Chapter Text
You wake up entangled in bones and with dirt shoved up your nose.
With a confused snort, you push yourself up and sit back on your haunches, staring at the bones beneath you.
It’s a… skeleton.
An entire skeleton, fully intact. And somehow, none of the bones have scattered apart, despite your fumbling around.
Why were you sleeping face-down on a bunch of bones, anyway? Lying belly-down is what your brother did, not you. How he could do that without permanently warping his spine is still a mystery.
With a quick glance around, your confusion only grows. Nestled in the roots of a great tree stump, a startling blue sky stretches over you, a seemingly endless expanse interrupted only by a distant tree line. Similarly, a grassy plain surrounds you, clumps of rocks littering the landscape.
It’s… peaceful.
(Something within you fractures at the thought of such delusion.)
Turning your attention back to the ground, you startle as the skeleton moves. Pinpricks of white light stare back at you from its eye sockets. As the skull tilts back to face you fully, a flash of silver catches in the sunlight.
Somehow, something trembling within your ribcage pulses, reaching out into the air and towards the watching skeleton.
An invisible presence brushes up against your something, meeting you halfway.
Pulses of warmth wash over you upon contact, thrumming through your bones like shots of liquid sunlight.
You know this skeleton.
You’d recognize his face anywhere.
Because he wears your face and would also recognize you anywhere, even now that you’re all bones too.
His elated smile is an exact mirror of your own as you tackle him down into the dirt, whooping as he wheezes.
“Ack– brother! Brother!”
Your brother’s yelp is a soothing balm on the trembling something within your ribs as you hug him tighter, laughing.
“We’re here! We’re here! By the gods, we’re actually here!”
“I– I can’t believe it– we’re– guh– brother, let go! You’re squeezing too damn hard!”
“I know! I don’t care! We’re here!”
This world could go to hell this very instant, and you couldn’t care less if you burn in the process.
Because all that matters now is that you and your brother are here.
It takes a few moments for you two to calm down, but you manage. With a smile still on your face, you finally have mercy and get off your wheezing brother.
“So, um, who are we?”
Turns out, you don’t remember anything. Neither does your brother either. The brains you think you should have must’ve jumped out the metaphorical window, because your memories are just gone.
Oh, and the tree stump talks.
To be exact, the sapling of the self-named wishing tree sprouting from the side of its stump talks.
Yep.
It’s barely half the height of you.
“Dream?”
You wave away the sapling’s explanations of its creations of your beings and roles and whatever to focus on the name it just gave you. It rustles its leafy twigs at you, then at your brother: Dream. Nightmare.
You say the unfamiliar word aloud.
Dream.
The new name feels ashy against your sternum, flecked with a bitter dampness. “I… don’t really feel dreamy.” You turn to your brother, bewildered. “But, that’s my name now, right? I’m… a dreamer… right?"
Your brother’s face wrinkles as he also mouths his new name, staring hard at the roots. “Nightmare. Nightmare. I’m… Nightmare.” His eyelights flick back up to you. They are blown wide, dim and wavering like fog. “I don’t feel like one at all,” he whispers. “Am I… am I supposed to be a nightmare, brother?”
The name you were given curdles in your throat. The ashiness turns slimy, stinging rancid against the insides of your nasal cavity. You spit out the rotting name.
“What! No! You’re not a nightmare at all!” You whirl onto the sapling, enraged. Your bony hands ache to wrap around that thin stem and snap it right off that stump, and only your brother’s sudden presence in front of you stays your hands. “Why’s my brother gotta have a name like that, huh? If that’s gotta be our names, then give that one to me instead of him!”
The sapling cowers under your withering glare, the leaves drooping in apology. Wished one sprout for guardian. Twins sprouted.
You gape down at the bent form of the sapling. Is… is this thing serious? “You… wanted to make one of us, and created two of us instead.” The leaves rustle meekly.
Wow.
You, or your brother– you don’t know who came first, really– are literally just a surprise addition from the wishing tree’s acts of creation. What was its naming process when that happened? Did this stump have only one name ready, and then floundered for another when it got more than it expected? Maybe it decided on an opposite name to match, as if that would balance it out?
“Oh, fine, whatever." You tsk and cross your arms. "As long as me and my brother are here together, I don’t really care what I’m called.” The echo of rot behind your teeth begs to differ. “But I don’t think we wanna be called ‘dream’ and ‘bad dream’, yeah?” Upon the sapling’s hasty agreement, you turn back to your brother. “Hmph. Well, we can try picking our own names. So, got any ideas?”
Your brother blinks rapidly, his eyelights relaxing, then drifting slightly up from your gaze. “...How about Sun?” he says. “For you, I mean. Like your circlet.”
“Huh, me? Wait, what– I have a circlet?”
Reaching up, you feel a band of metal encircling your skull. Apparently, you do. You take it off and look at it. The construction is straightforward, consisting of a simple band and then a plain disc for an emblem, the entire thing in silver– wait, no. A glint of gold catches your eyelight, temporarily dazzling you. Tilting the circlet around, you see it: a tinge of gold colors the disc, with a tiny silver disc inset within the left side of the emblem. The gold is barely there, as fleeting as iridescence on dragonfly wings.
