What the - this isn't any of the fics I meant to be working on. Crud. I'll use the excuse that today is the first day of the lunar new year, and the moon is in this.
Title from the song "Venus" by Sleeping at Last, which I incidentally heard in a beautiful fanmix dedicated to DenNor. The astronomy nerd in me was pleased.
NEW: find this story on AO3 under the name snark_sniper!
When the world was formed, day and night had a much stronger division than we know today. The sun set with little color, and rose with equally little glamor.
Day owned the domain between the sun's rise and descent. Day was a bright, sunny man with golden hair and eyes as blue as the sunlit sky, and he encouraged the earth to grow plants and to warm itself. He wandered among the animals and played with them, and when the first people arose, he taught them how to use the plants he grew and was in turn given the name Mathias.
Mathias had a happy life, but one mystery. After hours of warmth and light, the sun would fall lower in the sky. Every day Mathias would try to watch the sun cross the horizon—maybe it shone underground?—but every day he would fall asleep, never to wake up until the sun came from the opposite side of the sky. He asked the birds what happened when he fell asleep, and they reported to him that they too slept after the sun set. He asked the mammals, who told him the same. Only the wolves told him of a mysterious darkness that settled over the land, and of the glowing moon to which they howled.
One day, after waking and seeing the crescent moon hanging to one side of the rising sun, Mathias decided to howl to the moon too.
"AHHH—ahem. Um. AWOOOOOOO!"
"What on earth are you doing?"
Mathias startled. A teenage boy lounged upon the crescent moon, his hair as pale as moonlight and his arms crossed over his chest. "Uh…" Mathias wavered. "The wolves told me this is how they talk to the moon."
"Yes, and I'm the moon. The wolves call me Emil. What do you want?"
Mathias bounced a little. Maybe this was his chance! "Do you know what happens every day when I fall asleep?"
"It's no longer day once you fall asleep," said Emil crossly. "Once the sun has set, Night comes."
"Who's Night?"
"He's my brother. He guides the stars and the winds, and he hunts with the wolves and keeps people safe in the darkness."
Mathias understood the part about the wolves and the winds, but he'd only seen darkness in caves. And he tended to avoid those. "So what are stars?"
Emil looked all about him in the sky. "Do you see the sun?" he asked, squinting in its direction somewhat distastefully.
"Sure! The sun's my favorite." And sure enough, Mathias felt at his best and his strongest the further up in the sky the sun was.
"Well, during your time, all of the light and the heat come from one sun. But when Night has control, the sky is dark, but there are very small suns, so small that you can barely see them, and they cover the sky."
Mathias's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. "So—so it must be even warmer at Night! Because of all the suns!"
Emil raised an eyebrow, and decided that he was done talking to Mathias. He was due to set, anyway.
Mathias became obsessed with learning more about his mysterious counterpart with a million suns. He tried to stay awake long enough to meet him. He tried eating the berries and drinking the leaves that humans said gave them energy enough to stay awake all night. It failed. He tried to spend more time with the wolves, to learn their secrets and match his sleep with theirs. It failed.
Finally, a human took pity on him. "We use this f're to keep warm," he said, handing Mathias a lit torch. Working with fire was the human's job—he used it to forge metal into new shapes. "But if ya spread it on more wood, it makes a bright blaze. Maybe ya just need light to st'y awake. Like ya wake with the sun."
Mathias spent three days assembling a pile of fallen branches for kindling, and surrounding the torch with stones so he wouldn't spread the flame. At the end of each day Mathias still fell asleep, but each time he fell asleep a little more slowly. He still didn't see the million suns in the sky, though, or his mysterious counterpart Night.
By the third day, Mathias's pile of spare wood was nearly half as tall as himself, and his fire filled the air with smoke. Mathias spent all day kindling the blaze, daring himself not to close his eyes as he watched the sun sink to the horizon.
It sank lower.
And lower.
And lower.
Until the last rays of sunlight shrank back to the horizon in retreat, and Mathias was left staring into the fire in an effort to replace the warmth and light that energized him so.
Night was much quieter than day, and whenever Mathias risked a glance at the sky or around him, he saw nothing, so dark were his surroundings. He saw nothing close to a million suns in the sky, and he certainly didn't feel their heat. Night was cold. Night was frightening.
Mathias was beginning to think maybe he was right to sleep with most of the other animals, when he heard shuffling and rustling behind him. Expecting it to be the wolves checking on his progress, he didn't turn around. When fur didn't brush his back, though, he glanced behind him.
