Hey, you there! Yes you, human! I won't ask what you're doing in the forests of the Never, nor which land you are off to, but I can let you pass safely if you listen to my story. I am just an old, wrinkled creature, who knows how long I'll live? Please sit! Good child, beside me now. I don't bite!

Now let's begin.

Once upon a time, there was a faraway land, were lived mythical beings and beasts of legend. Ruling over these were the wise and just Fey. At least, that's how the Fey tell the story.

But this is not that story. This is the story of a lonely Fey boy, whose name was- no, is Tarin.

With his two elder brothers and his Queen mother, he lived in the icy deserts of the Moonland.

Life was sumptious and luxurious, and Tarin wanted for nothing.

Well, nearly nothing. He did have one wish. One wish that a life as a Moon prince couldn't fulfill.

A depthless desire, a lingering longing, to see the sun. Sounds innocent? Ah, but here's the catch: he wanted to get as close as he could to it! A joke, no?

Everyone is aware that Moon Fey cannot stand heat.

As you know, traveller, the land of Moon only knows light through the cold reflection of the moon.

Now, I want you to imagine the rest of this story as if you are there, watching! One day, on impulse, our young Prince runs away, taking a boat to cross the sea between the land of Moon and the land of Sun.

A doomed trip, no? We all know the Gorgonic Sea is a death trap. But the poor prince doesn't!

A storm struck. Innocent young Tarin's vessel is crushed beneath the waves, and he sinks, unconscious, in the midst of that deathly dark sea.

Waking up, he finds himself in a strange land, surrounded by desert, seeing a glowing, bronze gold beacon in the sky. He sighs with contentment; half his mission was complete. Finally.

Then, he became aware of a prickly, scorching sensation all over him
... He thinks to himself, 'Could this be heat?'. He thinks right!

Gradually, he finds himself getting used to the weather till the heat is but a tickle, sometimes an itchy, tingling sensation.

I hope you know, because Tarin certainly didn't, that most Moon Fey do not reach this stage of tolerance, by this time having left in a hurry and a huff.

Now realising as a moon fey, his characteristic pale skin and black hair is noticeable, he snatches up a cloak from nearby and covers himself in it, face hidden.

Despite his measures, his short, hooded, blindly wandering self is soon found by a curious Sun boy, Hallyn.

The tufty haired kid won't stop pestering the mysterious stranger he's met, whom he suspects to be the same age as himself. Soon, Hallyn gains Tarin's trust, and our hero lifts his hood and reveals himself as a moon fey, informing his new friend of his mission to see the sun up close before he returns home.

Our young Sun Fey, Hallyn, is understandably baffled, but agrees. They make up a name for Tarin, Rizaad.

But one cannot live in a muddy, threadbare cloak that begs suspicion. Tarin receives from his friend a disguise ointment to tan his skin, and Harin casts a glamour to makes his black hair appear brown. Eventually as Hallyn meets his own friends, he ends up introducing his friend Rizaad as well, an unplanned move on his part.

Tarin looks around the land of Sun and remarks to himself how warm and friendly the people are. There is none of the quiet and cold of home.

At a small Sun Fey party, a red headed girl quietly observed Hallyn's and Tarin's friendship.

When this girl, Ceilon, gets into a loud altercation with Hallyn (not an unusual occurrence), Tarin tells her calmly but firmly to leave his friend alone.

Now this girl grows curious. Wouldn't you? No one has ever stood up to her before. Hallyn notices her piqued interest and grows wary, telling her to stay away from them, and Tarin from her, but is reluctant to explain why when Tarin asks.

Ceilon wonders about Tarin and decides to corner him alone. She soon gets an opportunity; at another party, she meets him alone in the garden, where the two children they play near the stream, she making flower wreaths and him helping collect the flowers. It's the first time the dark demoiselle has ever played with someone and felt peace at the same time. Tarin also enjoys himself, but wonders about the secrecy that surrounds her and why Hallyn, who loves everyone, detests her so much.

Ceilon continues arranging appointments for herself and Tarin, without Hallyn's knowledge, and the two isolated souls grow close.

But what of Hallyn, you must ask? Well, soon our ferrety friend grows suspicious as to what Tarin is doing when he is not directly with him, but shrugs it off and attributes it to him having made another friend. Such is his sunny disposition.

Our hero, Tarin, soon shakes himself of his dazzled awe of the Sunland, and reminds Hallyn of his longing to be close to the sun.

But first he must learn how to reach it!

