Gilded Ashes Chapter 87: When the Sun Darkened

The convoy had been moving for forty minutes. The road was packed earth under the tires, starting to dry from the storm.

Solomon had said nothing since the lifts. He sat in the center of the rear bench, hands folded, eyes forward. Whatever the Ukai Ruler had told him was still on his face - not in any expression Raizen could na, but in the absence of the composure that had been there before. The mask was back on. It just didn’t fit as well.

A Warden unfolded a table between the benches before they departed. On it sat a portable reader - a flat device, Neoshiman make, steel-cased with copper fittings and a small speaker grille. Beside it, a chip. A chip so old, the edges were worn smooth - one corner chipped, the surface discolored in patches where ti had eaten at the material. The Ukai’s ruler gave it to him with a dark look on his face. His only instructions were: "be careful, it almost didn’t survive the first reading."

Solomon looked at the chip. Then at the eight. Then he slowly picked it up, slotted it into the reader, and pressed the only button.

The speaker crackled. Hissed. Then a voice ca through – poorly recorded, a man’s low voice.

✦ ✦ ✦

Once, a very long ti ago, the Sun went dark. It was not night, and it was not a new kind of day. It was a black sun, like a shut eye in the sky. People lit small fires and stood close together. They spoke softly because loud voices sounded too big in the dark.

In the midst of that darkness, the Light Beings ca. They were shaped like people, but they shone from within, gentle and warm. Wherever they walked, the dark stepped back a little. They showed the people how to keep a steady fire, how to make lamps that did not bite the fingers, and how to smile even when you were afraid. They called themselves "⨅╎ᔑ⍑ᓭ"

The Light Beings made the Stars shine brighter - Tiny lanterns on very long strings, hung far away in the sky. Sotis, when the clouds were a tiny bit thinner, they pointed up and said, "There, there! Do you see?"

Life beca easier. Children learned new gas that needed only a little glow. Wounds disappeared where light shone. The people loved the Light Beings, and the Light Beings seed glad.

Ti passed. The people grew bold. They asked the Beings to shine on this house and not that house, on this path and not that path. They built foreign bodies, slots, containers... All for light, and tried to keep it for themselves. They tied strings to lamps and mocked the Moon with their songs.

So say the people tugged too hard and made darkness out of the light. Others say the light hid itself and is waiting. But one thing is certain: the stars were covered by a white blanket, never to be seen again.

✦ ✦ ✦

The reader clicked once and went silent.

Hikari’s lips were parted. Her hands were in her lap, one gripping the other, knuckles tight. She was staring at the reader as if it might say more. As if there might be one more sentence - one more word - that would finish it. There were none.

Lynea had her elbows on her knees and his head down. Her fingers were laced together behind her neck. She was thinking hard enough that the muscles in her jaw were working, teeth pressing together, releasing, then pressing again.

Arashi let out a quiet "woah" and then stood silent, which was so unusual that Feris looked at her instead of at the reader.

Keahi’s arms were folded across her chest. She hadn’t moved during the recording. "What else is on the chip?"

"Nothing" Solomon answered. "That’s the full content."

Raizen leaned forward. He slowly picked up the chip from where Solomon had set it on the table, and turned it over. The solder points were hand-done - rough, basic technique, the kind of joints you can make when you don’t have precision tools and you’re working with whatever tal is available. The chip housing was a soft tal over sothing denser inside. The data contacts were copper, tarnished green.

"How old is this?" he asked.

"We couldn’t date it" Solomon shook his head. "That’s one more reason why we’re taking it to Neoshima. The reader almost failed to translate the encoding, and the format predates anything Ukai has on record."

Raizen set the chip down. He could build a reader for this, if he had Saffi’s help with the encoding. The hardware was straightforward - copper contacts, standard disk format under the old encoding layer.

Solomon reached beside him and opened a hard leather case. Inside, between sheets of protective paper, were drawings. Drawings on hard, primitive paper that was visibly preserved in wood, still carrying that faint brown-ish tone. He set the case on the table and opened it so the group could see.

Graphite first. Semicircles drawn clumsily - so faint, so pressed too hard, the paper dented under the strokes. Rough marks around the edges. Attempts at sothing the artist had never seen firsthand, working from description or mory.

Then, in the middle of the graphite, pignt. A pale disc - not white, not yellow either, sothing between - with a shadow on one side that curved across its surface. And around it, scattered unevenly across the dark background, dozens of small points. So bright. So faint. So clustered together in groups. So alone. And threads of decolored light.

The moon, the stars... And sothing else.

Hikari leaned forward in her seat. She pressed her hand flat against her thigh.

"It’s beautiful" she whispered. Her voice was barely there.

Solomon shifted in his seat. "Three nights. The ruler told that for three nights, right on the "Firefly Festival", the clouds parted the tiniest bit, just enough for them to see the moon" he said, voice was rough, strained by exhaustion. "In Neoshima, we call it "the song". A yearly event on the date of the sumr solstice" He looked at the car’s ceiling as if he could see through it. "during that ti, for three days, multiple mysterious frequencies can be heard, long, beautiful sounds echoing from the horizon"

He paused. "And beautiful lights cross the sky in every color imaginable"

Raizen’s eyes widened, old mories resurfacing. From his village, two years ago – he was in the Underworks the days where it should have happened. He rembered waking up to a faint, low sound. It sounded like a dozen sounds overlapped in harmony, with a pattern that didn’t make sense. He rembered sneaking out from his small house into the night, to see the light threads in the sky - every color he ever imagined, intertwined with the clouds and each other.

Solomon was looking at the drawing. His face was still. "When the Sun was black..." he said. Slow. Working through it the way he worked through everything - thodically, pulling it apart. "I do not know what that ans, though. Light Beings ca? People pulled...? And then-"

Solomon sighed and closed the case. He set his hand flat on the table beside the reader. "Ukai made ten copies of the chip before we left" he said. "Each one goes with a separate escort, separate route. The original stays with us."

He looked at the eight. "If this story is true, it changes what we know about the sky, the light, and what ca before us. If it’s just a myth – which it probably is, in my opinion, it changes what we know about what people believed. Either way, it matters."

Arashi still hadn’t made a joke. He was looking at the drawing case leaning his face on his knuckle.

Keahi looked toward the window. Dark. Rain. Trees pressing close on both sides, branches scraping the roof. "What did the Ukai Ruler tell you?" she asked Solomon. Direct.

Solomon’s jaw tightened. One second. Two.

"That’s... Still too much to tell you. So things are still supposed to be confidential"

The car hit a root in the road and rocked on its suspension. The reader slid from the table. Raizen caught it and set it back, exhaling in relief.

Hikari leaned close to him. Her shoulder pressed against his arm. Her mouth was near his ear. Her breath was warm.

"Do you think we’ll ever see them?" she whispered. "The stars."

Raizen looked at the rain on the window. At the dark canopy pressing down above them. At the white sky that had been there every day of his life - every day of everyone’s life, for longer than anyone could count.

"I don’t know" he said. Honest. "But let’s hope they’re there."

Solomon was looking out the window. His reflection looked distorted - a boy in a white sash, thirteen years old, jaw still tight. He whispered to himself. "That’s the third fragnt we’ve found this decade..."