Sunsets - Thank the Lord for the Night Time by Alicia

Thank the Lord for the Night Time

In the final years of the Old Days, humanity was still in denial. Stargazing in its infancy couldn’t explain it. Patricians couldn’t either. Religion stood up to take the podium, only to step down in dismay as the crowds refused to accept the Gods’ wrath in death and darkness. Cities rose and fell like the breaths of a dormant giant as the heavens realigned. The ozone shifted. Slowly, almost excruciatingly, the western hemisphere boiled and burned away.

The cold nights grew longer. Days fell short. Dawn splashed against the horizon for hours, flickering at noon. Receding into dusk.

Oceans that once flowed learnt to swirl.

In the last moments before a thousand years came to rest, the bauble that was Earth became still.

***

For nearly two millennia, the men and women of the known east grew solemn and pale. 'Days' became the stuff of distant hokum and crazy talk. Civilisations evolved to flourish under the thousand year starlight.

The Old Gods faded fast.

And eventually, so did the New.

As the summery breath of August 1967 receded into the atmosphere of the night, the stars too began to disappear from the night sky. Sirens from the neighbourhood over were going off; car and house alarms startling and screeching as tumbling bodies hurtled from the heavens. Children with telescopes would watch as a twinkle of light was snuffed out by a celestial thumb; a soft pregnant silence, before the telling spark sang way up high in the troposphere, and a path of fire would blaze to life.

One by one, they fell. Like angels falling from grace, the stars had shamed the skies with their unspoken disobedience, and were thrown from their pedestals.

But beneath the din of dogs barking, cars whining and middle-aged men growling, the soft snaps of a pop rock groove floated from the radios of a dozen homes.

I thank the Lord for the night time
To forget the day
A day of up, uptight time
Baby, chase it away
I get relaxation, it's a time to groove
I thank the Lord for the night time
I thank the Lord for you.

Resistant to the static.

***

2014.

The sun had begun. Begun its unholy descent into the depths of a shadowy gloom. Gloom from which it would not emerge for another thousand years. Years in which the downturned faces of the hollowed lower city brush against one another blindly, reaching out to rough cold brick for solace. They turn away from one another as they bump unsolicited into grasps unwelcome. Solace will not come in the darkness.

Sam closed the blinds as the last rays hesitated on the horizon, returning to the comfortable familiarity of electric-powered light sources, glad the Day of Étaín was almost over. Only a few hours remained before the residents of Scunthorpe could resume their routines in the winding streets. He could already feel the temperature dropping slightly as he reached for the wardrobe.

'Jess, the sun's almost set. We should probably call Dean.' He emerged with two thick coats, wrapping a scarf around his neck as he spoke, the soft crimson wool alive in the atmospheric lighting. The much larger coat was tugged over his three layers of shirts and jackets as Jess entered the bedroom in her casual summer vest and grey thermal trousers.

'Ready, but I think Dean's already in the lower city,' she grimaced as she let Sam drape her in another layer of clothing, 'He isn't picking up his phone.'

Sam was silent as he moved to the window, peering between the shutters, waiting. But the sun seemed intent on winning the staring contest. He looked away as she spoke up.

'You need to talk to him. He's your brother.'

'Look, I know it isn't normal to want to be out during sunlight hours, but as long as he isn't waving his ass directly in the glare for longer than an hour, I don't see why we should bother him about it.' Sam sighed, adjusting the buttons on his sleeves, 'He'll be fine.'

An hour passes, and the sky is clear. They leave hand in hand, smiling at each other in the puddles of flickering streetlights.

Thank the Lord for the night time.

***

A man takes a heavy step. It is unmeasured, unsteady. It rests for a moment on the frozen cement of the past, before the heel lifts a centimetre towards the unlit heavens. Heavens which were lost. The man heaves several breaths, the air puffing in an ashen silence. His hood is raised; his nape clings to the carelessly thin textile. His outstretched fingers, a ghostly white were there light, crush gently against the lapel of an unknown neighbour. The neighbour either does not feel it, or ignores it.

The man once again steps, towards a dim iridescence. Perhaps it is pure imagination that draws him. All he knows is that this light, calls to him.

‘Dean.’

He turns.

The silence which greets him is shrieking. His eyes recoil from the darkness as if the sun had been switched off in a thoughtless moment. He can feel them trying, trying so hard, to adjust to the night. But his blown wide pupils could only stretch so far before the black became.

