Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
Seventeen and a Half Years Ago
ATOP THE STORM-SHROUDED VILLA, a figure hurries across the rooftop to place four jars of ashes in a circle before settling in the center, legs crossed. Dry blood still decorates his arms, his shaking hands, but there’s no time for regrets. Not this time.
Above, swirling black-gray clouds verge across the blue sky, spilling shadows across the desert all around. Directly in its path, New Sky City’s central tower and rotating tiers rise high, a blinking, purple-blue beacon across the arid land, seen from every angle for a hundred miles. The chosen city, forever aglow beneath the constant watch of the never-setting Sun. Even now, the golden ball in the sky shines bright on its people below, protecting them from the oncoming darkness.
The young man cracks a sad smile. Wastes precious seconds wondering about a girl with green eyes and her chosen partner with swirling brown. His friends, over-talented for their low stations, safe from this terrible storm. By now, they’re probably already at the hospital. Holding hands. Embracing a small bundle of blankets. No room to wonder where their friend has gone. Perhaps, in the days to come, they’ll convince themselves his ambition tore him from the city to brighter things across the world. Perhaps their disappointment will be short-lived. Perhaps they’ll move on from this chapter as quick as flipping a page.
As tears well, he hopes they spare him a thought. Now and then. Remember that wild and wired young man with fire for hair and music for breath? Remember how he lifted the shadows in every room? Remember how eyes trailed him wherever he went?
Remember his voice?
Dark clouds shroud the villa completely now. And the jars await their fate.
Words spin from the young man’s dry lips with a hoarse flourish. Ever the performer. “I cast my hand… into the flame.” He unscrews the lid of the first jar. Sets it to his left.
Wind swirls against the bloodied skin of his arms, his neck. Whispers catch in his unkempt hair.
“For golden glory,” he continues, unscrewing another. Setting it to the right. “Unforgetting fame.”
A heavenly rumble. A flashing jagged spark between curves of cloud.
“And when my body… finally breaks.” He stifles a tremble in his voice. Keeps every word even. Purposeful. He places the third jar behind him, lid gone.
The air goes cold, chilling through him, reaching for bones.
The young man unscrews the final lid, sets the jar of ash in front of his crossed legs. The ashes stir on the breeze but hold back. Waiting.
He considers not saying the words, but as if compelled, a rebelling heat barrels up his throat, and he hisses the final curse to the storm clouds above. “The phoenix legacy I reclaim!”
A crash of thunder, lightning ignites across the rooftop!
There is no time for scream or pain.
In a blink, a fifth pile of ash collects between the four jars. And together, the ashes drift upon the wind, circling the villa, rising higher into the sky.
Until the storm, untouched by the Sun’s light, swallows them whole.
~*~*~*~
THE SUN HANGS LOW on the red horizon as Bridget drags coal lines fast across her sketchbook. Precious shadows stretch down the alleyways below her fire escape perch like pockets of orange-edged void, New Sky City’s usual vibrant palette swathed in sunset monochrome. The perfect time of day. She quickly scans the red-darkening sky for any spark of silver or inky blackness spilling across the heavens. For any sign of stars, for the moon. The celestial bodies history books and museums claim do not exist.
Bridget knows they exist, though. Well, “knows” is a strong word. “Suspects” would be more apt. “Hopes” even more so. She’s only ever seen them in blurry, probably doctored, photos and bad interpretive paintings but has to believe the moon and all its winking, twinkling stars are real. Every sundown she holds her breath, refuses to blink, as she searches for them. Ready to capture their silvery beauty in coal-scratched lines, in poetic words, to witness something so many believe to be myth.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she urges the stars. “Show yourselves.”
An electric flicker from across the street twitches her ear.
“I know you’re there.”
A neon buzz sizzles up the side of the building.
“No, no, not yet—”
All at once, city bulbs spark to life, and with a blinded cry, Bridget falls back.
False sunlight bursts across the city, top to bottom. Shinescreen billboards bloom awake upon every roof. Neon arrows blink for attention. Advertisements for expensive restaurants and motorized scooters flash across storefronts. Even the streets below glow, rectangular lights lining the sunstone paths in shimmering greens, clear sky blues, and dizzying magentas, leading either up, down, or across.
And front and center across the alley, Bridget’s constant, and unwanted, companions for weeks at this point, flash upon a shinescreen. A five-member boy band, whites of their teeth oppressing her makeshift studio with their brightness, inviting her to the annual Sunrise Festival.
