Until Dawn, the story

Until Dawn (spoiler/ plot synopsis)

“I don’t remember. What is my name? Is this my blood, it looks like it. Have I been dreaming, wakened from sleep by the kiss of a dark angel?.... ah gods, the memory hurts!

I am Stephan DarkStar, prince of my people, and I have a story to tell.

I had a lover once, of my breed. He died. I was not there to catch him when he fell.

I wanted to join him, by my people would not let me, their prince, do so. So I wandered in the darkness for centuries, searching for a love like his. I came to your world, the world of the light. Then I saw her. Eyes like mountain violets…

To love a human! Folly, disaster!

You know us; we are the shadows that walk in your night. Selkies, vampires, fairies, shape shifters and myths. We come to your mortal world to hunt and play, and at dawn return to our worlds to love war and pray at the sacred stones. We fly through the icy voids on wings, and live in the space between the stars.

I watched her through the eyes of the mother’s mirror, and in time, we met.

Long hours from dusk until dawn as fast friends, we talked and played. I was careful never to let her see the transformation……

Nighttime has a different kind of honesty. Side by side you sit and nothing comes between you. “I love you Adrianna.” “I love you too Stephan.” We became lovers, inseparable for the time I had with her. I would race to her, the sunset still burning in the sky, but at dawn no matter what, I had to leave. She did not understand. How could she?

Sometimes I smelled on her skin the scent of her friends, and with it, her sorrow.”

-“What do you really know about him Adrianna? Does he work? Why does he only show up at night? Does he have someone else? Can you trust him? I bet He’s lying to you. He’s a freak. You’re being used; he’s got a wife somewhere. He’s…crazy.”

Her friends made her very sad. I watched, but had no answer.

We can go to our sacred place, and with flesh and blood summon those who watch over us, our gods. They are fierce and pitiless, but they come.

I made the ritual sacrifices, and on bent knee begged them.

‘Please let me stay with her. Please. I will do anything….I would die for her’

And they answered….

This is the pact.

As long as she loves you, the sun will not shine.

As long as she loves you, the dawn will never break,

The world will go dark and you may stay

As long as she loves you

As long as she loves you

In the shadows of this night, if she sees you as you are

Loves you as you are

You may walk in the light as well as the shadow,

All the days of her life.

You must tell her nothing.

You risk death

You risk despair

You risk isolation and excommunication

You will die for her

As long as she loves you…

Gods, I hear, I see, I accept. I would die for her. There is no price too high.

I returned to her…..

And time stopped. Morning came and Adrianna expected me to leave, she woke me to tell me it was time to go, knowing in her heart she could not bear this much longer, my leaving.

Outside, the sky stood at midnight. Adrianna was very frightened. Dawn never came.

I did not know her world by day, so I did not know if what evolved around us was normal. Her world went crazy. The entire world was dark, but small life moved as if the sun still came and went. Flowers still opened and closed. The insects of the night walked peacefully beside the insects of the day. Birds sang. But her people?

Mother drowned their children in tubs for washing them, lovers killed each other and themselves, people screamed at the dark sky…. I did not know.

We ran together through this magic night like lovers in a dark carnival….

Adrianna’s friends were frightened too. Except the bitter eyed one, Connie.

Connie could see the shapes in the sky that I knew to be my people, and she knew they were not just big birds……

I summoned my people to me, to celebrate my joy…. ‘My prince’ they said to me, ‘you court disaster when you court this mortal woman’ and ‘we will try to catch you when you fall’…

The world, all dark. Disaster all around as people could not cope… and we did not see it. Love does that.

There was a dream, I dreamed……

                “The sun! I am in the Sun!’ Desert around me and Adrianna’s voice calling to me, “Stephan it is OK, I know everything my would one, come with me” In this dream world, dragons flew in the sunlight, and someone shot them from the sky…Adrianna told me to look away and follow her…to a huge, old pyramid rising from the sands. She clipped an iron collar to my neck, chains to my wrists and promised it was ok….

On the top of the pyramid waited evil faced men, in filthy robes, with evil ancient eyes. Adrianna spoke to them, handed me to them, and told me this was as it should me. They would determine if I had…a heart. And she reminded me I had promised…to die for her.

Of course, I had no heart…only darkness full of stars. And she thought I was human…

Evil dreams I woke from, needing to remember and understand. Adrianna so concerned, wondering if she was the star feature, assuring her love for me and telling me it was only the long dark… then wishing me to forget….

I like the dark….

I called to my brothers and sisters; transformed into the lion’s form, the winged form and called… they had nothing to say but to go speak to the mother…

Flesh, blood, steel, and stone… flowers, water, fire and fruit- I called to the mother to ask that I be permitted to take Adrianna to be…my wife. Cast from magic a ring of silver, a dragon….. a diamond, a promise.

I did not know I had been seen, and that the bitter eyed one wanted to see my destruction, and set out to create that.

Tales to Adrianna that I ran with bad people, that I was not what I seemed to be, that I was evil….. and that she was the wisest and most trusted friend, just looking out for Adrianna…. Words. You believe words if they are said enough times to you.

I offered my love and my ring, and asked that Adrianna marry me… and she said, “I can’t.”

Adrianna wanted the dark to end. She missed the light, blue skies, rainbows. I did not know about rainbows or blue sky…and I said so.

Yes, I must have seemed crazy…

She ran to her friends to ‘talk’, my people came to me to beg me to leave before it was too late…

She was right- there was something I was not telling her…because it was forbidden to me. I could do nothing…..

Please wake up Adrianna, before it is too late. Please wake up Stephan, before I am gone……

I would step into the light to die for her….

She spent hours with the bitter eyed one, who sought to show her other people, those that worked, waited for the dawn, sought the ‘normal’ worlds…. And I waited on the stone monuments of the dead, knowing I would die for her…

Last call, curtain call, I flew calling to her “See me how I am…. love me how I am….”

But she did not… and came the words...

“We need to talk… I need space, we should see other people….and then….”

“I don’t love you anymore…”

Time woke up, and unfroze. The midnight sky began to turn, and time ran forward again.

All I could think was ‘she’s leaving’ even while my people came to tear me away and bear me home. But a prince has a right to choose. I chose. I did not leave. I offered her my love in my true form, and she backed away in horror while the sky began to lighten, while my people fled with no time left.

Sunrise. Pain, blindness, blood, death…. Farewell Adrianna…

I love you………….

The words I can not speak to you I sing….

She has another…. And I am…alone.