Everything was pink, from the sky to the grass. If you went outside with a paper cone you could swirl the clouds onto it and taste their sweet candy sugar. The light of the setting sun behind these clouds warmed the soul, but chilled the skin, and pale forms basked in its bright, cool embrace. Though there was no wind, a whisper flitted through the air constantly as the people converged through the fields of tall grass, dyed lavender in the evening light. Beyond them there was not a tree unladen with draped, colourful swaths of fabric, their garb matched to that of those who dressed them.
Troughs marked the ground, formed like sketches, their lines deliberate but not certain in their ways. Tonight, finally these interlinked dug out patterns were complete, now filled with shadows for ink in. Every piece together made a web without any straight portions. Arches emerged from the centre of the pattern and swirled outwards, crossed at predictable intervals by widening circles which reached out so far that all citizens were required in order to encircle the edge of the grand sigil.
Every being present joined hands with the ones beside them along the patterned rutts. Held hands hoisted high, all joined in the sway to call down the sun into the bed they had woven for it in the earth.
The clouds dipped down like stretched gauze as the sun leaned in to the beckoning of the people down below. Once the wisps in the air were at their capacity their hold broke, and the righteous ball of light burst through, into the bull’s eye of the nest made by the people it gazed down upon for so long. A homecoming.
True night had been evaded, but darkness was still coming. The sun would sleep, tough not over the horizon as it always had before, it still needed rest, to douse down and have time where the only energy expended was on itself.
From an incredible expanse the sun lessened itself, exhaled its expectations. All that was golden rose petals of light and fire calmed into smooth obsidian surfaces, at odds with one another, and liquid at first… But as the entity eased further, its form too evened out. Soon, in the absolute centre of the scorched field, lay a perfectly ovular black stone. Its unmarred surface glistened with the light from stars pinned in the sky, no haze of light to outshine them any longer.
The slumbering sun began to move, to turn over as it dozed, and formed further from its simple shape into that of a child, skin still as black as the sudden night that had fallen with it. The people who had prepared the bed paced inwards, and two worked together to swaddle up the called down star.
The sun would no longer be expected to strain on its own for so many, would never be without love, would be able to rest for as long as it liked.
Congratulations to @snowelves for getting this prize, a blog-inspired story, as one of four winners in my patreon contest!
For more, follow me here or check out my patreon page. I write reader-influenced fiction!
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