Darkness Follows Where Light Leaves

Blackouts are not scary until you learn that monsters exist in darkness and shadows. At least, that is what we are told to able to stomach the thought of daylight. What montharas fail to tell their milli is that monsters exist even when the lights are on.

The solarplants faded around Pledge Time, right before the Light God hides away so White Goddess can shine while we sleep. When we approached Rest, the solarplants were still dark, and did not illuminate again as they should have, making it hard to prepare our last meal and move around the hut.

My mora said the plants were just resting after giving us such beautiful light for so many life cycles. 

“Just like you and me, they need time to rest too. We should give this rest to them without complaints.”

I nodded, believing my mora with everything I had to give. She was rarely wrong about such things. The solarplants will brighten again. We took our Pledge Time, kneeling in front of the altar dedicated to our gods and goddesses to sing songs of worship and faith in their abilities to keep us safe and happy. The solarplants were Resting.

That was a long time ago during my twelfth life cycle. Now, I am beginning my fourteenth, and all the solarplants are dead. They started withering away after the Light God did not appear for over five Wakes. Our White Goddess shined brightly over us, like a hopeful beacon in the darkness. But, she is not as bright as the Light God, and her light is for peace and healing, not for energy and power. 

Once the solarplants died, our King ordered everyone twelve life cycles or older to search for more in the surrounding wild lands. This is where our Old Ones found them many, many life cycles ago, when we first landed on this planet. Of course, my mora wanted to hide me away and claim I was too sick to help search. The wild lands are dangerous, filled with mysterious creatures that our Old Ones warn us to never anger and never seek out. She painted red dye on my cheeks and doused me in hot water, the last of our store. 

It did not matter to the King’s men as they stormed into our hut and demanded I stand to prove I could not walk. They banged their large hands on my knees and stretched out my limbs, yelling at my mora to stop with her silly tricks. 

In the end, I was shoved out of the hut with my mora to go search with the others, fear rippling across faces as we stumbled into the wild lands. We would search for a long time, using the faint white light of our Goddess to guide us through the thick veglata as we fumbled around to feel for the plants.

After one life cycle of searching during our recreated Wake and sleeping during Rest, me and a few of my millos, also in their thirteenth life cycle, came across a gathering of veglata we believed to be solarplants. Their big leaves and bulbous middles looked identical to our beloved plant, and we cried out joyously, hugging and crying and hoping that discovery would be the end of a horrible darkness. Without the powerful rays of the Light God, our people were falling sick with something the White Goddess could not heal. Sickness that starts in the mind and crawls to the limbs like a merciless insect that rots away flesh and bone. My mora was sick with it at the time, showing the first stages that start with fatigue and pains in her limbs. 

But, our happy cries transformed to screams of terror when one of my millos pulled at the stem of one of the plants. A hand was holding the root, attached to a bony arm caked in clumps of dirt. As he dropped the plant, I stepped closer to look at the thing. A skull, poking out of the dirt, grinned at me, its empty eye sockets unnaturally large as it stared at us. 

Before I could say anything, my millos started coughing loudly, scratching vigorously at their throat. Their eyes were red and bulging as they turned to look at me. I reached out to help, but hesitated to grab their hand. They dropped to the ground, dead before I could scream. And I ran. I didn’t wait for my other millos.

By the time I made it back to my hut, only three of us were still running home. My millos who lived next to us ran into their houses so fast, their mora scolded them to go back out to wipe their feet. When scolding turned into terrified screaming, I quickly shut my hut door and hurried to the back to find my own mora. To warn her about what I saw.

She was laying in bed and her breathing was no more. 

I buried her soon after that. Outside our hut beside my mori. They always wanted to be next to each other in life and death, but hoped it would be long after I finished my fourieth life cycle and had taken a morella and had healthy milli of my own. 

Now, as I sit in front of her resting place, enduring a whole life cycle without her, my heart yearns to hear her beautiful voice singing as the Light God awakens. To feel the brush of her hand as she gently wakes me up from Rest. To see her captivating smile one more time before she disappears forever. It’s a pain that will never go away. 

Suddenly, a low croaking breaks through the peaceful silence. My spine tingles as a shot of fear flows through my body. 

I wait for a moment, listening to see if I can hear it again and get a sense of how close it is.

There it goes. It’s outside the front of my hut. 

With practiced steps, I slowly stand up and silently walk towards my home, taking care not to jab a toe into any of the large rocks littered across the ground.

As I step through the back door, the croaking intensifies. Two of them. And where there’s two, there must be more. 

Thanking myself for locking the door earlier when I came home from another Wake of searching, I shuffle towards the bed and reach under the fluffy nest of blankets and thick juliao leaves to grab my knife. Their sense of smell will let them know I am here and their amazing strength despite brittle-looking limbs can rip the door off as if it were made of thin bark. A knife will do nothing. Those things are immune to weapons but at least I feel safer with something in my hands to defend myself. 

I flinch as a loud boom echos across the hut. The walls vibrate from the impact of what I guess are the Croakers throwing their decrepit bodies against the door. I heard them break into the huts around us, one by one over the course of the last life cycle. Unable to see the creatures, I would crouch in the dark corner furthest my door, praying I would not be next as the sounds of horrible coughing and croaking filled the air around me.

Until one day, when there were no booms, no screams, no croaking. They destroyed my village in half a life cycle and left me alone to face the darkness. As I walked through the dark village every Wake, or what I still believe to be the Wake, to look for food and other things to live, my ears always stay sharp for any croaking. 

I hear another boom, accompanied by a cracking sound. The door will not hold and I will not survive. I cannot outrun a Croaker. No one in the village could from the sounds I have heard. 

The door shakes violently as one last boom penetrates dark silence. 

My breathing becomes erratic as my heart beats loudly in my chest. My fingers clutch the hilt of my knife so hard that one starts to lose feeling in its tip. Bitter water cascades down my face, running into my open mouth as I pray for them to leave me alone. 

Then the door cracks through the middle before falling into the hut with a thud that rattles my teeth and bones.

Blood red eyes greet me through the darkness and my old millo, rotted to nothing but black flesh, grins at me with a lipless mouth. 

And in his hand to help him see through the inky darkness and help me to finally see what these creatures look like, is a solarplant.