In the Dark of the Night

The night isn't just a time when the day is gone, or when things get darker. It is an actual and very real presence, something that pushes against the day, edging it out for half the time of the world, and being pushed back in kind by the day.

This is, some say, the reason for the volatility of dawn and of dusk. Dawn comes with prayer, birdsong, the movement of small creatures. Fish leap and fog burns off. Dusk brings the cries of different birds, the songs of druids, the bursts of color and light we see as stars.

In any event, Night has its own rules. Things that seem familiar by day, even in deepest darkness, are made strange and unfamiliar through the black veil drawn by the night.

E.g., a group comes upon a wood during the day. The trees are weathered and curled over on themselves, gray bark peeling from gray flesh. Scrubby foliage lets through dappled light up above. Beneath the boughs a cracked and tilted stone road runs. Once upon a time that road carried carts filled with fine wools, rare lumbers, gems and gold for nobles. For two hundred years or more there's been not a soul on the road, and it's fallen into disrepair. The pastures were greener over the hill, the lumber here was logged out. The gems and gold are gone, the mines merely caverns at this point. Nature has reclaimed this land. Nevertheless, this empty place, speckled and dotted with sunlight, is lovely. Mushrooms are plentiful here, ready for foraging. Animals have been without human contact so long that they nearly don't fear people again.

But when night comes, the place changes. The deer trails and even the stone road twist and turn in the wood. The stars are blocked out by leaves and branches, and even if you were to climb the trees perhaps wouldn't be there… People (the uninitiated) say that this is all a trick of the mind. It's just fear, it's just unfamiliarity. The truth is exactly what you feel in your guts, though: the dark actually does change things. The streets truly do change. The trees grow taller and yet loom lower. The animals gain a dark cunning and malevolence. Sounds don't echo as far out, light stays closer to the flame. The Night is kind to her people, but never gentle. And there are some places you shouldn't go.