The Sun Slayer

This a story about a myth explaining a star being consumed by a black hole.

Num sat on top of her favorite rock taking a break from her foraging duties. She sat in a dimly lit field under a dying sun. The people of her village told tales of an age long pass, when the sun was a brilliant yellow giant that brought light and warmth to all. There was a demon that was slowly eating away at it until the day star would be destroyed. The elders said it was birthed from their god before he had killed knowledge. Num looked at the colossus and its parasite, and remembered the story that her mother would tell her when she couldn't, the story of how this world came to be, the story of how the sun was killed. It wasn’t a particularly comforting story, but there was something about the way she told that always calmed Num. She had gone into the forever sleep now, Num didn't have much left of her mother, but that story kept in her head. It brought her solace reciting it to her head. 

There was a world before Num’s, that the gods of reason had tamed with their great minds. Everything from the stars to the sea was under their control, nothing could stop them. They spent their time indulging in lavish parties and meaningless games. Living in great palaces of metal filled with servants of their own creation. They would make monsters for a war that would never come. Obsessed with competition, trying to prove who was the strongest, smartest, or simply the best. Knowing everything, able to do anything, yet damned themselves to a pointless life of consumption and pageantry. The knowledge did not make the world a better place instead corrupting every aspect of it. Their knowledge has ruined that world, and it must never take over this one. 

The people of Num’s village saw knowledge as an evil thing that should never be sought out. Always encouraging the children to learn only what was necessary for survival and love. Num never liked that idea, often she thought “knowledge isn't inherently bad, it depends on how you use it”. She never told anyone her opinion but her mother who seemed to share it. Num understood why people held that belief, she had seen firsthand how knowledge can ruin things. Her brother had made a knife to make foraging and eating easier for his people. Some of the other boys started to attack villagers and destroy things with it. They were all punished with exile. Except her brother was executed for the great sin of creation. Tools were evil and he had made a tool, that was the reason the elders gave. Num was always angry at their ruling, but she couldn't do much about it. She thought back to the story, and of its hero, the god that punished the others, the slayer of knowledge, the liberator: Hajum. 

He was said to be the wisest god of reason, but much maligned among his people. Hating the waste of the world he lived in, he often criticized the higher gods for not fixing the world. They didn’t see anything wrong with the society of decadence, everyone had all of the food they could eat, endless play, and seeing infinite wonders. Everything they wanted they had, always. The gods had never struggled once in their endless life, and Hajum thought there was something deeply wrong with that. He wasn't sure what power struggle and pain held, however he was determined to figure it out. Trying to answer his query, he went out into the stars and created a world and its people. The world was equally far from the utopia that Hajum hailed from but it wasn't a place of pure struggle either. There was enough food for every person but it was far away and hard to obtain. The landscape was beautiful, hard to traverse, and dangerous. It was a good balance of gifts and punishments. Hajum thought that a world of pain alone may be better to find the power of struggle but he did not have the heart to do it. The people were similarly mediocre, they were given the ability to learn but born knowing nothing. Having an endless capacity for hatred and compassion with a strong inclination to both. Beings perpetually hanging on the middle rung. 

Num had a moment of confusion when it came to the description of these creatures of contradiction. The elders always said that the people were a failed creation of Hajum and their name should be cursed. Her mother said that their people were descendants of his original work. That Num and all of her village were just as capable of being living paradoxes as the people from the myth. She remembered the next part of the story, the wonders of their struggle and all of the great things that came with it. She remembered the age before the fall, the age of invention, the age of cleverness, the age of art.

Hajum placed the new people in the middle of his world, a place that could survive with effort, and effort alone. He watched them for lifetimes, never interfering even when he wanted to, even when he needed to. They started by exploring the plains that they lived upon, gathering fruit, hunting beasts, doing what they could to survive. Then they discovered how to tame the wild plants and beasts, harness the great flame, and build the most basic of tools. From the little they had they made depictions of their simple lives. The people went on to master metal and machine, rivaling the gods in their cleverness. With every new invention came more ways to hurt their fellow people. They fought great wars, where everything from the people to the ground there walked on to the ideas in their head would die. The gods would fight but never actually kill each other, it was a foreign concept to Hajum. After the dust had settled and bodies were buried, something good came from all of the bad. The people learned for a time to be kind to each other, tasted death and stupidity and knew to spit it out. The tools were also used to help: to make food, to cure disease, to connect people. There was love and art and unfathomable wonderful things. All of it, the violence, the kindness, the invention, the expression was simply a result of the cacophony that was their being.

Num thought about something her mother said to her about stories. “You can tell a lot about someone by the one they tell a story.” Everyone else in the village would omit the good parts of the old people, or at least focus on the bad. Her mother would always make an effort to highlight the positives of their lives. Before the end, most of them were good, or at least trying to be. They were gone now, they sent themselves into the night, it took only one moment of arrogance and ignorance to end a world. 

The gods had the ability to destroy themselves but were far too filled with hubris to do it. Towards the end, Hajum’s creation had things to obliterate their world and its people. Hajum thought that they would never do it, but selfishness and stupidity gave birth to a monster undeserving of a name, a monster that was inside the hearts of them all, the monster that killed them. The people had divided themselves into large villages and they hated each other. They built deadly and deadly tools in an attempt to scare themselves out of killing. One day a few fools among them released a great weapon to the world, infecting everyone with a horrible plague. Hajum was heartbroken to see his creation kill itself, and saw the truth of knowledge in any amount that it will always end in horribleness. He resolved that he rid all of creation of it, and create a people free from its chains.

Num never liked that part of the story, her mother always focused on the people who activated the weapons and that everyone else were just victims. Her mother had died of a disease that had taken the lives of many villagers. Num was told to rejoice in the death of mother for she had been completely freed of her chains and was now with Hajum. The truth of things was that she was dead, and there was nothing that could make that untrue, and it was horrible, and nothing was going to make that untrue. She thought back to how her world came to be, how Hajum killed the gods, how he made a people free from knowledge. 

Hajum left his failure and went back to old gods of reasons. He created weapons that not only killed his fellow god but erased every record, killed every story, obliterated every symptom of knowledge. After his work was done and cleared the universe of sin, he rested. He looked at the creation he had ravaged, and weeped for no one was left to enjoy the wonders of creation. The gods couldn't see the beauty, they understood everything so they didn't bother trying to appreciate any of it. Given enough time the people that could see beauty ended up losing sight of it. Hajum decided he would make a world that was simple, a people free of knowledge, and unburdened by the weight of the ages. He placed an endless well of darkness inside of their star so they would always know their world wouldn't last long. So that they would focus on the current, the simple, and never strive for greatness. 

Num looked at the dying sun, she thought back to her brother and mother. Both killed without good reason, and nothing was brought of them being dead. This story that her mother would tell her brought her peace even after the storyteller was gone. Num never liked this story, most of it anyways, but she loved her mother and this was left of her. She knew that she would die soon, that no one would be left to love her. It was a terrifying thought, the death of everyone, their love, and their memory, everything. It had been with her so long, that it seemed default, just the way things are, normal. Perhaps she lived in spite of it, of death, and misery, and all of the bad things. Her mother had loved her and brought her joy, despite living with an illness most of life. Her brother tried to help a people that hated him and ruined his work. Both lived with knowledge that all of their work, love, ideas, and being would soon be nothing. They did the most they could with what they had, and Num wanted to follow in their footsteps.