In the shadows of the trees was a figure, slightly smaller than Mathias was when he stood. Mathias could see very little of the stranger, except dark eyes and pale skin.
"Put out that fire," the stranger said.
"I can't. I need it."
"For what?"
"To stay awake. To see Night."
"You can't see my realm with fire. Fire is noisy and bright. It has its uses, but it distracts from my true form."
"Well…can't you show me your true form in the light?"
"No. Can't you show me your true form in darkness?"
"Of course not! Darkness isn't warm, or bright, and it doesn't grow things! How could I?"
Mathias couldn't see it, but he swore the strange figure was looking at him in the same way Emil did, in that exasperated manner that indicated Mathias was understanding something a little too slowly.
"Are you Night?" Mathias asked, standing and now fully turning his back to his fire. He held his hands out to it behind his back, drawing strength from it to keep himself from succumbing to sleep.
The figure retreated further into the shadows. "Are you Day?"
"The humans call me Mathias."
"Lukas."
"Lukas," Mathias repeated. "What do you look like, Lukas?"
"Does it matter?"
"You can see me, but I can't see you!"
"I can't see you. You're surrounded by too much light."
"…Oh."
The two stood for a few moments, the fire crackling behind Mathias. The heat reminded him.
"Don't you have more suns than me?"
"What?" Lukas asked.
"I only have one sun. I thought if you had more than me, maybe it would be warmer here."
"Suns… Do you mean stars?"
"Right, yeah." That was the word Emil used.
"Your fire is too bright. You'll have to put it out to see them properly."
"If I put it out, I'll fall asleep!" Mathias could already feel himself drooping, as if he had run all day and his limbs were tied to bags of sand. He moved a little closer to his fire, drawing from its warmth and energy.
"Well, and which would you rather do? Stay awake until sunrise, or see the stars?"
Mathias didn't know. He had of course hoped for stars, but what was the point if he fell asleep the minute he could see them? He bit his lip, eyeing the shadowy figure in the woods.
After a few more moments of silence, the figure sighed. He then set foot outside the woods, into the clearing where Mathias's fire burned brightly.
Mathias drank in his image. Lukas's features were sharp and angular, and as pale as the moonlight Emil's moon emitted. His hair gently floated, whereas Mathias's nearly stood up on end. He was sturdy but lithe, with long, graceful limbs.
Mathias only wished he could see him in full daylight, to understand the color of his eyes. They appeared dark, but Mathias didn't think they were fully black.
"I can put out the fire," said Lukas. He never broke gaze with Mathias—assuming, of course, that Lukas could even see his eyes against the backlighting.
Mathias's curiosity—about Lukas's promises, about Lukas's features, about how Lukas planned to put out the fire, about Lukas—tightened its grip on Mathias until he felt like he would snap in half. "Alright," he said.
Lukas took a deep breath. He exhaled, and with it came a strong gust of wind that made the trees rattle and hiss. The fire sputtered, trailing along with the wind, before it diminished to embers.
Mathias and Lukas were left in darkness in the clearing.
Don't fall asleep, don't fall asleep, Mathias chanted to himself the minute he lost the heat of the fire at his back. He tried to keep himself awake by noticing things. The darkness, once chilling, felt gradually warmer until the air was simply cool. His eyes began to make out more shapes, helped greatly by the fact that Lukas hadn't moved and Mathias could concentrate on him. His hearing sharpened—he heard the somewhat reluctant, vaguely impressed "hmph" escape Lukas's lips as he continued to examine Mathias.
Without the fire, Mathias heard crickets and owls and the night breeze rustling the grasses around him. He heard distant laughter. The humans worked in his domain, but relaxed in Lukas's. He'd never known.
"Look up," came Lukas's soft voice.
Mathias craned his head back slowly, and his breath caught in his throat. He had seen pinpricks in the sky when he glanced from the fire to look around, but only one or two; his eyes could only see the brightest ones, and he had thought they were sparks. Now, though, the more he stared, the more tiny, tiny suns—stars—he could see, as if the sun shone behind an inky canvas. He didn't feel the stars' warmth, but instead the warmth came from within him—from wonder.
Just as he began to wonder if some of the stars made patterns or shapes, he collapsed into the grass.
Mathias woke slightly late the next day, and laid in the clearing. It was long before noon, so the sky directly above him was blue. Like his eyes, he'd been told.
Were Lukas's eyes the color of stars?
