Chapter Text
Familiar sunny yellow and candy pink walls greeted Sky as he entered the play room, bundle of freshly forged candles in hand ready to be offered to new friends. The nice nurse smiled at him and waved him forward before she had to go back to the other rooms with the stark white beds, blue curtains and machines. Other kids were already in the play room, either coloring or reading the books that were all pictures. As soon as he let off a small call, just to let them know he was there, they looked up and smiled.
“Sky’s back!” Vicky cried, jumping up and wheeling her IV pole with her.
“I saw him first!” Cole said swiftly, waving his box of markers over his head. “Sky, come color with me!”
Other kids began perking up and clamoring for him to play with them first, and for a moment, Sky found himself indecisive. Thankfully, the activities lady got up and put her hands on her hips.
“We do this every time,” Miss Johnson sighed, “Sky will have time to play with all of you. Don’t crowd him.”
“We can all color,” Sky replied, taking a box of crayons and one of the many coloring books and sitting on the round rug in the center of the play room. Within moments, every kid grabbed crayons, markers or pencils and either sat on the rug with him or stayed in their wheelchairs and parked themselves nearby.
Sky’s first visit to the children’s hospital had been to offer his light to those still afflicted with shard-sickness. However, after the doctors told him he had done a good job and could go, he had gotten lost in the huge, sterile corridors. At some point while he was trying to retrace his steps to the exit, he heard someone crying in a room. After peeking inside, he discovered a room designed to make kids happy and take their minds off being sick, but the kids inside didn’t look very happy. A little boy was red-faced and wailing despite his father’s attempts to soothe him.
Sky was not sure what propelled him to go inside and approach the boy, but the next thing he knew he was showing the boy how he could make sparklers out of thin air and walk on his hands. Minutes later, the boy was laughing and trying to guess what thing Sky was trying to pantomime out. A few more minutes after that, the other children in the room huddled closer to make guesses or be the ones doing the pantomiming. Nurses stared at the scene in awe, and by the time Sky left, he was light on candles.
Naturally, he returned a few days later after running around a few realms with Rain to replenish his candle supply. Then again a short while after that. The hospital staff came to expect him now.
“It’s a dark dragon!” Ben said proudly, holding up his drawing. “And here’s you, keeping it away from the castle!”
Sky laughed. “I can’t shoot lasers, Ben!”
Ben tugged off his blanket cape and draped it between his hands. “Then let’s make you a castle!”
All of them giggling now, they scouted the room for blankets, chairs, cushions, really anything that could be used for building. Sky wished there was a way to set up a space spell here so everyone could have a blanket fort whenever they wanted. Until then, they would all have to make do with putting the fort together manually.
When the last blanket was secured in place and the last chair was put in place, every kid clamored to find a spot beneath the blanket canopy. Miss Johnson helped JJ out of his wheelchair and under the tent. Sky jumped from foot to foot, already thinking about all the different shadow puppets he could make and how he could show the sparkler tricks Noon taught him.
A still head of dark hair near the window drew his attention. Sky glanced away from the blanket fort and stared at the girl huddled in the corner, not a single toy or game with her. She leaned her forehead against the glass, watching the streets below, her skinny arms wrapped around herself.
“Sky!” Ben called, “I’ll be the dragon, and you be the knight!”
Sky glanced over his shoulder at the small crowd of kids in the fort, then back at the girl.
“Coming,” Sky replied absentmindedly, “Um…in a minute.”
He didn’t need to think about it. He crossed the room toward the window, his inner light washing the walls in pale gold and reflecting off the glass. The girl seemed to come out of her thoughts and sat straight up before turning to see Sky approaching her, candle in hand. The yellow flame danced joyfully as Sky smiled and presented the candle to her. A flicker of confusion crossed her pretty eyes—a mix of grass green and sunset gold. She reached toward the candle with hesitant fingers, the creamy wax flaring brighter and warmer the second her fingertips touched it. She uttered a little gasp, color and warmth flooding her cheeks as the candle’s warmth transferred to her.
“Hi!” Sky chirped, “You can understand me now. What’s your name? I’m Sky!”
The girl’s eyes widened in wonder as his bell-like voice registered as actual words.
“Eh…Evie,” she mumbled, “I’m Evie.”
Sky beamed. “That’s a nice name! Do you wanna play with us?”
Evie glanced over at the others shouting gleefully and tying blankets around their shoulders. Ben had found a black t-shirt and had stretched it over his head and was now fake roaring at the others.
Evie picked at her gown. “I don’t feel like playing.”
Sky frowned, tilting his head. “Why not?”
“Don’t wanna,” Evie replied, tucking her knees closer to her chest and turning back to the window.
Sky stood there for a moment, hands useless at his sides. He looks again at her pretty eyes, the way they seem sharp as a krill’s spines, but dull as the hazy skies above the Golden Wasteland. He shifted on his feet before sliding onto the windowsill a comfortable distance away, like he’d seen Clark do sometimes when talking to someone upset.
“The playroom is nice,” he spoke up, idly swinging his feet, “But it needs more green. Like a plant in a pot.” He gasped. “Or moss! A floor made of moss!”
Evie glanced up briefly. “Why?”
“I like moss,” he declared, “It’s soft, it smells nice, and it makes stuff look prettier.”