Ceilon suggests the Sunland Halls of Knowledge, where the Ilm (truth) of all Sunland things is stored. Thus it is that Ceilon and our young royal make a daring trip to the might tower in the sky, it's very top piercing the clouds as if in anger. It is a heavily guarded structure, as you must imagine.

Consider the inner workings of the Sunland getting out to the wrong hands, or heaven forbid, to Moon Fey. It would mean destruction.

But Ceilon has a carefully crafted plan. She suggests they wear a feldspar ointment that disguises them as appearing closely similar to their surroundings and hides them from all senses. Next, they climb the great silver tower from the outside, spotting the window of the Room of Best Kept Secrets. Here, Ceilon refuses Tarin's scavenged Everglass glade and summons stony green vines to wrench the window neatly out of the wall, without a break or a sound. Tarin wonders how Ceilon is so calm and proficient at this task.

After a time of frantic searching and close calls while the red-headed fey girl keeps watch, Tarin finally reads of a way to build a giant staircase 'to the heavens and beyond' while she keeps guard.

The method is this: the powers of both a Sun fey and a Moon fey must combine to summon the Magpie, a mythical beast that, once fed, will bring into existence the thornwood stair that takes one to the heavens. It says nowhere how exactly to do this.

When the guards catch wind of their plans, Cei helps Tarin escape but herself gets caught. Tarin runs to Hallyn's home and begs Hallyn for help to rescue Ceilon before he passes out in fatigue.

When our young hero wakes up, he finds himself in a lone, isolated bedchamber in Hallyn's stately home. It is dark outside, and a cold feeling runs down his spine. He remembers seeing a Sun Fey publicly executed for not bowing when a higher class Fey passed by him. Ceilon and himself had trespassed in a sacred place. Life may not be an option offered to her.

He runs back to the library to search for his trapped friend. Here he deftly hides in blind spots as Ceilon has taught him to, and hears from servant gossip that the 'fugitive' in the Halls of knowledge has been moved to the Imperial palace.

Taking a servant and placing a blade under his chin as he has seen his brothers do many a time, Tarin persuades the serf to take him to the Palace gates. Here, he explores the entire imperial palace, starting from the kitchens and ending in the dungeons. In its dank and reptile-infested depths, after spilling many a snake and basilisk's blood with a stolen sword and half-remembered training, energised by desperation, he finds himself still feeling pity for a miserable entrapped palace slave boy whose coworker had scapegoated him for their petty crime. Grabbing the new friend, Li, by the wrist, Tarin brings him out with himself.

Tallyn goes back to Harin's home, defeated, to tell him he couldn't find Cei anywhere, but encounters all of Harin's Sun Fey friends at Hallyn's place, waiting for Tarin. But what shocks him to a near fainting state, is the presence of Ceilon, looking guilty yet also unreadable when she sees him.

Here, Ceilon quietly tells a visibly stupefied Tarin that she is the Palace's Ward, and was let off the hook for her crime.

Life swiftly returns to normal for the Sun fey. Tarin chooses to enjoy some quiet days in Sunland with his friends before executing his plan to meet the sun. One day, him and Hallyn play a game, and, spotting a discreetly onlooking Ceilon, he asks her to join in.

Uncharacteristically, she does. It is the first time Tarin sees Ceilon and Hallyn are involved in something together. They are stiff-lipped and uncomfortable at first, but slowly make themselves civil solely to make Tarin happy.

Eventually, after much research and more sneaked visits to the Halls of Knowledge (as well as a hike to certain informative old ruins in a mountainside cave guarded by a carniverous halitosis-suffering cave troll), Tarin and Hallyn were able to learn how to combine their powers, of Moon and Sun, to summon the all-feared Titan Magpie. The Great bird was fed the Troll's teeth, after which it summoned its nest which untwisted into a staircase so high that its end was not able to be seen.

Our two heroes, Tarin and Hallyn, looked at each other and knew this was the final moment.

They race up the staircase, but the curious staircase has caught the eagle-eyed attention of Sun fey guards. Nevertheless, Tarin and Hallyn elude them as the climb up the staircase takes minutes, and then an hour. Hallyn comes up with the idea to use his abilities to help them float on a safe Sun-fire he conjures up. After he tires, Tarin replaces it with a cloud that they float on to the top, tired and blistered feet aching as they lose track of time. Tarin and Hallyn wonder whether this is the trick of the staircase; making time seem infinite, or whether the Sun really is that far away.

