When Darkness Comes
When Darkness Comes
To Witch We Shall Return: A Sun Hunter Story
Interlude.
When darkness comes, it rises like the morning sun. Pink in its center and burnt orange at its edges, its surface gushes and festers like the open wound of the dying fisherman. The locals call this fisherman Adil. Just last night, Adil was impaled through the stomach with a broken mast, its splintered shafts rupturing his liver, kidney, and spleen.
It’s unlikely he’ll ever feel the sun again.
Glasstone has served as the only healer on the gloomy coast of Mourning Star for over a decade now. She’s often asked if she’ll ever leave. She knows they’re not asking out of simple pleasantries or pure curiosity. They ask because they’re worried. They ask because they’re afraid. They ask because Glasstone holds their life in her hands, just as she holds the fisherman now. She can feel the warmth as it escapes him, his blood hot like the sun that kept him alive for so many joyous years at sea; on land; within the arms of his loved ones; in the bed he’s now dying on.
The Angel of Death works at a pace faster than Glasstone can replicate, each hour a minute, each minute a second. As the seconds pass, Glasstone knows; she’s known for a while now, even as she continues to work in vain to save the fisherman’s life.
Adil’s wife is watching. His children are crying. His mother is praying.
Glasstone knows, but she can’t stop now. She won’t give up on his life. “Hold on,” she pleads with him. “Just a little bit longer.”
She works until Adil’s very last breath.
When darkness comes, it lingers like the afternoon sun, the heat of its flames a scorching reminder of death’s nonchalance. For Glasstone, every encounter is an intense battle, a gruesome fight to keep the living alive. She stands on the frontlines of this war, clutching a clean sword and a shield caked with blood.
It takes three days to pick the fisherman’s blood out of her fingernails.
It takes a fortnight to wash the pink stains out of her clothes.
When darkness comes, it falls like the evening sun. It does not stay long, but the damage of its presence is everlasting.
It cannot be picked out. It cannot be washed away.
And what it takes can never be replaced.
