Once upon a time there was a land where the sun rose in the west and baked the dry ocean into a cake before noon, and in the small shadows dark things grew. In that land there lived a girl. She lived on a street where it was always night, and she was brightly beautiful, as if all the light denied her neighborhood was gifted to her. Her hair was golden as the sun and her skin flushed like dawn, and her eyes were clear blue. In spite of her incongruity, she loved her gloomy home, and was happy there.
One evening, however, which is the same as saying one morning, or one noon, there was an exciting new thing on her street: streetlights. They were round, glowing balls of glass that reminded the girl of what she saw in the mirror, and the girl, whose name was Noir, watched them with great interest.
It was not long before a careless bird, one of the thousands of shade-dust-colored crows who chacked and chattered in the trees on her street, dropped a heavy seed on one of the glass globes, cracking it. Instantly the shadows scuttled from under trees and stairs to cluster around the broken streetlight as the fire flickered and died. Noir laughed at the sudden change, and watched through a fissure in her garden wall to see what would happen.
Soon she saw a faint stirring around in the shadows near the light-pole, and heard a soft clink as the glass globe was moved. She looked harder, but could see very little. Then suddenly the light blazed forth again, pouring like molten gold between a pair of black-silhouetted hands. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, Noir gasped, for holding the globe between his splayed fingers, and gazing in wonderment into its blinding depths, was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
His hair was dark and his skin streaked with soot, but her eyes were dazzled with motes of light that caught in his hair like flaming moths, and as he stared, transfixed, at the beauty of the light-globe that he never grew weary of, she stared at him in the same way. Then he disappeared once more into the night and was gone.
Noir, haunted by her brief glimspe, was frantic to see him again, to prove that his beauty had not been merely the product of her hazed eyes. Whenever a friend mentioned in passing that the streetlight near her house had gotten cracked, and usually went on to complain about this "new technology" and how it was no good, Noir then contrived to stay the night with that friend, and was wakeful until deep in the cold hours, when the streetlight-changer climbed the pole to repair the damage.
Every time she saw him, Noir thought him more handsome. His countenance was grim and forbidding, but in the intense gleaming of the streetlights his eyes shone, and she knew he loved his work. And little by little, Noir came to love him.
Noir's mother soon became suspicious of her daughter's frequent nights out, and queried her friends to hear the reasons. When she heard of her daughter's affection for the streetlight-changer, one of the "night people," who lived outside the walls in the shadows, who had dark hair and big hands, who sang such strange songs late at night so the decent people couldn't sleep, she flew into a rage and confined Noir to the house, and locked the gate in the large wall that surrounded it.
Noir became increasingly depressed. She paced the small garden, and beat her fists upon the cold stones. Her only view of the outside was through the tiny crack in the wall.
One night, as she paced desperately, she was struck by an inspiration. Finding a good round stone, she stretched and threw it with all of her strength over the wall, hitting the glass globe nearest her with a musical crack, and dousing the light within. She danced with triumph, and clung to the wall to see the shadowy man when he came.
And come he did, and Noir knew she never need be lonely again. The next day, she threw another stone and cracked the globe again, and the next, and the next. And every night the streetlight-changer came to bring the light back.
As she stood in the darkness some days (which is the same as saying nights) later, waiting for the man to arrive, she heard a rustling on the other side of the wall. There was a click, as of marbles one against the other, and a rock was pushed through the crack into her hands.
Before she could be surprised, a soft, gravelly voice murmured, "Yours?" She whispered, "Yes," only to find other stones--some ten or twenty--pushed though after it.
"And these? And these?"
"Yes, I threw them. Who are you?"
"Please don't throw them at the light anymore. I don't mind changing it, but my master will think my work is no good if it's always having to be fixed."
With that, Noir knew her paramour was there, over the wall, and she gasped, "But I had to see you! I saw you once, a while ago, and I couldn't stand not seeing you again! And my mother won't let me out of the garden."
There was a silence, and then the soot-filled voice whispered again. "Who are you, Lady?"
"I live here. My name is Noir."
Another silence, and then an awed whisper. "The Midnight Sun... I knew I saw something shining through the crack... I never would have found it otherwise. I'm honored to meet you, Lady. They talk of you, they do, down on the street, out in the shadows. My name is Lucifer."
"Lucifer, light the light there, so I may see you one last time, if I'm never to break the globe again."
