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The Sunset Transition

By Goldeneye

She was born at dawn. She didn't have a name.

In the first moment of her birth, she saw the sun glitter over the pacific as it crested it. She saw its shining glow drape itself over the African rainforest. She saw the chill lights of Moscow overwhelmed by wave after wave of gold and light.

Of course, these things did not happen at the same time. The sun doesn't rise simultaneously on every side of the world, after all. But for her, it did. She existed outside of time, because she personified her own part of it.

She was Day. The dawn to the dusk. The waking up to the last light. Everything which happened in all the world in that time... was part of her.

As befitting a single piece of time, she was formed of everything in that twelve hours (or more, or less, it varied). She breathed with every breath of every living thing, burned with every emotion and thought. She swam in the Nile and climbed mountains in Tibet. She pushed through the earth and cruised high on thermal pillars of air. She read Proust and Steinbeck, at the same time as Clancy, King and an internet fanfiction about Sonic the Hedgehog. She experienced a trillion different lifetimes neither separately nor simultaneously. She lived more than any one creature could ever have done.

Perhaps that was the one small kindness which the universe granted her.

Day stabilised herself in one location and one time as she watched the sun set over the great red mass of Uluru, or Ayers Rock, in Australia. Technically, she had only existed for twelve hours. But to her, it felt like a century.

Now that she was more collected, and less an general mass of ideas and feelings, she could think more clearly. Day felt her soul-form resolving into a physical body, directed by her whims. She examined herself, smiling in pleasure at the pretty, clean lines of her limbs and body. A Sentient. Of course she would be. Their thoughts were so vivid, so blinding and complex. She stood, naked, female - because why not? - with fur the colour the colour of golden sunlight which cascaded beautifully down her elegant frame back. Her eyes were a pure, shining white. She might have been a squirrel, judging from the glorious tail, or perhaps a rabbit, from the long elegant ears. It wasn't clear and it didn't really matter. She was her. Day shook her head softly to feel it brush against her bare skin, walking a few steps into the future to sit down again a thousand miles away in the middle of the ocean, and watch the same sun setting from a different angle. What a life. What a creature she was. What a day this had been. She couldn't wait to see what the next one would hold.

She smiled to herself, and that was when the strange plane of existence she inhabited spoke.

"Now, why would you think that?"

The sun hung exactly on the edge of the horizon as Day started, looking around herself. This voice had decided to be male, as much on a whim as she had chosen her gender. It was soft and sibilant, much deeper than her own, and... though size was of little importance to her, somehow far larger.

Was she not alone? Day brightened so much that she nearly outshone the sun. Now that she was being one person rather than billions, she might feel rather lonely. "Hello?" she said, as politely as she could. "I'm sorry, I thought I was... I was all there was. What do you mean, sorry, why would I think that?"

"You were thinking about what the next day would hold for you," said the same voice, coming from everywhere around her. "You know what you are, aren't you?"

Day frowned. "Um. I call myself Day, if you like. What's your name?"

"You should be able to work it out in a moment, little day. Think about it. You are this day. Why would you think you're the next one?"

"I... I'm not... but that doesn't make any sense, surely." Day stood up on the gently rippling waters, pulling herself together more firmly. "I mean, if I'm not tomorrow as well, then... well, who would be?"

The voice chuckled softly. "It's alright. I understand. You've spent so much time living that you haven't had a chance to think about what you are. It's not uncommon, after all. If anything... I think it makes you sweeter." It, or he, now seemed to circling around Day, voice coming from one direction after another, and yet she still couldn't see anything. "But now we can slow down a little and enjoy things one at a time. Why do you think you only existed as of this morning?"

Day started to catch on. She was very, very far from stupid, but she was young and innocent, and rather naiive. "Who... if I'm... who was yesterday?"

"Good. Well done, little day. What do you think the answer is?"

It was already on her tongue. "Another... another me? Another Day? You... you don't mean I'll lose my memories, surely?" She clasped her hands to herself, horrified. To lose everything she had experienced so far, to have to begin anew without any of the wonderful sights she had once seen... no, surely, surely not. The universe would not create such wonder for her and then have her have to start again.

"No," said the voice, tenderly, and yet Day did not feel entirely relieved. "You'll keep these ones as long as you live. You're not thinking the right way, dear, darling little day. Perhaps I can help."

