Speaker 1: A forest of earth and mind, an Arcane Heart Studio
production created and written by Ainsley Bay. Chapter thirteen, The
Long Night.
Speaker 2: Something is wrong with the dark. I wake up with
that thought. It's not a panicked thought, not like the
adrenaline soaked terror of the Nator. It's a quiet, bone
deep certainty, the kind of reptilian brain instinct that tells
you the predator is in the room before you actually
see it. I roll over and check the digital clock
on the bedside table. Seven am. I blink, check again.
The red numbers glare back at me, unwavering, seven zero zero.
I look at the window. It's pitch black, not early
dawn black, not heavy cloud cover. Black black black, the
kind of impenetrable velvet darkness that only happens in the
deepest part of the night. I sit up, the sheets
pooling around my waist. Here the other side of the
bed is umpy. The sheets are cool. He's been up
for a while. I slide out of bed, shivering. The
room is cold, colder than it should be. The heating
system in the manner is old and temperamental, but this
feels different. The air has a stillness to it, a weight.
I walk to the window and press my hand against
the glass.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 2: No stars, no moon, no faint gray line on the
horizon promising the sun. Just absolute, suffocating darkness. Seven o
five am. I grab my robe and hurry out into
the hall. The sconces are lit, casting long, flickering shadows
on the stone walls. The house feels asleep, but not
in the peaceful way it did yesterday. It feels held suspended.
I find Kir in the kitchen. He's standing by the window,
a mug of coffee in his hand, staring out at
the blackness. He's fully dressed, jeans, a heavy sweater, boots.
He looks like he's ready for a siege here, he
doesn't turn coffee's fresh here. Look at the window. I
see it at seven in the morning. I know where's
the sun. He finally turns to face me. His expression
is calm, too calm. It's the face he wears when
he's managing a crisis, the alpha in training, mask that
shuts down all emotion. The dense canopy, he says, heavy
cloud cover. The valley is deep, thive. Sometimes the light
takes a while to reach us. Don't do that, do what?
Don't gaslight me? My voice is sharper than ided, echoing
in the quiet kitchen. I've been living here for weeks.
I know what dawn looks like. Even on cloudy days,
even in the rain, the sky turns gray. This isn't gray,
this is midnight. He takes a sip of his coffee.
Deliberate and slow. Magic is fluid, viv. You know that
the atmosphere in the valley, it responds to things, shifts, shifts.
I stuck closer to him. You're telling me the magic
just decided to cancel the sunrise. Delay it. He corrects gently,
not cancel. It happens rare, but not unheard of. It happens.
I repeat, when when was the last time the sun
didn't rise? It's complicated to explain. He sets his mug down.
You're looking at this like a human, like a scientist.
You expect physics to follow rulesvity rotation, time, but here
the rules are different. The treaty, the Fay influence, it
all creates a local reality that is flexible, flexible. Yes,
I stare at him. He believes it. That's the terrifying part.
He's not lying to me, not consciously. He's lying to himself.
He's standing there, looking at a world that is fundamentally broken,
and he's rationalizing in a way with packmisticism. Here, I say,
keeping my voice steady, I don't need to be a
mechanic to know when the engine is smoking. His jaw tightens.
It's not smoking.
Speaker 1: The sun is gone. The sun is gone. The sun
is gone. The sun is gone, and the patchy is gone.
It's light.
Speaker 2: He steps toward me, reaching for my hands. His grip
is warm, solid, reassuring, please trust me. This is an anomaly,
a fluctuation. It will pass, and if it doesn't, it
will How can you be sure? How can you look
at that? I gesture violently at the window and not
be terrified Because I know this place, he says simply.
I know it's rhythms. I know its soul. The valley
protects us. It provides for us. Sometimes it demands things
in return, patience, faith, but it has never failed us. Faith.
He's talking about faith, I'm talking about astrophysics. We are
speaking different languages. Okay, I say, I pull my hands away, Okay,
keep your faith, viv. I'm going to the library to
do what to read. I turn away, wrapping my robe
tighter around myself. If the sun isn't going to come up.
I might as well get some work done by lamplight.
I leave him there in the kitchen, staring out at
the impossible dark. It's seven point fifteen am, the sun
still hasn't risen, and for the first time since I
came to Slate Fall, I feel completely utterly alone. The
shadow moves where the light one stood.
Speaker 1: Sullenly whispers in the mt. The wind did rise, It
calls man a fleeting ancles, signals chosen free