I Was Sent to Wake Up the Sun

“I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

She stared at the figure that stood at the entrance to the temple of obsidian stone. They were hooded in long robes of black, their pale wrinkled face watching her with pinprick eyes that did not see.

The temple itself was a rectangular mass of unshadowed black, the pillars and carvings all bleeding together like spilled ink; it spun her eyes to look too closely. Iridescent cracks veined through the obsidian, shimmering in a light she couldn’t find.

The guard pointed a long bladed staff at her. “And how do you intend to do that?”

Her voice halted in her throat. She…didn’t know. They didn’t tell her how to do it. They didn’t tell her what to say if someone asked.

The unseeing person shook their head at her silence. “Come back when you know, little ember.”

They raised their staff and swung it through the air, and before she could cry out, her head fell from her shoulders.

***

“I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

She’d woken with an irritating headache. The bones in her neck had crawled back to each other and the severed skin had mended. The hard ground was unforgiving on her skull. She rolled over with a groan and cursed the blind person who had decapitated her.

There wasn’t much light in this place where They’d sent her. She’d expected quite the opposite, given her objective, but she supposed that since the Sun needed waking, perhaps there shouldn’t be any light at all. She tried to shake her head and it screamed at her. She didn’t know; it wasn’t her job to know. It was only her job to wake it.

But it seemed she didn’t know how to do that either.

It had been a long walk back to the temple of obsidian from where she’d woken. The ground beneath her feet was uneven and cracked, and very cold, though no discomfort to her. Her feet were bare but she wasn’t built to wither.

This time as she approached, it was not a columned, rectangular, subtractive block of black stone that she came upon. It had adopted the shape of a tall narrow mountain, the rock unpolished but for carved obsidian vines wrapping around it like eerie, stretched out arms. And there again, before the mountain stood a hooded figure, though they stood straighter than the one before.

They turned to look at her and their eyes were clear and seeing; their face was lined and weathered, but not weighed. They stood tall.

“I was sent to wake up the Sun,” she repeated.

The new person looked her up and down. “Sent by who?”

“Them,” she said promptly. “I was sent by Them.”

“Who are They?” the guard asked.

“I -” she stopped.

She didn’t know.

“Come back when you know, little flame,” said the guard. She didn’t even see the sword they slit her throat with.

***

“I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

Rising from a killed body was no pleasant feat. She pushed herself up from the bare ground and felt that her bones had sunk into the patterns of the rock, which was not fun to correct. The obsidian temple was a smaller inkdrop in the distance than it had been before. The walk back had caught the heel of her foot on a sharp stone.

She looked at the red scratch in the bottom of her foot. She marveled; her head swam. What was this? What was this…weakness?

The temple of obsidian stone had changed again, no longer a rough pillar spearing the boundless sky. Now it stood as a singular archway, carved to appear as many thick black vines woven together. They separated and spread like roots of a tree where each end met the ground.

The person guarding it looked ever younger: their face unlined but not soft, sharp flinty eyes, set shoulders. Their hood cast a shadow over their face.

“Were you, now?” They tilted their head.

She looked between their eyes. “Yes. I was.”

“Are you a messenger?” they asked.

Her brows drew together. “No.”

“But you were sent,” they pointed out. “Are you often sent?”

“I am,” she said. “I have been sent many places.”

“How many?”

“I -” she stopped.

They tilted their head the other way. “Which places?”

She had no answer.

“Come back when you know, little flare.” Their face was blocked by a metal hole and she was shot in the forehead.

***

“I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

How many times was she supposed to do this? They didn’t tell her it would be such an arduous task, waking the Sun. She’d had her own assumptions, but none of them included…whatever this was.

Her entire head hurt. Subtle aches rolled through her skull in waves; the reverberations of the bullet still rattled. She’d woken as her head was mending itself after pushing out the foreign object; she dully remembered the clink as it fell to the ground. It was a good thing They’d built her the way They did.

Who are They?

The question echoed in her mind in the trail of the aches. She tried to let it go; she tried to let the words dissolve into the past where the murdered versions of her resided. She didn’t question Them, and she didn’t question why. She only knew what They’d told her, and unfortunately, They hadn’t told her enough.

She’d made her way back to the temple on a slight limp, a strangely distinct feeling across her skin of scratches and scrapes. The roughed skin filtered the air like the bristles of a paintbrush, running fine cold lines of wind across the small wounds. She felt slightly sick.

The temple had evolved into the twisted shape of a leafless tree, ebony branches reaching out like they sought to poke holes in the ether. The opalescent seams of the obsidian curled among the imitation bark like a cosmic virus.

