Editing Shattered Sun (section)

==The Other Egg==
I can’t think of a time I didn’t dread Blackrise at least a little. Even now that I’m older, it gives me little tingles down my fingers to see it crest the horizon. Every time it comes around, blighting our skies the same time each year, the same doomsayers wheel out the same tirades from the same street corners. The Holy City chokes with smoke as people light fires on their rooftops in the hopes of driving the Black Moon away.

When I was seven or eight, I would spend a lot of time in my father’s workshop. He was a sculptor and used a lot of different materials. I’d poke around and ask him what all the different rocks and metals he was using were. One day, he was fashioning something out of obsidian, this little figurine of an Astronomer at his astrolabe. That memory always rushes back when I look at the Black Moon, hanging behind Gargonel. A sphere of obsidian huger than I could possibly fathom.

Walk down any street in the city during Blackrise and you’ll come away with a dozen theories about what the Black Moon is and how it’ll invariably kill us all. Everyone has a theory, especially the people who don’t know what they’re talking about. There are two really popular ones, though. The first is that the Black Moon is another Egg, like the Sun had been, and this Black Egg will eventually hatch. When that happens, the world ends. The other school of thought agrees that the Black Moon is an egg, but believes that the creature inside is dead and that’s why it’s black; if it were another Phoenix, the egg would shine.

I’m just out for supplies, but I have to leave extra time. Everything goes into overdrive during Blackrise. The preachers flood the streets and the wine merchants do their best business all year as people try to find one escape or another. We take a lot of comfort in the scale of Gargonel, the Shard that keeps up safe and warm. It’s supposed to be the single biggest Shard known to exist, big as whole continents. But when the Blackrise comes, the sky is filled with a looming black shape that reminds us that even great Gargonel is but a Shard.

I pass by a wild-eyed man on a street corner. He’s standing on an overturned fruit crate and his lips are flecked with crazed spittle. He’s shouting that this is the year that the Second Hatching will occur, that the Black Egg will split wide open and some malevolent evil will come out. I’m glad when the crowd drowns him out.

When I’m at the market, where the Twilight traders and the Strobers peddle their wares from rented stalls just inside the city gates, the crowds are even thicker. Everyone’s pointedly not looking up, but still talking about what’s up there. It’s strange. Blackrise is about the only time of year that it’s considered acceptable to talk about The Other Egg. It’s as if we’re afraid we might draw its attention.

I find the stall I’m after, a quiet little stand literally right against the wall. Karos is a Strober who sometimes brings me knick-knacks from out in the night. His tribe sometimes chance over old ruins, cities from before the Hatching. Some of them are mass graveyards, but even the ones where the population managed to escape to safety are filled with discarded goods. Him and I have an arrangement – I pay him for any old bits of art he can find. Karos shakes my hand when I approach him. He vanishes around the back to get what he’s found for me.

While he’s away, I take a moment and look upwards. It’s a clear day, and bright, but the sky is menacing. Because there It is, hanging silently behind the Shard. Perfectly round, shimmering in Gargonel’s reflecting glory. As I look at it, I can almost feel a pull on my chest. I hear astronomers talk about how when things get as big as Shards, sometimes their hugeness can pull other things. Looking at the Other Egg, I can believe it. 

It’s surface shimmers hypnotically. For a moment, I almost believe that its shell is translucent thin, and I see something moving under the surface, writhing. 

Then Karos comes with his gewgaws and snaps me out of it. I toss him some coin and head home. I try to eat, but find my appetite is gone.

That night, all I can find in me to sculpt is black spheres. 

I hate Blackrise.