In the strange half-world they inhabited, he did not so much appear out of thin air as simply twist into it from a different perspective. All around Day, out of the aether, vast length after length of smooth, scaly flesh simply... moved into existence. It was more than half as thick as she was tall, gleaming faintly in the setting sunlight, and a deep midnight colour, so dark that she could not tell if it was blue or black. Along one side ran a softer, underbelly-like stretch of silver-white flesh, and on the opposite she could see a strange pattern of white dots, billions of them, glittering before her eyes as the gigantic thing shifted into being. They reminded her of memories she'd experienced, although she had never experienced them herself. After all, when the sun was up there were no stars.

First came a pointed tailtip, several dozen feet away, and then the endless slithering muscle, slowly revealing itself to be coiled in a perfect spiral, with herself at the exact centre. At first she turned round and round to watch it, and then she made herself dizzy and just stood, frightened and confused, as the thing endlessly unwound. It must have been a couple of hundred feet long. On the one hand, size did not mean anything on this realm of metaphor made flesh. On the other... Day had no clue how to do the same to her own form, and being so outsized was absolutely terrifying. And she was right in the middle of it.

She tried to pull herself closer as the coils slowly unwound, and spoke, voice quavering with the first, purest fear she had ever felt. "Who are you? What do you mean? What do you want?"

"By now, little day, you should have guessed the answer to all of those questions." With a deliberate pause, the portion straight in front of her raised itself up and looked. In place of its head was a great bipedal snake's torso, one which might have been eight feet tall if it had legs, with powerful, well-toned arms, and above it, a cobra's head with a massive flared hood the same silvery glow as its underbelly. The colour, Day realised through her fear, reminded her of another memory, of the light shining from the moon when the sun was not there.

The creature smiled at her, and cocked his head a little to the side, clasping his hands in front of him. He towered over her. His eyes were large and elegant, and completely, totally black, so dark that they barely seemed to have substance at all. They were like holes into space, pools of pure darkness. Day remembered her own white eyes, and she knew who he was.

"You're..." her mouth was suddenly dry. "You're Night."

Night smiled, winking one of his awful dark orbs off and on again. "Well done. You're not alone in this world, little day, don't worry. I'm here. That's one question down."

"I..." she looked around nervously, but there was nothing but coiled dark flesh surrounding her. "You're scaring me. If... if you're Night and I'm Day, we have no quarrel, surely? We have our own times. Our own domains. How are we even existing at the same time?"

Night extended a hand lazily towards the horizon, where the sun had begun to set, a few inches of the glowing orb already sinking down. "This is the transition time, where your kingdom and mine come together. I'm not nearly as dominant as I will be once it is fully night-time, but it's enough."

"Enough for what?"

"You can guess, little day." Suddenly at Day's back there was a wall of smooth dark flesh. It was not as cool as a snake's might be, but rather pleasantly heated, for of course Night was no real snake or snake-person. She stumbled, angry now.

"Do you just want to push me around? Is this what I don't remember from the past days? You taunting me like this?"

Night only smiled wider. The spiral was tightening, pulling around her. "Darling little day. Let me explain. You don't remember anything from before today because you weren't here before today."

"Then who - who in all of space and time was, for crying out loud?"

"Day." Night was right in front of her now, his body looming over her, and there was only scales at her back. She was trapped. "Do you want to know how many Days there have been?"

Day stared at him. "They... there'd be a new one?"

"Almost every twenty four hour period since the universe began."

"But - and - what happens when my... mine ends?" She saw the sun sinking behind the towering naga, and trembled with fear. "Where do I go? And... where do you go when yours ends? Surely it's the same for Nights as it is for Days?"

A hand reached out, caressing the side of her face. His touch was warm and gentle as a lover. "Yes, it is... and no, it isn't. Those two questions have their answer in the same root, in fact."

"And how do you know any of this? If you're the new Night, then you're younger than I am! How can you-"

"There you have it." Night was now almost touching her, his body coiling inch by inch around her, both of them floating a few feet above the waves. "I'm not the new Night. I'm the old Night. I'm the same Night. I'm always... simply... Night."

"Wh-" She was lifted off the ground, the expanse of sinuous striking in an instant, loop after loop of thick, heavy muscle pressing her into the reptile's embrace. Her arms were caught, her legs were caught, her feet twitched above what they had decided to consider the floor. Every part of her was trapped in layers of dark, smooth, silky soft snake-flesh. Only her face remained outside, forced to look straight at Night's dark eyes. His smile had not flickered as the personification of day herself tried to scream and could only manage a splutter. He was so strong. The muscular flesh held her so tight that her lungs creaked, expanding only by his permission. In contrast to her struggle, the naga-creature barely seemed to be noticing that she was resisting at all. His smile was constant.