Guarding the tree-temple now was an adolescent, their eyes half-closed and their mouth in a resting frown, as if they were just as sick of this game as she was. Their hood was pooled upon their shoulders, revealing long white hair braided along their scalp, half their head shorn close to the skull. They raised an eyebrow.

“You were sent?” they said.

This did not bother her: she no longer felt like the acclaimed soldier sent on an honorable mission. She approached the guard on unsteady feet.

“I was,” she said.

“Who are you?” they asked in a way that implied they didn’t really care, but that she should.

“Who am I?” she echoed. “I am the One They Sent.”

The guard gave her a dissecting look. “Is that all?”

She stopped. Was…was she supposed to be more?

“Yes,” they said. “You were, little blaze.”

In a flash of black-gloved hands, they broke her neck.

***

“I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

Her voice was rough and whistled a little in her throat. She coughed and rolled her shoulders. This was getting old. She would be very angry if she wasn’t so tired, or confused.

How do you intend to do that? the first one had asked.

Shake its shoulders? Douse it in cold water? Slap it in the face? Whatever it took, They’d said, but They didn’t say what it would take.

Sent by who? the second one had asked.

Them. They. They Who Had Sent Her. Was there supposed to be more of an answer than that?

She knew that question would eat away at her the most. So she didn’t think about it.

Are you a messenger? the third one had asked. She’d said no. But she had been sent. Isn’t that what messengers do?

She wasn’t a messenger, she knew. But what was she, then?

Who are you? the fourth one had asked.

She’d woken to the sound of voices, so many voices she couldn’t count them, all calling, lamenting, crying. They spoke different words, but she somehow knew what they were all asking for. They were asking her to wake up the Sun.

I’m trying, she beseeched silently. I’m trying.

“You were sent to wake up the Sun?”

A child stood before her, perhaps twelve years old, looking up at her with wide eyes. When they tilted their head back the hood fell from their loose pale hair. There was an awed smile on their face.

This was perhaps the first of the guards to seem happy to see her.

Behind the child the temple of obsidian stone was in the shape of a blooming flower, those colorful veins coalescing in the center and branching into tiny ribbons throughout the petals.

“I-I was,” she said to the guard.

“I was sent to wait for you,” they said.

Her brows furrowed. “Sent by who?”

The child smiled. “By Her.”

“By who?”

“Her,” they repeated, as if this was sufficient. “She found me, and told me I needed to wait. So She sent me here, where We All Wait.”

“What do you all wait for?” she asked tentatively.

The child laughed like she’d told a joke. “You, little star!”

With much more strength than she anticipated, they shoved their fingers into her chest and ripped out her heart.

***

When she rose this time, it felt different. She felt no bones in her limbs, but rather swirling clouds of heat. The gaping hole where her heart had been was burning, but not unpleasantly. The old, scarred skin of her body had burned up and disintegrated, her arms and cheeks raw in the relentlessly cold air. When she found the black temple, it had taken the likeness of an unopened bud.

An even younger child stood before it, swallowed almost whole by those black robes, perhaps half the age of the guard previous. She approached, and dropped to her knees before them.

She said quietly, her voice still hoarse, “I was sent to wake up the Sun.”

The child reached out slowly, and she didn’t flinch as they drew soft lines down each of her cheeks with their little fingers.

“And then what?” they asked.

She thought about it. She had an answer this time.

“And then I’ll find you,” she said.

“You will not remember when you fall back asleep,” they said.

“I will find you,” she repeated, “And you’ll remind me.”

The child’s faint eyebrows lowered over their polished gray eyes. “Do you promise?”

“I promise,” she said. She paused, and couldn’t help asking: “Are you one of Them?”

“The Ones Asking For The Sun?” they said. She nodded. “I think I used to be.”

“I wasn’t ever one of Them,” she said quietly, resolutely. “I wasn’t even made by Them.”

“No,” the child guard said. “You made Them.”

They stepped to the side. She rose to her feet and beheld the temple of obsidian stone shaped like an unbloomed flower, feeling uneasy; she’d never gotten this close before.

There was a gap between two of the closed stone petals, a kind of door. She turned sideways and slipped through, the black rock cold under her hand.

Inside was dimly lit, the carved walls curved around a huddled round center. Something small shone there, bright red in the palm of the stone, casting a softly pulsing light around the temple. It was all she could see.

She approached it and saw its shape. It was the lumpen and uneven form of a heart, and the glowing center of a scarlet flame. She reached toward it, and its heat did not burn her.

She picked it up and it was not soft. The flames danced over her skin. Like sliding a key into a lock, she put the burning heart into the hole in her chest. It fit with a scorching snap, and like a final candle being snuffed, darkness fell around her.

She woke up, and she lit the sky.