to worry about, for she was much too large to be pray. To be sure, though, she searched for anymore hidden around her. Though she found none, when she looked back, the small dog was much closer. It did not hide now; it stood in the open only a few feet away from her. Perhaps it a grown rabid.

Before she could consider further, the dog lunged for her. She did not feel fear, perhaps because she now lacked a reason to worry about life, or perhaps because it was only a small dog, easily picked up by its neck. As she held it in the air, squeezing its throat, it squeaked and cried, trying to bite as her fingers sank beneath its fur, and she felt heat dripping across her to her wrist. She found a thick vein in its neck, and pulled until it ripped free. She felt the warmth spray across her face and neck now. For the first time in days, she smiled.

And so she carried the coyote as its twitching stopped and warmth faded slowly. She found the edge of the riverbank, where she dropped the dead thing. She dropped her dress next to it, and bathed in the icy water. When the blood was washed from her skin and hair, she cleaned her dress in the water next. When it was done, she threw it over her shoulder, picked the coyote back up, and walked back toward the camp. She dropped the dog next to the fire pit and put it beneath a tarp to keep any bugs away. The others could cook the meat that night, and the fur would be valuable. She hung her dress outside the trailer to dry, and then went inside to peel off her soaked underclothes. She pulled on a cloak and stepped back outside to hang up the rest of the garments. When she did, she saw that the sky was now light gray, and she was suddenly so tired. She felt dizzy with exhaustion, and wavered on her feet. Inside, she fell asleep before she was all the way in her bed. When the first ray of the sun appeared, her eyes shut and she was unconscious.

In the morning, word spread that the girl, who was now known to be cursed, had killed a coyote with her hands. Debate began about removing her from the camp, but no one agreed to do it. The girl was more and more strange and frightening. Who knew what powers and grown within her? And so they left her to lie until she awoke at sunset. If necessary, they would remove her later.

When she woke she was alone, and no one spoke to her. She understood why, they were afraid of her. She had become something twisted over the last few days with her dead black eyes and ice cold skin. But, she knew now what she should do. When she was young, one of the women had told her a story of a witch who lived in a cave along the shore. She had told the story as a lesson to learn only the arts of fortune telling, and not black magic. For the witch had taken up the black arts, and had given up her life in exchange. Now she was bound within her cave, the entrance guarded by seagulls by day and bats at night. Now, though, the story was no longer a lesson, but an idea. If anyone understood the black spot that kept her awake in the night and made nightmares chase her by day, the witch would.

As the sky slowly turned, she began the journey down toward the shore, wearing her dress and cloak, hood pulled low to hide her eyes. The darker the night became as she wove along the path, the clearer her vision slowly grew. When she reached the shore where the gray sands stretched, she stopped to look upon the sea. It had no color to her now, but in shades of gray she could see each ripple and wave as no one had by day. She took off her slippers and left them on a rock to keep the sand from getting in the seams. She followed the shore to the place where the boulders began to grow, and walked across them to where the rocks grew slick. She stepped across them where the wind ripped at her cloak, and mist struck her skin until she got to the mouth of the cave.

She walked inside without announcing herself. A fire burned, but to her appeared only as a moving, blurry white light, too bright for her vision to make form of. It hurt her eyes, and so she kept her gaze away. The witch stood in the farthest place in the care, her veils and cloaks the same gray as her skin, to the girl's vision. Her eyes did not glow like the coyote's. It was true then, the witch was without life.

"I came for answers." The girl said.

The woman withdrew in surprise. No one should have been able to see her, not in the dark. Something was not as it should be. She stepped out from her corner and sat across from the girl at her table, but immediately wished that she could draw back without showing her discomfort. The girl radiated the cold, but there was no one more powerful than she in this village of simple people. So she spoke.

"What is it you wish to know? And what is the price you will pay?"

"I wish to know why it is that I wake at night and dream awful things when the sun is up."

The witch grinned her slyest grin. She would not even have to waste her sight into the other world for this. "What will you pay?"

Now it was the girl's turn to smile. "You are trapped inside this cave. If you tell me what I want to know, I won't topple your fire over and let you burn alive in this tomb."

"Fine, then," said the witch. "It was the gypsies. Those above have chosen to punish them, and you are simply the first."

"The truth, witch, or I will start the flames now." And to prove her point, she rose to the fire, and reached into it. She held one of the glowing embers in her hand.

"Put it back, petulant child," the witch almost shrieked. "Sit and I will tell the truth."

As the girl returned, she spoke.


There was a girl who wandered in and out of the village of Dragonwell, and each time she did the eyes of a man followed her. He was a fine young man, but the girl was oblivious to him. No man, you see, was good enough for her, as highly as she thought of herself. So she would settle for nothing but the king of the sky himself. How silly this was, as if the sun would ever kneel for her. The sun is divine. It has no use for a mortal girl. Still, she refused the young man, and broke his heart. In his misery, he cried out for appeasement. The god of fire took pity on him, and punished the girl for her stubbornness, placing a curse upon her that would keep her awake in the nights, never to see her sun again. Appropriate for someone with a heart as hard as rock and as cold as the sea.


The girl rose from her seat. "You have told me what I wanted to know, and most was even true. You left out one piece, though. Gods did not curse me. You did."

As she walked from the mouth of the cave, she looked just over her head. Hundreds of eyes looped in quick circles. As she left, they seemed to unify all at once, before flying into the cave. Inside, the witch screamed, once.

Now it seemed, that the girl had finished one chore, it was already time for a new one. She crossed the boulders and shores and paths back to the village, where she found the small home attached to the blacksmith's shop. On silent feet, she snuck through the rooms to where the young man slept. Though she could see him clearly in outline against his bed, she lit a candle.