"I've told the story, many, many times. Why don't you guess instead? You're nearly there."

"Let... let me - uuunnnnggh!" The coils around her flexed and tightened again, squeezed her protest from her lungs. Night leant forwards, resting his arms on a mound of his own tail, watching her.

"Hush."

Day swallowed, quivering in her cocoon of flesh, and tried to think. Just give him what she wants. "There's... there's supposed to be... one Day. And one Night. Forever."

"Good." The tail lessened its pressure, and she gasped for breath, slumping against his supporting flesh. Night stroked her fluffy ears playfully with a finger. "Go on."

"But you... you k-kill us? You end us? That... surely, you.... How can you do that? How can you end a thing like us?" Like me?

Night nodded, slowly, savouring every word. "Well done. Because right now, you're you. You're not a vague, spread-out idea of a creature. You're terrified, and that makes you clutch together into one individual, makes you bond into a single person. You naturally try to make yourself as small and focused as possible. It's delicious, actually. I can kill you because you're scared I'm going to kill you."

"You... you're going to..." she squirmed frantically, trying to pull out and he responded with a crushing flex which took her breath all away and sapped her utterly. Day's wriggling died away in seconds as her muscles seized up, her head lolling on her shoulders. She mouthed something at Night, not even sure what it was without breath to think. The snake smirked a little, watching her as the blood thundered in her ears and her lungs spasmed frantically. She shouldn't need breath. And yet she did, because she was in his power, and he wanted her to suffer. Why. Why?

She must have mouthed that as well, because as she shuddered and winced, suffering in total silence, Night began to speak again.

"Because I enjoy it. That's why. I am Night, born of everything which happens under the dark sky. The romance, the passion, the joy... and the fear. The secrets. The dark desires. Of course, living for billions and billions of night-times means that I've developed something of my own personality." He smiled. "So I end you. And the universe needs a Day. So another one of you morphs into existence at the dawn of the new day. And when it's time for them to pass to me... I end them too. You're so young, so inexperienced, so wretchedly, pathetically weak... so prey-like. You're perfect."

Black spots were swimming in front of Day's eyes, as if a hundred of the fiends eyes were poring over her. She mumbled something silent.

"Yes, yes, maybe I will let you breathe. When I've enjoyed the sight of you choking like this. When I choose to. You're mine now. You might as well have been from the moment the sun rose. The days are full of life and light... but the Night is always coming." He laughed softly. "And, of course, I wouldn't want a counterpart who could actually challenge me. What if Day decided that Night was interfering too much with the world while it was mine?"

You're a monster... Day managed to say, silently. She could not think for how badly she wanted air. Monster...

"Oh, aren't you clever? That word doesn't seem to work as well now, does it? Monsters under the bed, monsters in the moonlight, monsters in the dark... I think I am, yes. The Night is monstrous at its core, it always has been." Night kissed her gently on the forehead. "And the night ends the day. It's only natural that I should personify it."

He released her, just a little, and the little squirrel-like female sucked in breath until she saw stars. She flopped in Night's iron grip, gasping and groaning for breath, mumbling things from the memories she had gathered. "Oh... oh god... oh the prophet... tamaso ma jyotir gamaya..."

"Do you think any of those will save you?" Night asked gently, swivelling his long form around to lean next to her. "I like the last one, though. "From darkness lead me to light." Sorry, little day. The darkness is all your new god has to lead you into."

"Why?" she choked, cowering away from him. The sun was starting to cross the boundary, now more than halfway in. The day was ending. "Why? What do you gain from this? How can you do this to me... to us, over and over and over again?"

Night nodded. "At the basest level? At the pit of my soul? Why?" He was silent for a moment, still smiling. "Because in the darkness, there are none of those saviours you praise so. There is no light to guide anyone. There is only the power. And the pleasure. And I will have all." He kissed her again, this time on the lips, tender and full, and long. It was the first, and last, kiss of Day's short life.

His body rippled again lifting her up, high above the ocean, high above Night. Day blinked confusedly, trying to pull her head out enough to see what was going on beneath her feet, but it was useless. The thick dark blue-black coils held her completely. "P-please," she stuttered.