Now Mathias knew not to burn fires at night, because they frustrated Lukas and distracted from his beauty. He didn't know, however, what to do to stay awake longer. He lost himself in thinking about what to do now. He neglected the plants he once used his touch to grow. He played with the animals less often, and only to learn from the ones who stayed awake at night. The humans asked him what was wrong, but he didn't know what to tell them. He loved his domain, and the warmth and joy of living in it. But he knew now of another domain, one that was calm and cool and secretly beautiful. He ached to know it as well as he did his own. He felt that by having spoken to Lukas, he was already halfway there. But still so far from whole.
One day, when the moon was waning, Emil caught Mathias's attention.
"The humans are concerned," he said.
"Oh?" Mathias responded. He was lying in the field where he had first met Lukas, trying to sleep in the sunlight to prepare himself for night.
"Their crops aren't growing well enough. They work all day, but when it grows dark they worry they won't have enough to eat."
Mathias felt vaguely guilty. Still, he was making progress, he thought. Surely he'd figure it out soon. He said nothing.
"Lukas is worried too."
That got Mathias's attention. He bolted upright and sat in the meadow, staring at Emil's body resting in the crescent moon as if it were a sling holding him in the sky. "You talk to Lukas?"
Emil raised an eyebrow. "Of course. He's my brother."
"But—you talk to me too."
"I can, yes. I talk to you when I'm a crescent. I talk to him when I'm full."
"Full?"
"Like your sun."
"The last time you used the sun to describe something, I spent all night freezing cold because I thought you meant stars are warm."
"You were the one who assumed it. I just told you what they looked like."
Mathias nodded sadly. He was wrong about the stars—they weren't warm, and they were considerably smaller than he'd imagined—but he wanted to see them again. He wanted to know them, and ask Lukas questions about them. He wanted to show Lukas his own sun, to make him see how warmth and brightness weren't so bad, even if they were jarringly different from nighttime.
Emil watched Mathias's face fall. He sighed. "What if I told you I could have you two meet?"
"What?" Mathias startled. "But you're in the sky!"
"Still," said Emil.
"…Do you know how to stop me from sleeping?"
"I was thinking more that you could show Lukas your domain. He tells me you've already seen his. Good job hitting your head on the ground, by the way. He wouldn't stop talking about that for hours."
"Really?" Yes, Mathias's head hurt after his visit with Lukas. But Mathias beamed all the same at the thought of Lukas thinking about him, or even fretting about him (though he should probably apologize for the scare). "That'd be great! Just tell me what I have to do!"
"Just wait."
Mathias did. He waited all day, and the next day too. He ate berries from the nearby bushes and drank from the nearby stream, but otherwise he stayed in the same meadow. Every day, he saw Emil's moon grow smaller and smaller, thinner and thinner. He'd only noticed the moon in crescent form. Now he watched it shrink every day, until one day, he didn't see it at all.
On the day the moon disappeared, Emil came to join Mathias in the meadow.
"Emil!" Mathias cried, bounding across the field. He stopped to take in Emil, who was shorter than he'd anticipated. He gave Emil a hug, at which Emil squawked and wriggled. "Why don't you visit every time your moon disappears?"
"It's a new moon, you idiot, and I have other things to do."
"Ah. Right." Mathias let Emil go. "So…where's Lukas?"
"Ah. Not this time. You're not done waiting yet."
Mathias frowned. "Not this time?"
"Not this time. I want you to make a deal with me, because I'm tired of hearing the humans mutter and Lukas fret. I want you to help the humans grow their food again. But, every time I become a new moon, you can spend one day in this meadow. And one day I'll bring Lukas here."
"But—but which day?"
"Soon."
Mathias agreed. He spent his time as he always did before hearing of Night, tending to crops and growing wild berries and spending the day with animals and humans alike. He lived in his domain and relearned how to love everything about it. But every twenty-eighth day, his smile grew a little anxious, a little desperate, and he spent that day in the meadow. Sometimes Emil came to visit. Sometimes he didn't. Lukas never did.
Mathias continued this cycle dozens of times, living as much by Emil's time now as Emil did. He learned to attune his growing patterns to Emil's, to bring out the best taste in each food. He learned to count the changes of the sun by Emil's cycles, and the humans he worked with learned it too. They began to encourage him on the days he disappeared to the meadow, and to play music and feed him food and burn fires long past sunset, in the hope that Lukas would venture close to their party, that Mathias would catch a glimpse of Night.
By the thirty-seventh cycle since his and Emil's agreement, Mathias was partially convinced that Lukas was a story he told himself. He would have given up if Emil didn't visit seemingly every time Mathias was about to stop coming, telling him, "Wait, because Lukas is waiting too."