You try out the name your brother offered.
Sun.
The name is dry but light, a dull spark chasing away the rancid bitterness.
Sun.
“That’s better,” you say. “I like it.” You peer up at your brother, spying a near-identical circlet on his skull. Instead of a disc, his emblem is a silver ring forming a crescent moon, the end points pincering a tiny gold-tinted disc within the right side of the emblem. “If I’m Sun, do you wanna be Moon?”
Your brother takes off his own circlet to look at it. “Moon, eh?” He ducks his head, his eyelights flickering like candlefire. “If it’s from you, then I don’t mind it. I like the sound of Night better, though. Just, not… Nightmare…”
Both of you know the names you had offered to each other feel too dry, the edges too sharp to wear just yet. But the names are clean, untainted, just good enough to start with.
Despite the rotten start with the sapling, it is quite courteous and forthcoming as it explains everything to both of you. You like how to-the-point it is. It is a tree, after all. A magic sapling tree.
You and your brother were created from its magic to be the wishing tree’s guardians. Also, you are the positivity guardian, and your brother the negativity guardian, whatever the hell that means. Your souls are housed in skeleton vessels the tree had nearby, which explains the bones. It also explains the something within your ribcage, which the tree had identified as your magic and intent issuing forth from your soul.
Your guardian duties? One: protect the tree as it regrows until it reaches maturity to produce its fruit. Two: plant the fruits to seed new magic into the world.
It sounds… rather domestic. Simple, too. Right?
Your brother spots the issues right away. Being a guardian's going to take a while, and it comes with complications. As you can clearly tell from its massive stump, the wishing tree had been felled, and recently too, judging by the pitiful height of the regrowing sapling.
Probably three-months recently.
What in the nine hells happened for a magic tree to be reduced to this?
You share a glance with your brother, who leads you by the hand to investigate the surrounding grassland.
Whatever the reason, your primary objective is to protect the tree.
No matter what.
The clumps of rocks in the grass aren’t rocks at all.
They’re skeletons.
All of them are in considerably worse shape than you and your brother, their bones either discolored, broken, or straight-up missing.
No matter how much you call out to them or shake whatever bones they still have, none of them stir at all.
Kind of a shame, really. If you could get one of them to wake up, they could make for good company while you survey the area.
But for the time being, all these sleeping bones have one thing you don’t have.
Clothes.
“Finally!” Your brother expertly strips the boots and pants off some hapless skeleton. “I am tired of being barebones! The wind goes straight through me! And don’t get me started about the grass! I've had about enough of it getting stuck between my toes!”
“You’re just ticklish.” You shake your head in amusement at your brother’s denials as you pick your way amongst the bones, when you spot a length of wood lying nearby.
Strike that.
These bones have two things you don’t have.
Clothes.
And–
“Spear!” You snatch it right off the ground and hoist it up, giving it a quick twirl before resting the shaft on your shoulder. Immediately, the spear head and the attached tassel falls right off the end. Your brother snorts at the display. “Come on, Night, let’s see if there’s another one for you!”
“Way ahead of you, Sun.” Your soul jolts at the sound of your new name. A smug grin overtakes your brother's face as he lifts a length of curved wood, the string dangling from one end. “Think we can still use a bow even if we have no muscles for it?”
“We’re magic,” you say, chuckling. “I’m sure we can do anything.”
Your words spark off a race to loot as many bones as you can, laughing all the while, as your shadows slowly sharpen between grasses in the afternoon light.
Along the way, you discover how to open your inventory.
Oh boy.
The sky.
The grassland around you is muted in shadow.
The sky.
Deep indigo stretches overhead as it chases after the sun, as it dies behind the tree line.
The sky.
Molten gold lines the clouds, streaking wisps of pink across the purpling expanse.
The sky.
The sky is ablaze.
Your soul roils within the too-small confines of your ribcage, your bones quivering as you stare into the burning sight.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Your brother joins you at your side, knocking a clothed shoulder against your bare arm.
“It’s the sunset.”
Sunset.
Sunset.
You want that.
You want to be like that sunset, burning alive in a soul-shattering display before fissuring into darkness.
“You want that.”
Your brother’s voice is barely there.
“Then… you can be the sundown that heralds the death of day.”
Sundown.
You turn your head to look at your brother in awe.
Sundown.
Behind him, the cloak of dusk deepens as it chases down the last scraps of color in the sky.
Sundown.
The fracture within you shifts back into place, your name finally settling within your soul.
Sundown.
“Then… you can be the nightfall as it extinguishes the waking world.”
“Nightfall, huh…” Your brother gives out a breathy laugh, his eyelights dilating in delight. “That’s us. Come sundown brings nightfall, as it trails in an endless banner of stars.”
“You’re quite the poet, aren’t you, Nightfall?”
“Hey! You were waxing words just now too, Sundown!” A pile of clothes are flung at your head as you cackle. “And here! Put on some clothes! Have some decency!”
You can’t stop laughing as the sky finally burns out, the glimmer of stars coming out to play in the approaching night.