On a stormy night, when the winds rushed through the trees, rains pattered against roofs of the wooden cottages in the surrounding area, thunder racked the skies in loud claps, and Lightning illuminated the horizon as it flashed. And the moon watched, almost sadly, as if he was saddened by the state of the Earth.
Suddenly, the moon had an idea.
There was such evil on the Earth, that if he gave a being of good, he could balance it and bring the world back the good it used to have. Made People happy, for all eternity.
So following his thought, he forced his energy out, and he dropped a single piece of himself into the outer atmosphere of the Planet that he had long known as Earth. His friend. His family.
He, the moon, had seen what the humans had done and over time, what they were going to do. He thrived to save the Earth, from its imminent death.
The droplet flew into the inner atmosphere, where it went through the clouds and into the ocean, where it splashed down, where it aloud itself to sink in the depths where, as the life around it, fish, plants, the water itself! Helped to nurture it a make it grow.
And make it live.
On a hot day, the clouds that had covered the sky only hours before, had completely dispersed, leaving only heat.
The floor of the Sahara Desert, radiated absolute heat and humidity.
From its place in Space, the Sun watched the planet Earth, raging in the knowledge that the Moon had done something to wreck the edge that the Sun had put the Earth on.
In words?
The edge was sharp and the Earth was teetering off it, the Moon, the Moon had just flattened it, setting the Earth back up on its feet.
Metaphorically.
The Sun didn't like this. The Sun didn't like that the Moon had taken this step and ruined The Sun's plan.
In its fit of rage. The Sun pushed and dropped its own droplet onto the Earth.
But this one.
Was not, a being of light.
It was a being of dark.
This being would contradict everything that the first did.
One that would defeat the other.
The Earth trembled as the Droplet hit the hot desert floor, sucking up the only life that surrounded it and used it to bring itself to life.
On that night, a baby boy, with silver hair and eyes with no colour, awoke, taking his first breath.
Well sort of.
The water that surrounded him filtered through his gills.
But he knew that they would disappear when they hit the air.
But at that moment, he was happy.
Happy to be surrounded by the fish and plants that gave him life.
In a way, they were his family.
His name?
The Moon deemed him with the name of Xander
But on that day.
A girl was born.
Her hair was ashen blonde and her eyes raged orange.
As she took her first breath of the hot air, she felt strength. Unlimited, untamed strength.
And she was going to learn it.
The Fennec foxes, Monitor Lizards, Sidewinders and Scorpions that surrounded her, bowed at her power and trembled.
The girl, curious of her power, reach a finger out and touched a poor fox.
It dropped dead as soon as her finger brushed.
Her name?
The Sun had named her for what she was. Dabria, an Angel of Death.
By the age of ten Xander had a lengthy understanding of human behavior, of human love and interaction. The importance of care and of tenderness. The love a mother had for her baby, a love siblings have for each other, the care and teasing relationship between friends.
He understood how important it was in human behavior and what the lack of could do. He’d seen what hate could do, listened to the stories his tutors told him of people who were evil beyond compare.
By the age of ten Dabria had a complete knowledge of human wars. The wars of the past, wars of the possible future, civil wars, apocalyptic wars. She knew as much as she could. She knew of the hate between governments, the rivalry between families, the killings that were both collateral and intentional. She knew how people loved to shoot other people, to show off their own power.
She loved it.
She’d seen the disgusting time of love and light, the care and nurture that others tried to bring, only to be shot down. It was like a roller coaster, except she could predict every move.
When Xander was fifteen he had control over his moon-given powers. Powers meant to heal and love. To bring light onto the darkness of human lives. He made his first trip out of the ocean in all of his fifteen years. Surprised by human technology and lingo. His own language understandably old-fashioned compared to the other children of his age group. He spent a week studying, learning and listening to humans, living in a city where people always were. He’d found homeless people, dying on the streets of sad diseases and cured them. He’d found children, lost in the dark and lit their way for them, bringing them away from the darkness descending upon them.
Every night, he prayed to the moon, telling it of his day, explaining what he had done and why he thought he should have done it. He remembered every morning the water-ish feeling he got at night, when the moons light was washing over hum like a protective blanket.
When Dabria was fifteen she could burn don entire desert villages with a single wave of her hand. The suns harsh punishment never leaving her, burning her skin and causing her sun-sickness if she didn’t do well. It’s blaring brightness glaring at her like a beacon, never letting her forget that it was always watching. It gave her a contestant reminder of what her job was. To send the Earth and its people over the edge of apocalypse. To burn and bring pain to those who dared fight back. So on her first day in human civilization, she was astounded by how oblivious humans were. The recluse desert village she had found was filled with people going about their boring, everyday lives. Doing what they needed to survive and nothing more. She didn’t think twice about setting the first house on fire, nor the next, or the one after that.