Standing back from him, she spoke his name and beckoned him to wake. Slowly, he did at first, and then rose quickly when he saw her in the room. He was warm from sleep, she knew, and she was pleased.

"I have come because I was wrong," she told him, "and I am so cold."

And Emil smiled. "Then come to me and lay in my bed. Then I will give you a name and take you as my wife. I will keep you warm."

"Yes, you will," she answered, and let him pull her into his arms. "But first, tell me, why is it that you took me from the sun?"

She felt his body tense in her arms as she clasped her teeth around his neck. He tried to pull away, but she bit into his vein and he eventually weakened as the blood poured down her throat. Her insides grew wonderfully warm, as if she was burning a fire in her stomach, and she felt full for the first time since the curse had come down on her. She let go and allowed the body to fall to the floor. Blowing out the candle, she left. She paid no attention to where she went from the shop, but she eventually found herself at a small home toward the edge of the village. A woman stood on the porch, watching her.

"You are lost," she said. "Come inside."

The girl followed, feeling very small and young again. She sat when the fortune sat.

"You were told a story today. I too have a story to tell you, before you decide how you will live your life."


There was a baby born to a small village. Her parents had been given ominous portents about the child's life, and to try to change her fate, they had a boy take the baby to a temple. Along the way, though, he found a group of gypsies who cared for her and bought her. One must not be angry at the boy. He was a fine child, just easily misguided. And besides, he paid his price for that tonight- a life for a life, it seems. The girl was destined to never be satisfied with earthly things, and her heart was empty and she was alone. But there was good in her story, for one day the sun found her among her people. He fell in love with her, and watched her from his place in the sky whenever he was awake. He listened to her sing, and gazed upon her when she danced, and when she napped beneath him he would came to her as he could only then. He began to burn just for her, always trying to reach down enough to touch her. He watched as a young man began to want her, and also when that desire brought about a curse. The sun tried to stop it, the day the curse came upon her, but even he, for all his love and strength, is just as trapped within his place in the sky as the girl was in her place on the ground. He could not find her on the day it was laid. She was lost among her people and her fears, and she was hurt deep inside, for she had decided that she and the sun could never really love. The next day, the sun knew that she did not walk the earth and began to cry for her. No one thought to tell her, but since the curse began, the sun has waned every day. The world grows grayer, and the nights grow longer, for the sun has lost his love.


"There is a difference between this story and the story that was told before," the fortune teller said. "This story holds the truth. When you leave this place, look up at the sky. There are many, many tiny lights in it now, glinting and far away. Those are the tears of the sun. They hang in the heavens, waiting to kiss the check of a young girl."

The fortune teller rose. "You must leave now." She said, "Sunrise is but an hour away, and there is blood on your dress."

The girl searched for something to say to the fortune teller, but sometimes words have no value, and so she left. There would not be time enough for her to make it back to the camp, but she would have to find a place to sleep along the way. Half way up the mountain, she began to grow weary. She moved away from the stream, and climbed through a thick tangle of branches where she found a place where the trees opened up again. She lay down in the grass curled deep into her cape, and slept.

In her dreams, blood spilled. She was walking the rest of the way up the mountain, under a sky now filled with the sun's tears. When she came to the camp, all her people were waiting for her, their backs all to a fire burning huge and blinding. In their eyes, she saw fear and anger. She was not welcome. Two of them grabbed her, and struggling, threw her into the fire. She did not, however, so much as feel the flames as she stood up and, her clothes and hair singed, climbed back out. Then, one by one, she killed them. When they all lay dead, she walked among the corpses as they slowly began to grow icy.

She woke suddenly the moment that the sun had set. She could not go back to the camp. If she did, she would find the dream to be true. She would kill those who had raised her. So she sat in the grass, knowing what her future now held. She had nowhere to live. She would wander now by night and hide by day, and how many more would she kill? Worse, far worse, though, was the loss of the sun. She was cold and alone, and already hungry again. And so she ran, ran before she could change her mind, up the mountain to the cliffs on the east side of it. She stopped just on the edge.

Below, she could see the water, and above she saw the stars, and then she jumped.

The sun saw her jump, and knew it was her fate. He watched her fall, and knew that the sky was his place and the earth was her's and that they were not meant to be. The sun knew this, and did not care. For that one time, he broke his bindings. The entire earth shifted with the weight of the imbalance he caused. Mountains shook and huge waves erupted, and entire pieces of land split apart. But the sun reached out and caught her, and that was all that mattered. For just a moment he held her, before the balances of the universe began to pull him back to where he belonged. Before he was forced back, he threw the girl and pushed her up far into the sky. With her, he sent some of his strength, so she might stay there. And so she hung in the night's sky, glowing among the sun's tears.

In Dragonwell, villagers now elderly, told stories to their grandchildren. They went like this.


There was a girl that was loved by the sun. She loved him too, but tried to kill herself when she found that they could never be. He stopped her from dying, though, and instead placed her in the sky. But though he saved her from death, it was still not meant to be, for still she sleeps while he is awake and flies through the sky in search of her. From his distance, the sun still cannot hold the moon, and so she still lives cold in the sky. That is why we have winter and summer, for the sun's realm now must be shared. During the moon's time, she comes close to the earth, her icy body freezing the world beneath her. Then the sun returns, burning for her, and dries up her tears.


After a time, those children grew in the village. They were too old for stories, and later told different ones to their children. Now that Dragonwell has a new name, the story of the sun and the moon is forgotten. No one knows why the world grows frozen for part of the year, or why the moon hangs cold in the night, or why the sun races through the sky while the world is bright. No one knows that the sun fell in love with a girl who did not even have a name. No one but you and I.