Bridget slaps her sketchbook down with a glare. “Can’t let anyone forget how cheerful and glowing we all are, now can we?” she hisses at their smiles.
The center band member stares back, orange hair pulled back by a sparkling blue band and eyelids low, suggesting he knows the inner workings of her soul.
“Fuck the Sun,” she hisses, but then glances right and left, making sure she’s alone out on the metal landing. Once assured, she sends him another glare, sticks out her tongue.
His smile persists. Taunting.
A angry tightness coils behind her sternum, an ache pulsing irregular against her lungs. Who do these losers think they are? As if their perfectly coifed hair and sparkling outfits even matter in a world where stars and darkness exist just out of sight. She’s out here searching for grand myths, something that matters! And what do they do all day? Staring her down. Silently laughing. Questioning her life choices. And every frustration crackles between her lungs, breaths hurried and heating.
Then the glass billboard buzzes, a sharp glitch of electricity splitting the band’s smiles. Until snap! The screen goes dormant, glass translucent once more.
Bridget blinks in shock, skin going cold. But takes the chance for one last view of the red horizon beyond the district drop-off. Light pollution-blurred, but steady. She leans forward, holds her breath, hoping. For once, couldn’t the Sun just sink behind the distant mountains? Just an inch. Just a crack in New Sky City’s everlasting glow. Was that really too much to ask?
Words swirl through her mind… hidden wisps of light… majestic swaths of shadow… a swelling orb of guiding silver … and she hurriedly writes them in her sketchbook, each letter rushed and blending into each other, but she can’t lose this moment of inspiration, can’t let the Sun win again—
The snap of a closing door jolts her out of focus.
A blink, and the shinescreen shivers back to life. Five shining grins once again summon her to the Sunrise Festival’s radiant celebration of New Sky City’s beloved, ever-present, ever-shining, and ever-watching Sun.
Bridget sneers, slips through the window, and turns her back on the neon mimicry of sunlight, the city’s annoying solution to sundown’s dimmed and reddish sky. The Sun’s only low a few hours, but why lose out on it’s glorious glow? Every hour must be filled with sunshine, real or not.
The apartment’s miniscreen by the front door chimes as she re-enters the apartment’s perimeter, the only source of interior light below Bridget’s loft studio. She ignores it, slouching over piles of poems and pages of coal drawings scattered across her desk as she climbs inside. She glances down into the dark apartment, listens for dad’s quiet footfalls or boiling noodles on the stove, but the door closing must have been his exit. Dad off to work without saying goodbye. Like every day this week. They haven’t spoken to each other much at all, tomorrow’s anniversary choking anything they could say. All the more reason to focus on other things. Bridget drops off her supplies then turns toward the canvas propped up on a blue-metal easel by the window. She pulls off the cloth and turns it toward the reddish low-sun light.
It’s a coal drawing, but really it’s a wish slowly captured over the last few days. Dark coal swirls across the background, but silver paint glitters against it. Star trails rush counterclockwise around a centered, silver orb, still waiting to be filled. Bridget has read that the moon contains shadows of its own but isn’t sure how to fill them in just yet.
Bridget uses the leftover coal on her fingertips to rub shadows into the moon’s face. A long central ridge with adjoining shadows on either side. But when the shadows begin to take on human features—a soft smile, a glitter of freckles, a dim birthmark along the jaw—she swipes the familiar, knowing eyes away.
“Shining to spite the darkness,” she whispers, collecting a coal pencil instead and curving the same words into the canvas across the moon’s surface. “Shining without solar mimicry…”
The words aren’t perfect. Not yet. But the wish is there. The hope to shine… not like the oppressive, bloated Sun, but like the stars. The moon. They exist in a world of darkness and unknowns and mysteries… yet strive to soften the shadows, to guide anyone lost in the dark. What better way is there to shine?
Bridget steps back from her work, nose scrunching at the scribbled word art, before swiping each letter away. Not right. Not yet.
The apartment air smells stale, a familiar stench of takeout and dust that’s lingered for the last year. Bridget hops down the spiral stairs, glancing through the long kitchen just to be certain dad’s gone and sure enough, no pans clink, no wooden spoon stir. She lets out a tight breath and clicks on the dim bulb over the stove for the barest bit of light. It’s always a shame to break the darkness, but sight’s a hard sense to renounce, she concedes.
Since young, Bridget’s gravitated toward darkness, fascinated by its vastness, its void. Every drawing and poem under her hand obsesses with the version of reality she’s never seen. She’s read every book available on historical star records, graphs and heat maps of the sky during the coolest points of day, and every fanciful fable about the mysterious phase of time called “night.” Where creatures hide in shadows. Where secrets curl away from desperate hearts. Where minds drift away from reality and “dream.”