"No." The coil around her feet unravelled, letting her paws and that gorgeous tail she had so enjoyed, so briefly, swing free, flailing at the air for some desperate attempt to touch ground. It found it... or it found something. Something soft and uneven, a little warm, and very wet. For a moment she thought he was going to drown in her the ocean. But it was worse.

Day squealed, and the naga hissed softly with amusement, but it came out rather muffled, because his mouth was full. His long tongue slurped over her ankles, tasting and drenching the golden fur, and then he suckled lightly and pulled in her calves. The coils around her body rippled and squeezed, playing with her now, stopping her breath at random to make her gasp and splutter even as she begged.

"Please, please, you - this can't be - no... I swear, I... I could do something, couldn't I? I've barely lived, just let me try! Please! I'll do something... anything.... Please, just don't... just let me go! No! NO!" But nothing halted. The flesh turned from soft and yielding to firm and muscular, clenching around her legs harder than Night's coils ever had, and dragged her in to her knees. Now the warmth and the slickness was halfway up her legs, and though it was wet and practically frictionless, she couldn't have budged it an inch. She was sliding in. In. He was devouring her alive.

Even as Day gasped for breath to scream with, the full realisation crashing down over her, the voice came again. Night didn't need a mouth to speak. "They all said things like that. They're all different in their way. No two are alike. Some think they're male, some female, some... other ideas. Some take forms like yours. Some don't. Some try to fight, some try to run. Some manage it, or I let them think so anyway. The sunset lasts as long as we need it to. But once they start to slide inside... they all beg. They all plead and threaten. They all cry."Night swallowed again, and Day could actually feel the ripple as his the spasm passed all the way down his tail. Her thighs were claimed, her hips lashed over lazily by a long, sinuous tongue. "I listen to all of them. You can't imagine how many days there have been since the world began. But I never, ever, ever stop swallowing."

He swallowed again, and squeezed her again, crushing the air from her lungs once more. It was as if asphyxiating her was barely an afterthought, her breath a casual thing to be tossed away. Day squealed... and then could make no sound. She began to weep, her eyes flowing with fearful tears, but she could not plead anymore, not even if she had anything else to say. And now his scaled lips were gently sealed around her hips, with her rear and legs completely inside the soft, squeezing flesh. Day was no stranger to passion, but Night only teased her between her thighs a little bit. He was not interested in pleasuring her, of course. Just in consuming her. Another roll of coils unhooked itself, but as soon as she was free of one thing, his jaws claimed her. There was not a part of her which he would not control.

Her mental pleas and begging trailed off, turning into inarticulate flashes of dread. She was silent. He had taken her voice. The naga laughed softly, lapping at her navel, now loosening the coils with every slow, wet gulp he gave so that gravity could ease her a little further in. "Good? The heat, the tightness, the flesh on every inch. For you, the swallowing will never end, you know. You'll simply squeeze along my body, inch by glorious, gluttonous inch, propelled by swallow after swallow as you melt away into me." He uncoiled her again, at last, and this time completely, slipping his tail away so that Day could look down and see his reptilian jaws distended around her. Her body made a beautiful bulge in his gullet, like a statue in relief, a moving, twitching, squirming statue. Day gasped again, moving without thought, at the speed of terror. Her arms, no longer pinned, grabbed onto the edges of the beast's jaws, her muscles straining to pull herself out. She choked for breath and flexed until she burned with the effort. But not a single inch was given.

The squirrel-creature collapsed in the cradle of her killer's maw, shaking with fear. His mouth was a deep, spectral shade of purple, she noticed. No fangs. He didn't need them.

"Please..." she mumbled, twisting around to look Night straight in the eyes. Up close, she saw a faint reflection of her own eyes, as white and pure as his were dark and endless. The twin bright spots looked so tiny in the mass of blackness. "Please, you... the n-night can be kind, can't it? The night can be merciful? It can help... it can comfort... it can be a friend! I learned t-this. I learned this from all the lives I came from! You're not... you're not just a monster. Please... you... please!"

Night gently sealed his lips over her shoulders, engulfing her in a kiss up to the neck. As he spoke, his tongue flicked to one side, ensnaring Day's right hand and dragging it into the drenching embrace, and then to the other, pulling it in as well. He wasn't even pausing to listen, simply continuing his work."You're right, little day. But for all the things it can be... the night is never very fair."

