Where the Light Lives

The orbs came out every evening without fail.

Nimbus knew this the way he knew the shape of every cloud — as a simple, certain fact. Each golden orb drifted above Enchanted Valley like a slow, sleepy breath, rising between the mossy hills and the fairy groves below, glowing just enough to make everything feel like a good dream.

He loved this part of the day best.

"There's Clover Hill," Nimbus said, stretching his wide white wings and pointing a fluffy claw toward the nearest slope. A small fairy with copper-bright wings zipped past him.

"Don't block the view!" she laughed, darting around him.

"Wren, I'm twice your size. Everything's a view from up here."

Wren landed on his snout and crossed her arms, pretending to be annoyed. She was very bad at it.

Nimbus chuckled, and below them the valley shimmered as the orbs climbed higher — all of them, every last one, glowing like they always did.

Something in the Quiet

Wren was still standing on Nimbus's snout when the first orb went out.

Not dimmed. Not flickered. Just — gone.

Like someone had pinched a candle flame between two fingers.

Nimbus stopped laughing.

Wren spun around so fast she nearly slipped off. "Did you see that?"

"I saw it."

They both stared at the spot where the orb had been. Only empty air hung there now, dark in a way that felt wrong against the shimmery evening sky.

Then a second one went out. Higher up, over the ridge past Clover Hill.

Then a third.

From somewhere deep in the fairy grove below, a sound rose — not a scream, more like a gasp shared between a hundred small voices at once. Then silence. The kind that means everyone heard the same thing and nobody knows what to say.

Nimbus dropped lower without thinking. Wren grabbed one of his cloud-soft ear spines to hold on.

"Nimbus," she said quietly. "How many orbs are up there?"

He didn't answer right away.

"A lot," he finally said.