“There’s something else out there. Something we can’t see with all these lights turned on,” she whispers to the dark ceiling, searching for movement, for the glitter of stars.
Instead, the miniscreen by the front door chimes again.
“Can’t keep the Sun waiting,” she mocks and marches toward the small version of the shinescreens outside. She jabs her finger over the orange sunburst symbol of New Sky City’s official Shine Rating app. Her mandatory account sparkles onto the screen, tied to her fingerprints. Bridget tried burning hers off twice before turning sixteen, but her parents had insisted she would find her own way to Shine within the city in no time.
“I don’t want to Shine,” she mutters, finger stabbing across the menus for her sundown check-in.
A small window pops up with a gold-sparkle border.
Reminder: Complete your Guild Selection form by the end of the month to secure your place for the season!
Bridget x’s out of the reminder, and the app, and the entire screen. But of course, it doesn’t go clear. Nothing ever turns off in New Sky City.
And by its persistent bluish glow, Bridget finds a piece of paper taped to the door.
The pen scribbles are leaning and fast. Some lines crossed out or illegible. But its Dad’s handwriting for sure. Letters running together. G’s looping in a fast flourish.
Bridget snatches the letter and curls into the oversized armchair in the living room, her back to the miniscreen. She doesn’t see the words for a long moment, gut clenched against every possible terrible thing they could say. Something’s been boiling up inside Dad for days. Not making eye contact. Not speaking a word. Something he clearly couldn’t verbalize. And here it is, scribbled on paper rather than told face to face. The day before the anniversary of losing mom…
In the dim light, seven tiny shadows catch Bridget’s eye from across the room on their designated shelf beside mom’s studio door. Seven figurines Bridget can name by heart. Seven of her mom’s finest work preserved in their little home. The Sun Bird. The Sunfruit Tree. The Sunbathed City. The Sunflower. The Sunkissed Couple. The Sun Bear Cub. And finally, the Girl in the Sunshine Dress.
Her mom’s voice whispers in her head, We’ll get you a dress just like it. For your birthday. You’ll shine so bright.
Every time Bridget looks at the figurines, another memory wiggles its way between her thoughts. Probably why she’s spending so much time on the fire escape. So much time searching for stars…
When was the last time they opened up mom’s studio, let in the light?
She licks her dry lips, suddenly shivering. Perhaps tomorrow…
Bridget adjusts her position in the chair, shielding the figurines in her periphery with a hand as she straightens the page to read.
Bridge,
The last year has been hard on both of us. I don’t want to diminish that. Grief shadows the Sun in more ways than one.
Regardless, the ownership of the apartment will transfer from your mother’s name in ten days, passing into my possession. However, since you are of age, our household Shine rankings will be averaged. And because you are the lowest rank of our district, I’ve been told our stay in District Five is up for evaluation. If we don’t raise our average ranks by the end of the month, we will be forced to descend districts, to abandon this home.
So, before I return at the end of the week, I’d like for you to find a job. Any job. Choose a Guild. Try anything. You are full of Shine and hope, and I wish you would share it with the world. I understand if you’re not ready, but I can’t lose this place. If you don’t manage to find something, then I won’t have a choice but to sever the household.
I love you, Bridge. Please find something. If not for me, then for your mom. She shone her brightest for you. Try to do the same for her.
Dad
Heat curls in Bridget’s stomach, and she crushes the letter in a fist. “He’s kicking me out?” Breaths come out hot, sweat sprouting across her forehead. She stands, glares, paces. “Sure, Dad, I’ll just pick a random Guild and invent the next Sun-powered toilet. Should fix our Shine in no time!” Huffing, she throws the paper ball across the room. “I’m just supposed to choose my entire future in a week? How the hells can he expect—”
A tight knot twists in her throat. Wistful wishes, starlit anger, rotting loss—all braiding and tying together. The corners of her eyes prickle. As a crackling energy coils behind the sternum once again.
The stove light surges bright.
“It’s all bullshit, just a popularity game!”
The miniscreen chimes again, but the tone bends unnaturally.
Bridget holds her chest steady but can’t hold back her scream. “I don’t belong here!”
A crack! Bulbs flash across the apartment. Then pop, pop, pop! All wink out like disappearing stars. Bridget ducks her head under the bursting glass. A surge of electricity pulses through the apartment’s walls, a sonic wave rippling back toward her. She staggers, catching herself against the armchair.
