Shards and Feathers

Chase the Sun

She ran. The light played around her as she flitted beneath the canopy of branches. A cotton tree shed its fluff to the wind and the birds sang out in joy for the sun. The world was bright and soft, the ethereal color drifting through the little girl's tangible soul. She continued to run through the white essence, frolicking and playing in the streams as she passed them, slowing occasionally to smell the blossoms in the wind.

She pranced with a lighthearted gait, her steps like clouds upon the earth. But the air became colder, and the sunlight faded a little from the land. The world became dim to her bright eyes. She frowned, not because she was frightened, but because she didn't understand. Though often within ignorance are the roots of fear itself.

The world grew dark and less inviting. The trees closed in around her, their dark canopy above writhing and whispering in the sharp breeze. The light had almost faded entirely now, only the splintered gleam in the distance was left. But even that was changing from its warm orange glow to a cold blue light. The ground felt unfamiliar beneath her feet, but she kept going. She ran with sheer determination now. Just keep going. Just keep going and nothing will be able to catch you. Nothing.

The darkness grew thicker as she ran towards the fading light, hoping to catch it before it faded forever. But she continued to fall behind. She wasn't fast enough for the sun. The fairy lights that came during the day to dance in the air had hidden away from the creeping darkness of the coming night. The warm breeze had cooled into the stinging frozen wind whipping against her face as she ran. Her eyes stayed on that light.

As she ran the trees began to change. They became shadowing silhouettes and deformed shells of what they were before. She was running into an area of the world where she had never been, for she had never found it needful to run there. The sun had always been her companion, until it began to run faster than her into the unknown land.

Her legs, normally so resilient in the light, began to tire. And as she slowed she looked around, noticing for the first time the stars in the dark night sky. She had never seen the stars before, but they were a source of some light in the new darkness of her world.

She didn't let her heart think. She knew it was dark, and that meant danger, or so her mind said. She knew she should stop, for she was tired, but she wouldn't. She felt that if she stopped, the fear and the shadows would catch up to her. She had to keep moving towards the light, or she'd lose it forever.

She wouldn't be able to live like that.

The ground was unfamiliar beneath her feet, and the trees began to come closer and closer, their movement in the wind becoming more a whistle than a whisper. The world had become an eerie constant of sound and shadow overwhelming the vision of the blue light in the horizon.

The girl stumbled through the darkness, keeping her legs moving though she could no longer feel their movement underneath her. She cried though she didn't know it, the wind drying her tears before they could come fully formed from her eyes.

The light had become now only a flicker of distant glow, that may have only been her imagination, when she broke through.

For once in her life, the girl ceased to run. The wind became no more than a cool gentle breeze as she looked out over the wasteland that was the darkness. The light she had thought she had seen was gone, no more than a memory. The sight before her was an ugly scar across the shadeland of the unknown world, a chasm of infinite length and impossible width. She could see by the light of the stars only the faded gray shape of the mountain on the other side, clouded also by a fog meant to ride the skies alone.

How had the sun ever crossed this wretched land?

She searched, her eyes delving into every essence of every shadow, trying to decipher any hint of light or gleam from the soul of the land. Seeking hope for the future she wasn't certain was hers.