There was no answer, but in a moment she saw his lanky shadow climbing the pole and clinging at the top like a cat. When the blinding light flashed out, he looked down at her over the wall, and she gazed up at him. He watched as tears like pearls rolled down her cheeks, and they were the only thing that distinguished her from the other bright globe between his hands. After a moment, he climbed down again.
Soon she heard his rasping voice at the crack. "You needn't break the light again. I will come to you, after my work is done, every night if you wish it."
"Oh, I do!"
"Then I shall see you again, my Lady. You know--" there was a scuffling, as if he had turned away, then turned back. "You are everything they said you were. You remind me of something I saw once."
"What was it?"
The faintest of whispers: "....the sun..." Then, as he collected himself, he continued. "I wish--pray, Lady, if I ask it, will you take one of those tears off your face, for there's no need for them anymore, and pass it out to me, so when I go home in the dark I'll have it to look at and remember you, and light the dark hours."
She did so, passing the soft, crystalline thing through to him, and she saw it glint among his long fingers.
"Farewell for tonight, Lady. No more stones." And he was gone.
But his word was good. He returned to the wall every night thereafter, and in time they grew to love each other well. But chance again conspired against them.
Noir's mother, waking one night to the mouse-foot scratching of whispers, discovered them there, and was transported by wrath. She chased Lucifer from the wall and, in desperation, closed her daughter's eyes and ears with a word, and told them not to open again. So Noir was blind and deaf.
"You are my light," her mother spat before Noir's hearing completely faded, "I created you, for me, to light this corner of this filthy place. Keep your blue eyes to yourself, shine them only for me, and look no more on outside lights, listen no more to dirty shadowed whispers--they die so soon."
Noir was stricken. She wept for days, and paced by the wall, but if Lucifer returned, she could no longer see or hear him. The light of the streetlight-globe shone over the wall, bright red through her closed eyelids, as if mocking her.
Finally, one night, or one day, she was so delirious with grief that she decided to break her word, and the streetlight, one last time. "He must come! He must!" She searched for a stone, found it, and threw it, but she couldn't see what she was throwing at, and she missed badly.
For hours she threw stones, but she couldn't hit the globe. Soon she collapsed in bitter tears, and then, with a despairing cry, she tore the tears from her cheeks and threw them at the light. They struck it like chimes, and their flame and the streetlight's clashed, and the globe shattered, exploding in a nova of light and razor-edged shards. And then she heard a sound that pierced her heart even through her closed ears: a cry of pain in Lucifer's voice.
He had climbed the pole, it seemed, to see if he could look upon her and see why she didn't speak to him anymore. As the globe broke, it drove crystal pieces into him and threw him backward off the pole, up against the wall and onto the ground by the crack.
With a wail of anguish, Noir threw herself to the ground and spoke frantically through the fissure. "Are you all right? Lucifer, please be all right!"
But she still couldn't hear or see him, and so she wept again, afraid that she had killed her love. Then his thin fingers wedged through the fissure and touched her face, and she kissed them as he lifted the tears from her cheeks. They shone on his fingertips as he pulled them back through the wall, and though she couldn't see him do it, he pressed his fingers to his lips, wishing her a tender farewell.
As he did so a few of the tears slipped between his lips and into his mouth, and he felt them burn his throat as he swallowed. Then he felt dizzy, and Noir, on the other side of the wall, trembled as something seemed to pull at her heart.
Unsure what was happening to him, Lucifer whispered her name, and as he did so she felt herself tearing apart, knowing her heart was breaking. But then it seemed as if her entire body was shredding with it, coming apart in beaded threads of sunlight. She gasped as she felt her fingers fragmenting, like burning petals in the wind, the sparks flying through the crack and into Lucifer's eyes and mouth. Her hair flew and began to come apart with the rest of her, and for a fleeting moment she could see again as her eyelids, and then her eyes turned to star-bright grains and flew through the wall with the rest, until there was nothing more of her, and Lucifer lay gasping on the ground, trying to decide whether to live or die.

In later years, all of Lucifer's friends, the shadow-people, came to look on him as a kind of prophet, for having lived through the explosion, yes, but also for his soft voice, his innocent wisdom that seemed to come through him, and for the way, sometimes, when he looked at you in the right way, his right eye glowed like the sun.

Labels: Lies, Love, Magic