The Staircase leaves the blue sky, entering white clouds, then entering a blank night lit by distant stars from where Hallyn and Tarin can't see behind them them or ahead. The stairs then enter a milky whiteness, then go through a silvery transparent space through which their own selves become invisible to them. Through it all, they keep running.

And through it all, the guards chase them, an entire army making the flimsy thornwood staircase creak beneath their weight. After all, the Magpie only made it to bear two fey children.

The guards catch up and are visible when the boys look over their shoulders. But the sun is now also within sight!

Just before a golden eyed, green haired guard dashingly grabs hold of our raven-haired desperado's ankle, Tarin reaches the Sun.

Tarin stops still, an armspan away from what looks like a colossal fiery planet.

It is more beautiful than he ever imagined.

He simply looks up at it, in a daze fringed by an exhausted euphoria. He feels its heat. The Sun's warmth scorches his Moon fey skin but leaves no mark. It blows towards him the breath of a thousand storms and yet has the gentleness of a mother's kiss, that he has never felt. Until now.

The mass of light that has sustained him and every being in the Never now hovers, as if saluting, before him.

Edging closer until he is inches away from the sun, Tarin doesn't realise how heavily his body is sweating, creating rivulets of the liquid that flow down him and soak the thornwood's final stair. Harin is behind him, dumbstruck at the gigantic sight he believed to just be Tarin's fantasy. He'd never been sure the staircase would really work.

Tarin, breathing out forcefully, gathers the remaining dregs of his courage reaches out a pale, clammy finger, touching the source of all life.

Ahh, I'm tired now. The End.

I'll let you pass through the forest safely now, stranger. There, I have stood up now, you should too! I am rather hungry and it was unfair of my temperamental self to stop you in the first place, don't you think?

Goodbye now!

...

What's that?

I'd better finish the story or else?

Oh alright then. But pay me a hundred gold coins first.

What's this? You actually have a hundr- Never mind, ahh, thank you. Let me put those away.

Now, I suppose I'll carry on!

Our meddlesome moron, our lad lacking loquacity, our harrumph-able Highness Tarin, touches a finger to the sun.

He immediately experiences an incredible pain, finding himself suddenly blinded. He yells in pain, and the boy prince-turned-sleuth-turned fugitive meets his fate.

He falls off the staircase.

Then-

What? Yes, of course you heard correctly! Tarin fell. Possibly further than anyone has ever fallen in existence.

Harin, serruptitiously, decides it is prudent to leap back to Earth along with Tarin rather than be left cornered by a medley of bloodthirsty Sun fey guards baying for lawbreaker blood.

Both boys free-fall through infinity, and meet the kiss of the the earth.

By some strange magic no one could understand, the boys fell to Earth and lived, breathing but unconscious.

When Tarin woke up, he noticed a shimmery silver mark on the pad of his index finger.

Hallyn and Tarin are surrounded by their friends, Ceilon at the forefront, all of whom have stringently kept them safe from the knowledge of guards still heavily on their tale.

Suddenly, a mysterious, kindly-looking Sun fey who had witnessed the event presents himself to Tarin as Arok, claiming it is time for Tarin to go home, and that he can take him without alerting any other Sun fey.

See, I told you my story was roughly finished but you didn't listen, did you? Harrumph.

So between Tarin and his Sun fey friends, goodbyes are said, and Tarin and Arok leave.

Hallyn is hopeful his friend will return, while Ceilon is wistful and bitter at the same time, unhappy at how he could leave her so thoughtlessly. Tarin was the only person she had felt comfortable to be herself around, and she suspects he will still accept her even after he knows her true origins, in sharp contrast to the other Sun fey, including Hallyn, who shun her.

Ceilon is affected to the degree that she becomes stringently isolated and reclusive, till the day they finally go to get Tarin back.

And where is Tarin now? Back in the Moon Court of course.

It is now his first time back, sitting in his mother's Court. A lie of having accompanied a brother on his travel (and blackmail so his brother covers for him) smooths out his return.

Tarin smiles. Because he is back home?

No! Use that brain. Because he is remembering his time with his Sun fey friends.

In the land of Sun, he'd felt the warmth of that heavenly star long before he'd touched it.

It was from the freely given friendship and love of it people.

Maybe if he kept it close and remembered its heat, in this cold dead land, he really could live without a sun.

As the old man says goodbye, you notice his golden eyes, and hair you'd previously thought black appearing inky dark green in the light.