Mathias settled himself on the ground of the clearing. Emil's moon was new again—Mathias never did figure out why it had that label, "new"—and he could barely see its shape in the sky. He watched it inch closer to the sun, until he had to avert his eyes or go blind.
The air around him grew cooler. The animals quieted. Something about this time, this moon, wasn't right.
Mathias still couldn't look at the sun, but now desperately wished that he could. He knew something was wrong, something was going on—
Was this what he'd been waiting for?
Mathias sat still, listening to nature fall quiet and then slowly work itself into a frenzy. The chill at high noon surprised him most. If Mathias looked slightly away from the sun, he thought he could see wisps of light licking out from the side of the shadow, like flames escaping a furnace.
Emil appeared as the sun was nearly blackened. He carried something over his shoulder, staggering slightly under its weight.
"Emil?" Mathias cried. He rushed to help Emil with his load. His very familiar load.
Mathias had just taken Lukas in his arms.
"He sleeps in a cave nearby," explained Emil, panting a little. Emil was strong, but Lukas was heavy and limp with sleep. And stirring. "He wakes when the sun is gone."
Mathias looked upwards. The sun was almost covered.
"It's an eclipse," said Emil. "My moon is blocking out the sun."
"But…if the sun is blocked, what does that mean for me?" said Mathias.
"Nothing permanent," Emil said curtly. Lukas began to shift in Mathias's arms.
"It doesn't last long," said Emil, taking a step backward, slowly retreating into the woods. "Enjoy it."
Mathias was about to ask exactly how long he had, when Lukas wriggled in his arms, demanding to be let down. Mathias obliged. Apparently his time started now.
And just in time—the moon fully eclipsed the sun.
"What—I—" Lukas held a hand to his head, looking around. "I've…never seen these colors." He peered at the trees surrounding them and the grass beneath them, as if marveling that the two could have such distinct shades of green. To Mathias it looked like dusk, but Lukas had probably never had so much light in the sky to illuminate the earth.
"Darkness isn't really good for color," Mathias said, placing a hand at the back of his neck. "Other beautiful things, yes, but not…color."
Lukas looked up at Mathias, and Mathias's heart leaped into his throat. Lukas's eyes weren't the color of stars—they were the color of dusk. They were blue, like his, but darker and deeper. Mathias saw stars only in the glint in his eyes as he examined Mathias. But it was enough.
"That"—Lukas indicated, looking behind Mathias after a few moments—"is your sun?"
"I…yeah," Mathias said, turning to stare in its direction. He still couldn't stare at it directly without seeing spots or feeling like his eyes were burning.
"It's warm. Not like fire, though. The heat spreads."
"You should feel it when it's not blocked," Mathias said with a smile.
"Is it so painful to look at all the time?"
"Oh—yeah, don't look at it! Just…I don't know. It's not about looking up, it's about doing things with the light you have."
Lukas shook his head. "That sounds like so much effort."
"Maybe. But it's what I do."
"I can tell." Lukas looked at Mathias as he said this, looking like he was pondering something. Mathias took the moment to examine Lukas, taking him in in probably the brightest light he was going to get. Lukas was sharp and cold and quiet, and he had stars in his eyes when he looked at Mathias.
Mathias leaned down and kissed him.
When they broke apart, Lukas kept his face close to Mathias's, running his lips over his jaw and across his cheek. Mathias's eyelids fluttered closed, and for that, his hearing sharpened enough to hear Lukas whisper, "We can't wait for the next eclipse."
"When is the next one?" he murmured.
"To happen in the same place, it can take decades."
Mathias's gut clenched at that. Decades before he could taste Lukas's lips again and breathe in his scent of pine and mountain wind.
"I could stay up late again," he offered. "I could light a bonfire."
"You could set the whole forest on fire," Lukas scolded. "And how could I return the favor? What dark places are there for me to hide? I've tried the caves—they work until I reach the entrance and see the sunlight, and collapse asleep."
Mathias couldn't help but be slightly pleased that Lukas tried to visit him. He smiled, and laughed a little, and his breath against Lukas's forehead made Lukas sigh.
"Is there a place we can meet halfway?" Mathias asked.
"When our domains meet?"
"When the sun rises?"
"Or when it sets." Lukas pulled away, looking at Mathias with newfound, if somewhat sleepy, determination. From both Lukas's fatigue and the knowledge in his own bones, Mathias sensed that the sun would free itself from the eclipse soon.
"I'll meet you right here," Mathias promised.