When all falls quiet, Bridget spins in place, searching. The only light remains from the miniscreen, though the glass is cracked right across the middle. Reminder window sparkling and jagged.
“Not again,” she breathes, struggling for air. “W-why does this keep happening?”
Twice in one day isn’t normal. Hells, twice in ten minutes isn’t normal! The shinescreen outside was one thing. A five second electric lapse. Maybe wasn’t even her fault. But this… There’s no denying the surge came from her. She presses her hand to her sternum, quelling the frantic electric storm inside. She has to calm down. Breathe slow. The last time she busted the bulbs like this was months ago. She thought with time these episodes would stop. The further from mom’s death, the less these freaky accidents would happen. But every time even a fraction of emotion rises inside her, the current is too strong to hold back. And Dad wants her to go out into the city? A city built on Sun-captured SkyCurrent through every shinescreen, every street, every buzzing neon bulb.
The day mom died, the energy inside Bridget crackled and thundered outward, a shockwave that blew an entire hospital grid. Not only casting the whole block into sundown red shadows but zapping precious medical machines dead. Endangering lives. Dad didn’t believe it was her, explained it away as SkyCurrent glitches. District Five doesn’t always have the best access to resources, or whatever. He was too sunken in his own grief to listen. But even when it happened again and again, he explained it away. Leaving Bridget to handle it on her own.
Which she had. Or thought she had.
Avoiding shinescreens and SkyCurrents worked. For a long time. But every reminder of her mom, every sundown missing the stars, every emotional trigger that exists in her buzzing, hormonal seventeen-year-old body came with another thunderous burst.
She can’t hide it. Can’t control it.
But containing the violent storm to the apartment isn’t an option anymore.
What is she supposed to do?
Carefully, Bridget steps toward the stairs heading up to her loft. Glass splinters beneath her slippers from the bulbs, but a second step crunches harder than glass.
Bridget gingerly picks up ceramic pieces in the dark and hurries to the light of the miniscreen. “No, no, no—Fuck!” There in her palms, split down the middle, is the Sun Bird. A quick search and she the rest of the seven figurines on the floor, victims of her emotional eruption. The orange star down the Sun Bird’s back is cracked completely in half. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t! Ugh, where’s the glue!”
She searches drawers in the dark then hurries up to the fire escape for light. She coats the broken pieces in yellow adhesive, pressing them back together. “C’mon, stick!” Then stands the assembled bird on the platform under the glow of the city’s neon lights. The glue shines like an ugly grimace down the Sun Bird’s back, oozing down its front feathers. Marring her mother’s beautiful creation.
Bridget wipes at tears, ducking back inside the shadows of her loft. She drapes blankets over the window, covers the miniscreen. Sinks into the shadows of the darkness before finally letting the sobs take over.
“I’m sorry,” she cries into her knees. Digs her nails into her shins. Wills the tears to dry up. Curses the strange current pulsing in her blood.
“What is happening to me?”
No one answers. Bridget searches the dark a long breath. For any starlit answer, a moonglow path forward, her mother’s shape hidden in the corners of the empty apartment. But finds nothing. She swallows down the knot of wishes in her throat and stands. She needs a distraction, something to cool the hot lightning stinging each breath.
She tests each light in the apartment and finds a few still intact and functioning. Then sweeps up the glass, replaces the bulbs where she can. Places the remaining six figurines back on mom’s shelf, fitting their bases into the dust spots left across the metal. Eventually, she pulls the blanket from the loft window. The Sun Bird still sits on the fire escape. Bathed in neon. But still broken, one half slouching, glue drying in gloopy patterns.
The shinescreen of the boy band’s glittering smiles calls her to the Sunrise Festival again. Invites her to partake in the city’s striving goal toward sunny creativity and prosperous innovation.
Her notebooks of sketches and poems litter the floor, filled with hundreds of pieces she could use for her application to the Writer’s Guild, or the Painter’s Guild, or the Photography Guild, or the Scripting Guild—there are so many options. She just has to pick one.
Pressing a hand to her chest, she takes several slow breaths, resisting the crackle of panic gathering between her lungs.
Beyond District Five’s drop-off, the Sun still refuses to set below the horizon. Refuses to release its blessing of light upon New Sky City. Soon, its oblong orbit will slide upward once again above the districts. And the artificial lights will dim. And the cycle will loop again. The city and her dad and the world shining on and on.
With a final glare at the Sun Bird, Bridget grabs her hooded jacket and rushes out of the apartment’s stifling air.