He licked her once, on the lips, a kind of kiss, and then opened his maw and pushed her down it with a single finger. For a moment, she saw the last few inches of the sun on the horizon, and then his gullet sealed over her only purple night. The heat doubled as the mawflesh sealed around her head, her lungs squeezed unbearably by every movement he made. Day howled in horror, pressing at the back of the throat an inch above her. She clasped at his fingers, suddenly desperate to hold on, and Night caressed her little hand and pushed it down as well as he swallowed. The muscles around Day convulsed, dragging her down into the depths of the naga's immense form. Her bulging swell must be leaving his torso-thing, oozing into his snake tail. She didn't know how defined her form would be there. Would it still be a soft, feminine shape, hips and breasts showing, skull mouthing frantically at all the gods she remembered believing in to save her? Or just a vague, thick plumpness, already indistinct, sliding deeper with the rippling peristalsis. It was in time with Night's heart, pulling her deeper, deeper into him. She cowered, whimpering, as the dark closed in. She was so young. She had so much. Not this, please. Not the darkness closing in on her light. Please.

"I'll never forget you, if that means anything," Night purred from outside. Something passed across her form, and the little day slowly realised that it was his hand, stroking the swell of her, feeling her slide slowly deeper. He must be lain on top of her, embracing her through the mass of his own body. "Of course, I never forget anyone. Not mortals, not gods, certainly not days. But you were particularly sweet. You had so much light in you." The flesh rippled and squeezed, pushing at Day's face, her body, her hands. She tried to hold it off, but nothing could deny the naga.

"Yessssssss," he hissed softly. "You know, I've thought, many times, about doing it. Just once. Letting you go when you ask. It wouldn't matter to me, of course. I could just eat you the next day. But maybe I could try being that merciful night just once in my existence. And then I taste you, and I never do. You slide in. Only in."

"No... no..." Day whimpered, prodding feebly at the caressing arms. "No... please... no..."

"Now you're just trying to deny that it's happening at all." Night shifted along, staying with her with each swallow. "Fighting against the universe itself. A little pocket of light and warmth in an ocean of darkness, trying to say, I am more than just a little bulge." He tapped her on the muzzle. "Are you?"

Neither of them existed within time. They were parts of time incarnate. So as the sun set, simultaneously on every side of the world, Night and Day had as long as they wanted. He followed her progress through the sweltering mass of his belly, feeling her weaken with every swallowing ripple. Day tried to say other things, but nothing could come. She felt so tired... so crushed and broken. So weak. So little. The flesh around her seemed to be pushing further in. She was... melting? Vapourising? There wasn't a word for it. She was turning from a person into pure energy, and everything was absorbed by Night. Slowly she was made his.

She should have had last words. Night would have heard them. But as the flesh finally closed over her utterly... Day could only think of the music she'd heard in all the things she used to be, before the dark, before the sunset. She hummed something, in between whimpers, trying to ward off the dark. Night laughed again, and his belly vibrated with the soft roar as he purred out the next line..

"We could share things, couldn't we? But I prefer to make them mine."

His flesh squeezed, hard, driving her breath from her, driving her soul from her. Her body collapsed. The bulge slowly sank to nothingness. As the sun set, Day ended.

***

Night lay on the softening bulge of her for a long time, not that it meant anything, feeling her become him. Slowly, he licked his fingers clean of her taste, one by one.

"Beautiful little thing, weren't you? I should have slurped up that tail last... but it doesn't matter. You'll look just as good on me. We were made for each other." He reclined in the mass of coils, alien mind shuddering with the memories of dark pleasure. Her, and a billion others before.

The sky slowly darkened. The night was finally the uncontested ruler. The stars twinkled, and the pattern on Night's back twinkled back. His long, long shape uncoiled slowly, into the physical world, and he slipped into the ocean without a splash. Now he could live like a real thing. And thanks to the memories in his mind from all the things Day had experienced, he had a hundred ideas. A hundred little creatures he knew who were just full of light, especially today, especially tonight.

Of course, just as the sun set on his side of the world, it was rising on another. A new Day was being born, just as innocent, just as young. They would live, they would play with the world... and then, as always, it would be his turn. Night smiled in the darkness of his ancient soul.

His last thought before he began his hunt anew was of just how much Day's golden fur had looked like the sunlight. But now, not a hair remained. Only the dark, and the scaly body of Night.

Goldeneye 2016