Heavenly Creatures

“Lancelot!” I heard the screaming as the knight before me nearly blinded me. I cut the knight’s neck before looking down the muddy ravine, where I spotted Sun on a horse above my comrade, who was struggling to hold him off.

“Stop!” I shouted, running down, but it was too late. Sun had stabbed him through his breastplate as he made eye contact with me.

“No!” I said, as Sun and his knights rode off on their horses. “Come back, coward!” I almost ran after him, but a gurgle from below made me stop.

“Don’t speak,” I said, trying to hold the wound closed with my hand. So much blood. I held his hand. “My friend,” I said, weeping openly now. “My friend.”

The scene changed, horribly, to a gray car I had been entirely too familiar with. I was a child in the back seat. The car lurched, I heard the sound of shattering metal and glass, and my parents in the front slumped over the dashboard. I wept inconsolably in the back seat. A policeman opened the side door, and I looked up to see that it was Sun.

I gasped, waking up from the dream. “Darn you, Sun,” I mumbled, pushing my hair back from my forehead. “What did you do this time?”

Miles away, Sun opened his eyes. He was floating on a cloud under a bridge, where people wouldn’t be able to spot him. He flipped his tail from side to side in agitation.

Sun sighed. Now he knew what Tara had meant by that comment earlier in the afternoon. The dreams he had accessed were actually memories—of Tara’s past and current lives. From seeing them, he finally understood what he was meant to do.

Tara had been cursed by heaven, and he was meant to help unravel the curse. Heaven had a great sense of irony in sending one cursed creature to help another. But that was just their way.

“I understand, old man,” Sun said.

The stars seemed to twinkle more brightly in acknowledgement of his words. The old man had heard him.