Night embraces the village of dome huts like a sleeping mother dog curled around her pups.
The youngsters gather around the circle of low embers in the center of the village, their wide saucerlike eyes staring expectantly at the elder sitting cross-legged in his voluminous grey robes.
"Tell us, please, Grandfather!" begs one eager child. "Tell us about the Children of the Sun!"
"The Children of the Sun..." the old man echoes, as if carefully pondering the request. "I don't know. It's a terribly frightening tale, for this late in the night..."
"Pleeeeease!" the children plead in near harmony.
"We'll go to sleep as soon as it's done!" adds the original supplicant. "We promise!"
The elder chuckles and holds up his wrinkled, milky-white hands in surrender. "All right, all right... the Children of the Sun, then...
"When the moon pales," he begins, "and the sun rises to fill all the world with terrible fire that blinds our eyes and burns our skin and tears the sheltering darkness to feeble shreds, then walk the Children of the Sun, seeking for flesh."
He draws out the last syllable into a low hiss for effect. The children shiver.
"They rise from graves buried too shallow -- graves that let the unwholesome sunlight drip into them like poison, stirring the dead back to life. Their skin is dark and weathered from walking abroad by daylight, and their narrow eyes can peirce the glare of even the brightest of days to find their prey.
"And when the sun rides high and all good little children should be in bed, the Children of the Sun come creeping, sniffing at doors and shutters, looking for those not shut tight. Looking for little children who stay up late," he adds, giving the assembled children a meaningful look.
"And what happens if they find any?" asks one young girl fearfully, as though she has not heard the tale a hundred times before.
"Then?" says the elder, arching a bushy white eyebrow. "Then the Children of the Sun flow like fog into the huts left open to them and steal away the children they find to roast them under the sunlit sky and feast upon their tender flesh!
"SO!" he adds abruptly, eliciting startled gasps from his young audience, "You must all hurry home this morning, and make sure your doors and windows are shut tight against the coming of day. Because the next home visited by the Children of the Sun could be -yours-!"
The elder leaps to his feet and throws his arms wide. "Run!!" he urges. "Run before the dawn finds you out of bed, food for the Children of the Sun!!!"
The children scatter in all directions, squealing in delighted terror.
The old man watches them go, shaking his head and chuckling. Then, noting the paling of the eastern sky, he, too, begins making his way home.
It will be daylight soon.
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