Lukas nodded. He leaned against Mathias. And as the first rays of sunlight burst free from behind the moon, Lukas collapsed into Mathias's arms, asleep once more.
Emil emerged from the woods a few minutes later, looking a little stronger than usual. Mathias wondered if Emil and his moon had absorbed some power from the sun, but didn't care enough to ask. Emil offered to show Mathias where Lukas usually liked to spend the day asleep, but Mathias declined. They had a plan.
Mathias waited until sunset, sitting beside Lukas's sleeping body under a tree. The animals and the humans slowly returned to their routines, a little shaken by the day's events but ready to forget. Mathias, however, was thrumming with excited energy. He wondered if this could work.
At sunset, he felt fatigue crawl over him. Nearly simultaneously, Lukas stirred. Mathias leaned himself beside Lukas against the trunk of the tree, lazily watching Lukas's eyes open and blink.
"'S'not the caves," Mathias murmured as Lukas turned to him, "but we can renegot'ate that part."
"It's fine," Lukas said, sitting up and stretching. "Perfect, actually. We can see the sun from here."
Indeed, the sun set to their right, lighting the clearing with its last rays.
"Thank you," Lukas said, kissing Mathias's cheek.
Their first kiss, under the eclipse, had been so sudden and desperate for time that neither had thought to be embarrassed. This time, however, the gesture was sweet. As if a thousand more just like them had taken place, and would happen again.
Mathias blushed.
So did the sky.
Lukas's breath caught in what almost sounded like a laugh as he looked at his surroundings. It was the last thing Mathias heard before he fell asleep.
He awoke hours later, to Lukas settling down next to him on the tree. Lukas smelled like foliage and hints of smoke, as if he'd traveled wide that night. The way he slumped against the tree indicated his fatigue. The transition of the sky from black to dark blue reflected his eyes.
"Long night?" Mathias asked, straightening his back and stretching.
"The humans wanted t' know what happened," Lukas said. "And I had t' thank Emil."
"He's pretty great, yeah," said Mathias, grinning. Not about to miss the opportunity that was a tired Lukas, he leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.
As Lukas blushed—apparently the shock of kisses was mutual—the horizon turned rosy. Mathias rarely woke early enough to see the sun rise, but it was usually somewhat of a mundane affair. The sky was black, and then it was blue. But with Lukas's blush, reds and oranges painted the sky, and the clouds glowed golden.
Mathias turned to show Lukas, but Lukas was already asleep.
Oh well, he thought, pressing another kiss to Lukas's forehead as he sat up. He would have tomorrow to kiss him and see if the sky blushed again.
The next day he tried it, and the next, and the next. Every time, Lukas blushed at his kiss. Every time, the sky exploded with the same color. And every night, as the sun disappeared and Lukas returned the kiss he'd received that morning, Mathias's blush painted the sky.
"What lies are you feeding into his head now?"
Norway raised an eyebrow at Denmark as he gently lifted a sleeping Iceland from Denmark's side. Denmark smiled sheepishly.
"Nothin', I promise."
"I heard all that. Sky gods—you're getting desperate."
"What? He asked why sunsets are red."
"I'm sure there's a better explanation than that. Idiot brother."
Norway examined his own little brother, and Denmark knew from experience that his stoic gaze was a fond one. Iceland was much younger than the teenager Denmark had portrayed in his impromptu tale, and neither Denmark nor Norway could imagine toddler Iceland growing big enough to carry one of his brothers. Still, Iceland's sleepy eyes had lit up to hear he was helping in this story, and Denmark had pressed on with the tale.
Norway set Iceland asleep on his own pile of blankets in the tent. "And I don't blush."
"What? Sure ya do."
"You do."
"And you." Denmark stood to prove it, his Viking helmet clanking on the ground as he accidentally kicked it with a boot. Iceland stirred in his sleep, and Norway glared at Denmark.
Denmark shrugged, but still winked at Norway, silently promising proof in the morning. Norway rolled his eyes and turned away to prepare his own sleeping space, clearing away tokens and trinkets from their latest raid, which he had sorted as Denmark told Iceland his bedtime story.
Denmark wasn't sure because of the darkness of their tent, but he really, really hoped he saw a tiny blush across Norway's cheeks.
Americans: did you know that there's a total solar eclipse coming up? August 21, 2017, stretching from the Oregon to the South Carolina coasts and all the way across the US mainland. For more information: www . eclipse2017 2017 / path_through_the_US . htm
(Get eclipse glasses - Mathias was just being an idiot, looking up and seeing the corona. Don't do that. That's bad.)