Word count: 1,617
As soon as the sun started to go dark, Birch dove back into the den. Surprisingly enough, both Scanlan and Stellar followed as well, with Mr. Snippy bringing up the rear. The four of them huddled in the cozy space, with Scanlan and Stellar peeking out. After a few minutes, Stellar ducked back in, going and laying down pressed to Birch’s side. “Hey, it’ll be okay…”
Ears back, the pale nymph glanced at his friend. “A-are you sure? It’s so dark out there… Like the sun got eaten!” He shifted, looking at the other nymph with panic in his eyes. “What if the sun doesn’t come back?! What if it’s gone forever?!”
Stellar’s own ears went back before he rested his chin on Birch’s back. “I… I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?” They’d find it out together, as friends. Only time would tell, really, what would happen. Or maybe the sun would come back out.
They both looked over as Scanlan returned, his ears going to and fro. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the sun vanishing like this before. It’s…” The pixie took a deep breath, then let it out. “Think we can make it to the Flock?” He looked at Stellar, who he knew liked to hang around the tall herd. Even had a daughter there, which kind of impressed Scanlan.
The purple nymph shook his head. “No, I don’t think we should brave this. It’s too dark, and…” He looked at Birch. “I’m gonna side with Birch in this one, in staying put. Then at least if it doesn’t improve, we’ll be somewhere we feel safe.”
Scanlan let out a sigh, then went over and tucked in on the other side of Birch, forming a sandwich of comfort. “Okay, okay… We’ll stay here.” His ears twitched, thinking. Who knew how long the sun would be gone? What were they going to do in that time? The wings on his tail twitched as he thought, unwittingly brushing against Birch.
His own tail twitching, Birch looked up at Scanlan. “You’re… You’re thinking… What are you thinking about?” When he’d first met the pixie, the brush of the tail wings had been as alarming as anything to the skittish nymph. Now, he found comfort in it, knowing it meant Scanlan’s mind was working on something. He felt the comforting scratch of Stellar’s antlers, too, against his back, helping calm his nerves.
The green pixie blinked, even his head wings fluttering a bit, caught out in his thoughts. “Ah, just… Thinking of what we can do while we wait to see.” He paused, tilting his head. “The good news is, whatever it is it’s not deadly. We’re not dead yet.”
On the other side of Birch, Stellar snorted, lifting his head. “Would we even know if we were dead?”
The question gave the pixie pause. “I suppose not. But I can still feel my heartbeat, I’m still breathing, and I don’t feel pain besides where I’ve managed to lay on a stone. And I don’t think I’d smell Snippy if we were dead.”
The goat gave a displeased little bleat, turning and glaring at Scanlan. “I don’t smell that bad! No worse than the three of you!”
It was hard to see in the dark, but Scanlan still gave the goat an amused look. “I didn’t say the smell was bad, just that I wouldn’t be able to smell you if we were dead.”
Mr. Snippy huffed, then settled back down, tail twitching in some irritation at the pixie but otherwise remained quiet once again.
The group lapsed into some silence. After a while, Stellar asked, “So nobody’s ever heard of this before?”
In the dark, Birch gave him a bit of a look. “Do I really look like I would have…?”
Stellar was quiet for a moment, before he turned and grabbed his braid, tossing it onto Birch’s head as best he could. “I mean, you kind of didn’t just come out of a basket afraid of everything, you had to learn that. So I figured, whoever taught you to be afraid of everything also told you stories…”
“Oh…” Birch shifted some, tail twitching and ears shifting forward for a moment before they went back again. “There were stories, I guess… Passed down across generations. The elders called it the day of night.”
Head and tail wings twitching again, Scanlan tilted his head, listening to Birch. “Day of night… Yeah, that’s a pretty accurate description.” His gaze went to the entrance to their little den, at the darkness beyond. It was so quiet out there, like everything was waiting. For what, nobody knew. “What did they say about this… Day of night?”
A thoughtful look passed across Birch’s face as he thought back on it. “A lot of the anecdotes called it an omen. Some said it was a sign of the end times.” Of course, here they were, so the end times hadn’t happened. Birch leaned a bit into Stellar. “What about you…?”
Mindful of his antlers, Stellar shook his head. “Nope, never heard anything about this. My family’s never really shared stories about the past.” Or at all, now that he thought about it. It made him realize his foalhood had been filled with a dearth of entertainment besides what he could find for himself. The antlered nymph leaned a bit, looking in Scanlan’s direction. “Okay what about your family? Any stories from them?”
Scanlan was quiet for what felt like forever. The two nymphs started to wonder if he was simply refusing to answer, before he said, “We grew up with all kinds of stories about every time this happened.” At the curious sounds, he smiled just a bit. “Yeah, I said every time. Sometimes it only lasted a few minutes, sometimes ages… There was rumor that one, uh… Day of night... Had lasted from just after sunrise to just before sunset. So it was literally a day of night. You could see the stars clearer than the actual night, they said… It was eerie.”
Shifting, the pixie stared up at the ceiling of their little den. “On days like that, I was told, a big fire would be lit if it lasted longer than a few minutes. There would be dancing and chanting to bring the sun back, a ritual to save the world from certain doom. And it worked! They sang their songs and the sun came back!”
When he finished talking, there was silence. Finally, Birch shifted, resting his head on Mr. Snippy’s back. “I don’t think we’re gonna be making a big fire and dancing around it.” His nose wrinkled. “The smoke might get in our lungs and poison us!”
Stellar snorted, tail wagging some in amusement. “We won’t get poisoned by the fire unless we put something in it!” He paused, tail stopping. “Though the smoke is still a concern, I’ll give you that.” And he really didn’t want to try and gather sticks and branches for a big fire when it was so dark out. It wasn’t safe! What if one of them stepped on a venomous snake, or didn’t see a slope until it was too late?
Oh, he was starting to sound in his head like Birch, wasn’t he?
On the other side of Birch, Scanlan let out a laugh. “Oh I’m not suggesting we do that at all!” He shook his head, both his head and tail wings fluttering in the dark. “I’d like to not get any of my wings caught in any branches or anything, and it’s not like we can see what we’re doing. I think the main reason they were able to do it in ages past is because they were parts of bigger herds and kept all the fixings to make a big fire near by. So they didn’t have to go searching for it all and could just pile it up and light it.” Which made sense. And actually wasn’t a bad idea, they should probably do that if the sun came back.
Stellar nodded, then hummed. “I wonder what caused the sun to vanish… Did something eat it?”
Birch’s ears lifted as he thought about it. “No, maybe a witch cast a spell… They’re very tricky like that, you know. All about rituals and stuff… It’s best to not get on their bad side, because if they can put out the sun, then what can they do to your insides?” A shiver ran up his spine, causing the fur to stand up. “I don’t want my insides to be my outsides...”
The pixie made a face, absolutely aghast. “I don’t think I want to think about ANY of that.” Looking past his friends to the entryway, Scanlan’s ears went back for a moment. “I don’t have any ideas on what happened to the sun or why. I just know I don’t like it.” It made him almost as paranoid as Birch could get. “We should do something to wait it out. Besides, you know… Talking about it.”
Suddenly Mr. Snippy shifted, startling all three. “You could shut your gobs and take a nap! It’s what I’M trying to do!”
Even in the dark, the pixie and nymphs managed to share a look. Finally Birch said, “You know what, that sounds like a good idea.” He settled down, using the goat as a pillow and relaxed as he felt Scanlan’s head resting across his neck and felt Stellar shift so his own head could rest across the pale nymph’s back. With the closeness as a comfort and forming a cozy blanket, it didn’t take long for them tall to slip into a good little nap.