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"No, I'm telling you! She's the right one, the love of my life!"
"Girl, you've said that about every girl that as much as smiled at you!" Her friend teased. He didn’t mean to be rude, but Buppha had a tendency to fall too fast for her own good.
"But this time's different."
"Oh, is it?"
"It is!"
"How?"
"We met at sunset. Just as the sun dawned and the sky turned orange. She's the one."
He laughed. There she went, quoting mythos to explain her crush this time around.
Every child knew the story, every teen longed for a love like that. Who wouldn’t? A love so intense, so powerful, that it changed reality, that it created night, that it gifted respite to humanity. All because one lover had asked and the other had murmured: "Do it."
It happened so long ago that only whispers of that time remain. Back when the earth was still tender and new and divinity flowed along with oxygen in blodstreams.
Back when the major Theerapanyakuls had tamed the sun: flaming energy and raw power bowed and saddled, put in a harness for one of the children to parade across the sky.
Kinn was his name, is to this day who every man prays to.
Power, productivity, glory, and sweat, he moved ceaselessly from east to west and then back. He was followed by a parade of attendands.
The sun a scorching forge hammering down on the world encouraging and demanding more. More production, more energy, more life.
Down on the ground, the humans followed, energized even as their muscles grew sore, their skin red and tender.
Next to them, the minor Theerapanyakuls.
With just as much divinity in their blood, just as much power within their grasp, but unable to ever catch up to the Sun, let alone control it.
Gun could never forgive his sons for not reaching the same level as Kinn, nevermind that it had been Korn who'd saddled it. The sin was of the father, the son took punishment.
The minor Theerapanyakuls ruled over the land. They tried as they could to run, but no growing grain, no rushing river or crashing wave could ever come close to the skies. And so the father felt resentment.
The son... he tried: he ran himself ragged, he worked himself to the bone, he sharpened what of his was exposed, he tried to live up to Kinn. He never could.
His father saw him as an equal to the countless attendees that chased after every ray, berely recognizing his divinity.
Legend says Vegas first ran into Pete during a moment when he himself had started questioning it. His legs had given out from exhaustion, body covered in sweat and rage. That's how Pete found him, as he crossed over the sky.
He took pause, casting shadow over the kneeling God. They say that Vegas looked up with a snarl. They say that Pete did not flinch. They say that God first saw a glimpse of what he would become in that man's eye.
Pete had resumed his duties as soon as Vegas caught his breath.
They kept meeting. All other attendees kept running, eyes glued to the sun like moths and their flames. But Vegas had noticed Pete by then and, sometimes, Pete glanced back.
At first, they barely talked. That changed.
"Why don't you just take posts?" Vegas had asked once. "Kinn always draws the same trajectory every day. You lot could just post up there, attend to his needs when he's within reach."
"Why would we?"
"It'd be easier."
"Then why don't you? Stay here, hold still. Wait for Khun Kinn to return and then take the Sun from him. Why don't you?"
Vegas had halted his race for that day, watched as Pete moved away from him once again.
He would resume the next trip.
"It would feel wrong," he'd explained, eventually. "It's not the right way to do it."
But now Vegas couldn’t stop looking.
There was something in Pete, something that the light did not touch. Something so close to his core that it wasn't supposed to exist.
Something about Pete had found a way to live in him. Sneaking in the corners of his soul.
And he understoof the God.
Despite the way in which light distorted him and showed every single one of his actions. Pete saw past that, noticed what didn't shine, what Vegas could not make explicit.
Pete'd told him that his father wasn't nearly as impressive as Vegas thought. He'd captured Vegas' attention so throughly that it was distracting.
Vegas was no longer sure: was he chasing after the Sun? Or was he chasing after Pete?
He was mesmerizing.
He was tired.
Vegas never had thought about it, how the attendees managed to keep up with the Sun. They were tired too. Just like the rest of the world just like Vegas himself was. But, fuck the world: Vegas worried about Pete.
When Pete looked at him, Vegas felt real.
He was a God, he was powerful, he was feared and respected. But Pete's eyes on him gave him depth, like shadow filling in the third dimension of a drawing.
But Pete could not stay with him, no. He chased after the Sun, he shed sweat and blood, his legs trembled with the effort and his back bowed.
Pete was in the wrong place.
He did not belong to the light, Vegas had decided as he watched the furrow of Pete's brow. There was something in him that did not belong to the light, to the Sun, to Kinn. There was a part of Pete that Vegas understood, and he wanted to bring it out.
He wanted to kill the light.
He'd blurred the words out before the meaning could hit him.
A promise he didn’t know how to keep. The one task his father had asked of him was less than that and Vegas could never accomplish it. How did he think he could archeive this?
But the words were out now.
"I'll block the Sun," He'd said. And then: "If you want it done."
There was no ploy for divinity, no scheme for power. Vegas was in love. Madly, deeply, stupidly in love. And his lover was tired, but he was loyal: he'd invented dogs, after all, the most loyal of pets. One day, he'd make wolves, just for Vegas, but back then... it was loyal dogs.
Pete would not stop following the sun.
So Vegas offered something new: let all time slow, let all light go, Vegas would still know him. It wasn’t about the shape of him now, it wasn’t about what Pete could give to him. Pete was something distinct. What a God the likes of Vegas could pray to.
But he would not take that from his lover.
He'd never expected Pete to agree to it.
Pete had never let his love interfere with his job.
Vegas had watched Pete run himself ragged for cycles after he'd made his offer.
And then Pete had looked at him. Made the God real. He'd caught Vegas' eye and said: "Do it."
Legend has it that Vegas lost himself. He started moving as soon as the words hit his ears.
He ran against the world that was turning, he moved so fast he outpaced the dawn, so fast that he beat the light. He faded away: he broke through a dimension where light could not reach him, he could no longer be seen. Faster than light, at a pace at which time no longer mattered, he wondered if Pete could still see him. He ran so fast he caught up with the Sun and then moved past it and he never slowed down and-
And that day ended.
The sun moved from East to West and then there was no more light. The was no burning furnace of heat.
There was darkness for the first time in creation.
There was night.
There was no sleep or dream, Macau was yet to invent it, but there was rest.
There was rest as Pete's body stopped moving, and collapsed in the arms of night. It was the first time they could be together like that. The first time they could hold each other. The first time either of them could breathe.
Eventually, Kinn emerged again. The Sun a scorching cythe on the land, it's attendees chasing after it with renewed vigor. But now they knew what rest felt like. Now Vegas knew what Pete's arms felt like.
Vegas ran again, every day. He had given up on the task given to him by his father. He'd lost himself, according to the old God, but Vegas was happy with it. He wasnted to fade away, if it meant cherishing Pete's embrace once more. The cycle was created.
Dusk was created out of love. Night and the rest it brings, are a gift of love. Every day Vegas struggled to regain his energy, to find it in him to run again. Every day he thinks he cannot take it again, only for him to catch Pete's eye. Every day he runs, beats the Sun. And his trophy, at the end of it, is getting to hold his lover. Getting to hold him gently as Pete sleeps in the night that Vegas created for him.
The God of night is happy. His dominion a sanctuary for lovers under the song of wolves.
So, if Buppha said she'd met the love of her life, and she'd met her at sunset, he was more willing to believe her. Night was blessed, after all.