Dark Sun

"Why have you come?"
"You know why I'm here."

The first and elder of the two calmly looked over his visitor through half-lidded crimson blood eyes, his expression stern but curious. All in a moment's glance he took in the defensive stance, the firmly set jaw, the dangerous edge to his tone, and the hint of fiery rage locked within the younger umbreons burgundy gaze, barely contained and poorly hidden. Even more, he noticed the way the creatures coat was of the darkest of blacks like his very own, a blackness that did not seem to reflect the light so much as absorb it; trapped for lost eternity within the heart of a living shadow, broken only by rings of burnished gold. The difference was subtle, but the keeper of the skies knew them well within himself and saw them at once. He stared a moment longer in silence, unperturbed, and then turned abruptly and padded with a powerful sleek grace through the entrance, not looking back at the defiant creature as he spoke.

"Follow me."

The keeper of the skies set a quick pace down burnt and scorched corridors as the pair headed deep into the ruins, the younger struggling to keep up as he clambered over immense pieces of fallen ceiling while the elder lightly bounded catlike over the scattered rubble. They passed swiftly through abandoned labs that were littered and strewn with broken equipment and rusted machinery, pitted and shattered not through the work of endless time, no, though the forest had been quick to reclaim the land it had lost. Already leafy vines of a pale, fresh green and tangy scent twisted and twined and wound their way through the plaster and rocks, and saplings broke strong and true through the concrete foundation. A decade of abandonment, yet it held the mystic, untamed air of ancient ruins, of a wild power lost by countless centuries and haunted by the ghosts of knowledge.

A decade since explosions wracked the Cinnabar Observatory as the labratory built beside it was torn apart in unnatural fury, since the walls heaved and the last worker fled, never to walk those broken halls again.

The two then entered another room, claws clicking loudly on marble floors, and the newcomer's eyes softened in awe and wonder as he looked up at the great chamber's vaulting ceiling of reddish stone that arced high overhead, golden sunlight streaming through the system of cracks that ran through the rock and plaster like it was a skim of ice on a lake. The forest had moved in even swifter in this room, the crumbling walls merged with towering oaks and blanketed with ivy in the birth of an indoor jungle. Yet the young umbreon began to notice something odd as he trotted through the room, carefully sidestepping the warm rays of sun that lit up the drifting dust motes...something out of place among the cracked walls and green fern shoots.

Lights.

Not the brilliant wash of sunlight illuminating the room, but small, artifical lights-- florescent-- and the sheen of metal and the occasional red point glowing like a burning ember. Where in the other rooms all had been broken, this one held equipment that was strangely intact--makeshift handiwork, yes, but the clicks and whirs emanating from the depths told a different tale than the shattered screens and monitors that littered the outer ruins. The chamber hummed with working machinery, still on after all those years.

Someone had been rebuilding.

The elder reached the far side of the room and flicked an ear impatiently, then ran up a set of wiry, metal stairs that spiraled upwards tightly in a skeletal column of rust that breached the ceiling itself, and the young umbreon followed hurriedly, stumbling on the rattling steps. The newcomer slowed as they reached the top of the stairs, a small circular room above the roof--a dome, curved in a gray half-sphere. Light spilled from a broad rectangular opening in the dome onto a curious object in the center, a great vice painted white clutching an immense cylinder, and the dark sky-keeper climbed onto a cushioned office chair in front of it and finally turned his gaze back to his visitor, curling his tail about himself like a cat and sitting regally as one regarded the other, basking in the sun. The two stared at each other for a long moment in silence, the elder waiting patiently and calmly while the younger grew tense and anxious, waiting and wanting.

"Why?!" The young umbreon finally demanded challengingly, shattering the silence, his voice echoing about the dome seething with anger and hopeless fury--yet there was a hidden note of something else to it, a source buried within himself. "Why am I like this?! Why did this happen? This is not what I chose," he growled in a dangerous tone, pacing back and forth a few times before glaring back up at the umbreon perched upon the chair. "Why?"

"And why do you come to me for that answer?" The elder said, his crimson eyes again half-lidded calmly, his voice smooth and deceptively relaxed, though beneath that sleepy gaze his eyes were strangely intent. "I'm a researcher, not a fortune teller."

"Because they say you were changed the same way," he replied, voice cracking, staring at the ground in disgust. "Because they say you're a freak too."

The elder twitched unnoticably and frowned a moment, then sighed and closed his eyes in contemplation, still bathed in golden light. Finally, he spoke again, his tone changed. "When did it happen?"

"So it's true..." the younger said quietly, raising his eyes to look at the elder on the chair as the anger broke away, spent itself and flowed out into the ground like water, leaving him strangely tired. "You were born in the light."

"When?" The keeper of the skies replied intently, his expression unmoving. The younger sighed and lowered his eyes again, folding his black paws beneath him like a cat as he lay on the dusty floor.

"Winter Solstice," he began quietly in a trembling voice thick with restrained emotion, his gaze still locked to the ground. "It--it was my coming of age ceremony. The clans of my homeland, we always placed great importance on that, it was the mark of a new life--I spent years making my decision. I chose day." He paused a moment and shifted, burgundy eyes wistful. "I chose light, and life. The eevee clan rejoiced, and the espeon clan gathered with them on the solstice at the top of the hill beneath the midday sun to await their new brother. I climbed to the top and stood with them as they chanted, waiting in the sunlight...and I..I..well, just look at me!" he spat bitterly, clenching his teeth. "Darkness born of day, night born of sun. An Umbreon born at high noon. The crowd was stunned, and the espeon pack told me they couldn't teach me how to be what I was...they sent me to the umbreon clan at the edge of the forest in the caves, Luna-raiht. But they said they couldn't take me in either...didn't know how, didn't know what I was. But they were kinder..they gave me my name, at least. Sol. Umbreon of the sun. And they told me where I could find you."

He looked up suddenly, his eyes shining with tears. "The espeon clan, they--they told me the sun didn't want me... They said it rejected me, and that's why they had to cast me out. Because I was a freak." Sol finally broke down then, shaking and trembling with a desperate hopelessness and self-loathing. "Why? Why didn't the sun want me? Why did it turn away when I asked for light?"

The keeper of the skies stood up then calmly on the chair, his eyes gentle and sympathetic but shining with excitement. "Did it ever occur to you..." He began, a strange glimmer flashing in his eyes again as he held his dark head high and quirked his muzzle knowingly in a faint smile, "That, perhaps...the sun chose you..?"