They shrink a nanometre as a presence flickers.

Within an inch of his nose, the man, Dean, can feel the ghosting breath of another person - man, woman, child, Sam… he can’t tell. But it isn’t the person that calls to him. It isn’t a physical call, but rather a visceral one. It shrivels as it approaches his navel, his ears and grasps his shoulders. But then it expands as it crawls into the hollow spaces between his ribs, cradling his sluggish organs and whispering of warmth.

He steps into silence.

Only moments ago, the wild gods of the west traversed the sky in their flaming chariots. How he missed it already; the absence of frost upon his lip, of mist on his tongue. In the last seconds of Étaín, he could've sworn he saw a silhouette cross the surface of the setting sun, trailing its wings behind it.

But they all thought he was another Apolloist, the title given to the solatics who claimed the sun wasn't just as bad as deep, deep, deep, deep winter.

Maybe it was true.

Now, he can only struggle forward in the hoarfrost that grows before his eyes. Only force of will lifts his sluggish limbs from frostbite in the unlit lower city. This part of town had as bad a rep as you could get without being from the west. With no electricity, only the desperate and poor roamed here. Most were motionless, having long lost the will to care.

They became the trees of winter.

Simple silence.

Gravel crunching against ice.

'Dean.'

A flash of something blinds him, erupting in fireworks behind his closed lids. A light.

'D-did you see that?' Dean demands of the frozen man he touched earlier. There is no response, of course. Just a burning cold reminder in the fingertips that came into contact with the man's icy lapels.

Ten Old Days was all these people had. The Day of Étaín. The Day of the Sun. Who could say if it was a sadder life than their electricity-dependent counterparts. Dean certainly couldn't. Even now, he was heading back up to his brother's heaters and mittens for a cup of hot cocoa.

'Dean.' It beckoned again. 'Come.'

Down an alley, and across an abandoned path of dead or very near.

And there, lying in a ditch, gasping for thin breaths, was a tax accountant.

But when he turned to Dean, his eyes were luminescent. They burned right through him, the colour of sky. Not normal sky; of Étaín sky. Sky when the sun was at its peak in the eastern world. Sky so rare and unseen that the last written accounts were still being scribbled by fanatics as Dean gazed straight into the empyrean.

Again, the visceral call promises warmth as it takes Dean's insides apart. It comes not from the man's mouth, but as if from deep within.

'Who are you?'

'My name is Castiel.' His voice was a deep seraphic whisper. 'And I'm here to raise the sun.'

Thank the Lord for you.

~OvO~

Author's Note: I don't care anymore. 1385 words. This story was going to be epic. But I ruined it with bad time management and the inability to work at late hours. Also yes, it was originally a Supernatural fanfic idea, and I decided to keep it that way, cause I'm a lazy butt. You can tell which bits I wrote tonight cause it's atrocious. Few notes:

• Thank the Lord for the Night Time is a song by Neil Diamond released sometime in 1967. 
• Étaín is an Irish sun goddess. 
• Apolloists are obviously made up and based on Apollo - chosen as my main choices were Celtic and Roman influences. 
• solatics - a play on 'lunatics' since that came from 'moon-sick'. 
• Scunthorpe is actually a town in England. 
• Patricians - nobles back in Ancient Rome. 
• Empyrean - the highest part of heaven, thought by the ancients to be the realm of pure fire / the visible sky

If you didn't understand the story at all, which don't worry I understand, cause it was total bollocks, here is a quick explanation cause I'm just pissed at myself:

Alternate universe where science screwed up, and the rotation of the Earth changed so that in the eastern world (i.e. continents excluding Americas) would have 1000 years of night, and 10 days of sunlight. Due to this crappy arrangement, the western world basically died out and became a desert. Of course, the point where the 'Earth became still' is actually the birth of Christ. 

In 1967, the angels fell. Why 1967? Cause I said so. So from 1967, there were no stars either. Lol I forgot about the actual moon. Oops #yolo. 

The story as I first wrote it starts from the final segment, where Dean is walking in the ice, and hears a visceral voice calling him. It was originally Castiel, an angel, calling him so they could save the world (because the original plot was very different), but then for this challenge I realised I had to explain it all to you guys somehow without delving too deep into SPN universe, and it screwed up loads. Obviously there are so many holes in this story it ain't funny. Like for one, Neil Diamond is an American. And I killed America. 

Okay, goodnight. I promise to rewrite this one if you liked the idea though.