That night she laid in her makeshift bed she’d put together for herself years ago, and she remembered the screams of the people of the town, the desperation in their voices, the horror and agony.
The time came when Xander was twenty years old, for him to finally go out and do what he had originally been set out to do. What he had dropped from the moon to do. He’d never forgotten this. He’d known his quest his entire life. He’d come to understand its idea and importance long ago.
Dabria reached the age of twenty with another burning, just another day where nothing really changed. Her reaches went further out across the desert. She’d moves her base out into bigger civilization, bigger cities in the warm countries. The villages turned into large towns, and then cities. Her origin-quest was going better than she had hoped, yet the sun still burned her darkened skin.
Xander left the ocean, the sun glaring down at him as he began his journey. A trick he had learned before leaving was light-jumping. A trick of the light if you will. Wherever the light is brightest, he can jump between them. His first jump was from Miami Florida to a cargo ship in the Atlantic sea, staying out of sight as much as he possibly could, regaining his lost energy with a bit of sleep before making a second jump to a cruise ship.
He landed on the limbo-deck. Where the crew and passengers were in the middle of an epic luau battle. He felt lucky he didn’t land in the middle of the limbo and was to the side near the punch bowl. He found an empty suite and slept fitfully through the night in a comfy bed with the gentle sway of the ocean under him.
She knew he was coming. She could tell by the way the heatwave hit the city like a wall, causing combustion and people fainting out of exhaustion. It was a pleasure to watch as she walked through the streets, burning her arms as she went. But she knew he was coming. She faced a tall building, looking up at its reaches to the tall blue sky. A smile grew on her face as she felt his approach, eager for someone new to play with, someone who could actually play to her level. Oh how she hoped he would play the good guy. How he would try to convince her she wasn’t evil, or that she didn’t have to be. He would view her sun scars as a sign of her torture and weakness. Of the suns cruel treatment on her body for doing the wrong thing. Or the right thing, there really wasn’t much of a difference. Would he try to tell her she was loved? That she didn’t want to be feared?
Because the truth it? She’d rather be feared.
There it was, the beautiful city of Casablanca. The beaches and the sand and the culture was shocking to Xander when he light-jumped in. For a moment, he looked around at the Arab vendors selling hijabs. The smell of roasted peanuts, fresh popcorn, and fish filled the air, an unlikely scent to be mixed but it didn’t smell bad in Xander’s opinion. The houses weren’t like the ones in Miami, they were cultured and prettier, less grey. People were yelling in Arabic, Moroccan and English, yelling about products and prices and words that Xander couldn’t translate. Children ran around, chasing each other through the cobbled streets.
Dabria saw him before he saw her. His silver hair stood out in the crowd of blacks and browns. His pale skin reflected the sun and he looked like the moon itself.
It was ironic really. Funny maybe.
She pretended to be looking at a fabric, catching his out of the corner of her eye as he walked down a street into an alleyway. She could have laughed at his dumbfounded expression. He knew nothing about what he was doing. It was going to be easy to banish him from the Earth, from the plane of reality that they existed on. Cruel, maybe. But necessary in the endgame.
He ducked into a building, looking around at the architecture that surrounded him. A mix between every country that colonised there. Proof of Spanish and French history as well as Arabic. It was a mix that Xander had never expected to see. Americans were so much different from the people on this side of the world. They spoke different, looked different. They were, to say, a different flavor of people in and of themselves.
He ran his fingers over the walls, savoring the rough feeling on his fingertips, the dustiness of the cement blocks. He heard the echoing voices from the other people in the mosque that he was in. Casablanca, he had learned in his previous research, had the third biggest mosque in the world. He should have gone there. It had been one of the places he would have loved to see in his time here. He would have loved to try the food, and the coffee that he had heard so much about from anyone he spoke to about Morocco.
She followed him, watching his footsteps, breathings the air he breathed, smelling what he smelled. It sounded obsessive but it was predatory. She was the predator, and he was the prey. She stalked him as he walked, oblivious of her just paces behind him. There were other people there too, oh yes. Praying and talking like there was nothing different going on. Like nothing was happening, that was out of the ordinary.
It was pathetic. The world was teetering on the edge of its destruction, on the edge of burning in an inferno of eternal fiery damnation, and all these people were praying to their god, or their Mohammed, or whoever they prayed to. Dabria didn’t care. In the mosque, the walls blocked off the sun, causing a cool air to fill the building. Dabria was thankful for this, as her skin burned and itched with an intensity that she could not describe.
