"What was it you said, again, about the sun and moon?"

Natalia, already staring up at the coldly-glowing moon, startled.

"Oh! That a long long time ago, they traded places. One of the stories says the sun fell ill, so the moon took up its station so it could rest. There's another version, but..." She trailed off, looking down and frowning.

Thistle's eyes went wide. She waited, and eventually gently pushed. "But...?"

"This is going to sound strange," Natalia said, chuckling and holding her muzzle in a paw, "but peculiar things happen when I tell it."

Natalia looked at Thistle, who carefully kept herself from hyperventilating. She very evenly repeated "peculiar things," but Natalia saw her interest plainly. She sighed, and looked away, then perked up just a bit and smiled—

"I do not like it. But, I'll show you, if you really want to know. Later. Come to my rooms, when... At nightfall."

Natalia's home was small and bunkerlike atop its building, a prudent defense against the cold at the edges of town. Inside, she and Thistle huddled together.

"So. The story," Natalia said, taking a deep breath and trying to settle herself. Thistle's interest was reassuring; she was quite sure she knew what was about to happen and wasn't worried.

"When the world was still warm, only the silverkin stood here," she started. "The sun spoke to them, and gave them gifts, and taught them of the world's workings."

"But the silverkin of the time lived in a coil of pain, and fought and killed each other by the thousands. They bent the sun's gifts into terrible weapons. When the sun saw the suffering they inflicted, it helped them no more."

Natalia's voice slowed and flattened, and she stared out into the dark. The room felt terribly small and flimsy. It almost seemed to draw inward, closer...

"They were furious. They were terrified. They relied on the sun for everything. When it refused to speak to them, the bands that fought each other joined to go to war."

Something was wrong with the walls. Thistle for the life of her couldn't tell why, but they horrified her; she listened to Natalia while trying very hard not to look at the masonry. She shouldn't have come— no, she was right to come, but she shouldn't be here.

"All as one, they reached up into the corrosive nothing past the sky to take the sun's secrets by force. They pierced its innermost fire, but the sun, knowing that the silverkin would destroy each other with its knowledge, fought them."

This was wrong. This was wrong. This was wrong.

Natalia continued, muttering in two voices.

"In the end they slew the sun."
"In the end they nearly slew the sun."

"Its fires died out, and their world froze."
"Its fires dimmed, and their world froze."

"As all turned to ice around them, the silverkin died."
"As all turned to ice around them, the silverkin fell into a sleep like death."

"Only crystal fossils remembered them."
"Indelible Memory buried under the ice preserved them."

"Time ground away every sign that they were ever here."
"While they slept, Memory mended the scraps of their world."

"Eternities later, long-lost heirs found their world."
"The world bent and stretched. The moon lit ablaze to warm it."

"They wondered how anything could go so wrong."
"Memory returned us to life."

Natalia gasped, freed from her trance, and couldn't help but laugh at the sight of Thistle clinging to a cushion by her claws.