#### Author's Note:

A very short story written as an extension of the following three line prose.

> *"However dark, the night above stands alone, only lit by a soft glow.
> All alone, he himself fights on, casting his light on the stark quiet ground below.
> A sad sight to see, for a moon to shed its light on an otherwise empty valley."*

## Darkness Falls, and the Sun Remains.

Plotting its ascent, the sun readies itself. Shrouded by high-peaked mountains that loom along the horizon line, the grassland is blackened by his absence. Blind as they may be, the plains refuse to silence themselves. They rumble and roar, a cacophony of the living and dying, each taking its turn to speak on the matter at hand.

The flighted animals sing as if announcing the impending battle. They are the most recent to join their voices to the conversation. Most simply hum along as they toil, doing life as they have for however long.

In the time since he last fell, the sun has nursed his wounds, honed his blade, and licked his lips nearly raw, eager for their next battle to be his final. For so long as he has cared to think back, he had been at war. Nothing, in all of the times he's been bested, has ached so bad as his soul in its want for peace.

Had he laid in wait for any longer, the ache he felt would have grown too strong for him to overcome. After steeling himself for the battle at hand, he lunges from where he'd hid, and silence falls on the land as the clouds part for his granduer. His sanity saved by his quick action, he stops to asses the damage.

The sun had cleaved its way through the sky, cutting the night deeply and shearing its path high above the treeline. Dark begins to fade and those in favor of the night's rule quickly make themselves scarce.

His servants flood out from every part of the land. Their movements tracking like new tributaries forming from the fork of a river -- they raise their voices unendingly to his triumph.

A delicate balance that lasted a lifetime was quelled by the quick vengeance of the sun. And as the sky becomes marred with the crimson blood of dark's failure -- the voices across the land begin to boom.

Their shouts of triumph turning to shouts of torment, and before the sun can blink, empty silence fills the grasslands.

He watches the plains he had once carefully defended as they become engulfed in flame. In the next breath, are rendered barren, and in the third, he watches as they bake until their earth splits as crevaces form along its length.

He watches through eyes that have seen life come and go as life itself is wiped from all he's known. He watches in this way until he can make peace with his actions. He watches with the sight of the lively valley burned into his mind, superimposed against what truly lies before him.

And after a time, he feels the arrival of something he has long expected to fae. His turmoil is put to rest by his person shining any brighter than it had before, and leaving in its wake only the dark to care for the place he had once loved.

As the plains cool, darkness takes hold again of this land. It too waits. In its infinite patience, it waits for another star to come along and bring with it life giving light, so that the dance can continue. The night -- knowing it will dance again -- rests comfortably.