Turn All the Lights On

It was too dark by more than half for the inhabitants.  But that was the way of things when there are creatures that ate the light.  In the wake of the initial event, the world had gone mad, shattered itself into more manageable pieces, broken populations and their gods in pieces much smaller than half.  A number of people had called them The End Days.

But Days simply became a foreign concept.  There was only a slight change in the sky's luminosity, a sensuous undulation of the sky's skirts from a murderous maroon to a deceptively soft violet.  Like the promise of a predawn that would die aborning, for the shafts of light would never come.

Eleora shivered on the worn floor of her home, arms wrapped around her torso; where there was so little light, there was also little warmth.  Her mother still prayed to an altar shielded carefully, pleading for any god that would answer to bring back Their Light.  The place of worship was ardently protected lest the Gobblers found a sliver of light somehow escaping and know that there was a delectable thing inside the structure.  When she was little, she prayed with her mother; the girl had long since abandoned that fervent hope by now and those gilded memories of blue skies.  They were gone and nothing had been found that could bring them back.  

Not even humans were safe.  The light in living eyes was enough to draw notice.  That was why people emerged outdoors only with thin blindfolds of muslin to draw the curtain on their humanity.  When. . .if Eleora survived to be of age, she would stow her muslin blindfold of plain, stout material and don a cheesecloth one instead.  It was enough to deflect the eye light, but enough to give the impression of her eyes, a daringly attractive feature.  With the world being cooler, one could not look at body shape with people layering their clothing.  Fashion was always a thing to adapt quickly.

Eleora was practicing with the cheesecloth blindfold in preparation.  She would be seventeen before long, according to the Morse Machine.  The little machine shivered with information to all households in their area, updated daily.  Who sent the messages and how, Eleora didn't quite know; the best she knew is that learning the code had been part of their school studies these past years.

One week.  One week to turn seventeen.

Seven Days.  In a world where Days were a unit of measure all but forgotten, dreamed of, hoped for, despaired of.

And on the Seventh Day . . .