He stopped, looking out a window at the city just beyond them. She watched him as he did so, wondering what he was doing, what could possibly be so interesting. Surely he knew what was going on, what they were supposed to do. The fighting and potential killing. She’d wondered for a long time what ability he could have been gifted with. What was he special at? She’d trained herself in different ways to prepare for the day where they met.
But so far, he seemed completely normal.
“I know you’re there.”
Her heart jumped into her throat as he spoke. She hadn’t expected him to know she was there, let alone speak to her.
“You can’t sneak by me, not for long.”
Xander turned to face the girl and he noticed her skin, darkened and welted with burns from the sun. He felt sorry for her, and he felt even sorrier for what he had to do to her. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he knew the part he had to play.
“Well,” She began “you were bound to figure it out some time. I must say, I’m a little –Oh what’s the word- underwhelmed, by your appearance.”
“Oh that’s a little bit mean. Try something nice instead.”
“Your shoes don’t match your outfit.”
“Better, but not by much.”
“So what’s your name? I suppose I should know this before I kill you.”
“Common curtesy, see now we’re getting somewhere! Next step is saving the whales. My name is Xander.”
“Xander? Well, I’ll have you know, Xander, that I won’t be saving any whales.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me your name? I think you should, considering you’re going to kill me.”
“I guess so. I’m Dabria.”
“Well Dabria, do you think you could go by, without killing me?”
She laughed “I’m sorry, I don’t really think I can. Quest of my birth, all that.”
“Ah, I see. Can’t really argue with that now can we? But let me ask you something. If you didn’t do it, and you can with me back to the ocean, out of the suns reach, wouldn’t that be better?”
“How so?”
“It would anger the sun first of all. And wouldn’t that be fun, just watching as it flames on without success.” He stepped forwards to her.
Dabria couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew that this was going to happen, but even as she was hearing it, it sounded ridiculous. Absurd! Still… being out of the sun sounded tempting.
“How do we know I won’t kill you after we get there?”
“There’s no guaranty that you will or won’t. I’m just trusting the fact that you have human needs, just like I do.”
“And why would I want human needs? They’re gross and filled with hatred and disgust and arrogance. Hate to break it to you honey, but humans aren’t as good as you think they are.”
“Maybe so.” Xander shrugged “But they’re also kind, and loving and caring. You just have to look for it. If you always focus on the bad things in people, you’ll miss the good things. It’s all about how you look for it.”
“Might be. But I don’t think we’ve got the time.”
“Perhaps not.” He took another step forwards, two paces in front of her.
“And what if the sun finds me again?” She couldn’t believe how fearful she sounded. How terrified her voice was. What happened to the girl that feared nothing? That burned villages with no cares?
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t. You’re going to be okay.” Xander stepped to her again, just on foot in front of her. She could see the lights reflection on his cheeks, the way his eyes sparkled, how his pale skin seemed to shine. His hair seemed lighter, fluffier even, a feeling in the pit of her stomach made her want to run her fingers through it. He put a hand on her shoulder. They were warm and comforting, not hot and harsh like the heat she knew. She looked at his chest and notice a silver light coming from under his shirt, pulsing right where his heart should be. Maybe this was his heart. It was luminous and beautiful from what she could see.
“I just want to help you Dabria. I’m not going to let anyone, or anything, hurt you ever again.”
He pulled her into his chest, feeling the way she let him. He’d read stories where people fit perfectly together and wondered if this was it. Her thin arms wrapped around his middle, hugging him tightly. There was a soft whirring in his chest as she held tighter.
“I don’t wanna go back. It sucks out here, all by myself.” Her words were choked up.
“I know. I know.” He pet her hair as the whirring got louder. “It’s going to be okay. In the end.”
“What do you mean?”
The whir in his chest grew louder as he held tighter. In honesty, he was scared. Which was a very human thing he realized.
“Thank you moon.”
His chest grew hot, but it was still comforting. Still warm and nice and loving somehow. She didn’t want to let go.
The explosion could be heard from miles away. It was a flash of bright silver light, mixed with a tiny bit of red. No one was hurt, the mosque remained completely intact. No one could explain the light and it was all the talk for days to come.
Inside the mosque, they found nothing to explain what had happened. It was like the people responsible had just disappeared.
And no one would know of what Xander did that day. The sacrifice he made to save Earth from its teetering on the edge. The light reached up into the sky and touched space. Seen from everywhere above, visible to the sun and to the moon.
The moon was no longer sad. It watched as the Earth fall back into stability. He knew what he had set Xander out to do from the beginning and Xander had understood what it meant. What needed to be done.
And it was done.
It was the first moment in her entire life that Dabria had ever felt loved or cared for and Xander had killed them both off. A necessary bitter ending.
No one would remember their last goodbye.