“Moss has bugs.”
Sky giggled. “Sometimes! I like bugs.”
She wrinkled her nose, but her mouth curved into a hint of a smile. “Eww! I only like butterflies!”
Sky perked up. “We need to make some!”
Evie blinked. “Bugs?”
“No, butterflies!” He slid off the sill. “We can decorate the castle with them! On a string!”
He grabbed paper from a nearby table, then the dull scissors, then the various drawing implements. Eyes narrowed in concentration, he folded the paper in half and began cutting symmetrical butterfly shapes and sliding them towards Evie.
“Can you color them?” he asked, “The others say you’re good at coloring.”
Her mouth did that twitchy thing again that looked like an attempt to stop a smile. She uncapped a yellow marker and leaned over one of the paper butterflies. When the others realized what they were doing, they migrated toward the other side of the room to color their own and stick it to the piece of ribbon Sky had dug out of another box of crafts.
A half hour later, their hands were stained with marker ink and glue, and the little garland of butterflies hung proudly over the entrance to the blanket fort. Sky blue ones, sunset orange ones, buttery yellow ones, and some painted with every color in the marker box. Several kids laid inside, ‘oohing at the sparkler heart Sky drew in the air. Even Evie went inside and tried to catch the falling motes of light. The golden specks lit up her eyes and made them sparkle. When they turned off the lights and huddled under the blanket, Sky dusted the fabric in glittering sparks that lingered and shimmered like stars. His friends laid on their backs and stared up while trying to find patterns in the “stars”.
“I see a dinosaur!” Cole declared, pointing at a cluster of glitter.
“Nu-uh!” JJ jabbed his finger up. “It’s a fish!”
Vicky hummed. “No,” she said dreamily, “It’s a little frog.”
Sky sighed contentedly. “And that’s the Forest Elder’s sign.” He pointed out the vague shape of her hammer and anvil.
“Who’s that?” Evie asked.
“Tell us another story!” Gina pleaded.
Sky grinned, sitting up. “Okay. Remember the Day Elder?”
Various nods and murmurs of agreement. JJ raised his hand, “He looked like he gives good hugs!”
“Yeah,” Sky nodded. “So, he has…kind of a sister? She lives in the forest, and it’s rainy all the time instead of sunny, but I like her realm!”
Vicky rolled onto her stomach and frowned at him. “It rains all the time in her forest? Then you can’t play there…”
Sky shrugged. “Yeah, it’s not so good for me to be in the rain, but there are lots of hiding spots! With lanterns. And the pond behind her temple is always sunny.”
“Is she nice?” Cole piped up.
“She is,” Sky replied, “Even if she doesn’t seem like it. And she made all the machines.”
“Like trucks?” Ben asked.
“I dunno how to explain it,” Sky mumbled, “But Rain tells me she kind of made stars? Little ones. And they gave people lights and everything.”
Evie’s eyes lit up. “She sounds cool.”
“A bit scary, though,” Sky shuddered. “She’s big. And she has a hammer.”
Several of them laughed. Ben’s eyes widened with delight. “She has a hammer?”
The dim room outside the blanket fort suddenly brightened, and soft footsteps approached. The corner of one of the blankets fluttered aside as Miss Johnson peeked inside with an apologetic smile.
“C’mon everyone,” she said brightly. “Playroom hours are almost done, and some of you have to go back to your rooms soon.”
The usual chorus of protests for “just a few more minutes” rose in a wave, but Miss Johnson kept her expression fair but firm.
“You know the rules, guys,” she replied, assisting JJ back into his wheelchair and helping Vicky untangle her IV. “Don’t worry, Sky will be back again this week.”
Sky crawled out from under the pile of blankets and dusted any stray light glitter off himself. He looked back over his friends’ faces, his chest feeling warm. They were all smiling now. Gina ran up to him and wrapped her arms around him in a parting hug before following her nurse back down the hall. JJ wheeled over and high fived before heading down the hall as well. He hugged Vicky, did his and Cole’s handshake, and high fived Ben before each of them left.
Something rustled to his left. He watched Evie begin disassembling the fort, folding the blankets but keeping them coated in the conjured “stars”.
“Oh, I’ll clean that up, Evie,” Miss Johnson said, crossing the room and taking the blanket Evie folded with a warm smile. “Thank you, honey.”
Evie nodded quietly, glancing up at Sky, something clutched in her hands. She walked up to him on yellow-socked feet, holding something brightly colored in her palms.
“I made an extra,” she mumbled, presenting one more paper butterfly. “For you.”
Sky’s chest bloomed with warmth as he bowed politely, accepting the gift. “Thanks! I love it!” He paused. “But…I didn’t bring anything for you.”
Evie smiled. “It’s okay. I had fun today.”
Sky visited again two days later, after spending some time with Noon searching for ways to make capes for human kids. Despite her best efforts, temporary garment spells simply just didn’t work on humans. Any attempt to get the spell to stick to Lois’s or Clark’s backs ended in a brief puff of sparkling dust, but no cape.
Instead, Noon turned to fabrics of a more tangible variety. By the time Sky showed up to the hospital’s playroom again, he had a stack of capes in bright colors and soft fabrics. All his friends loved them. Evie joined again, choosing one of the capes that Noon had shaped into a butterfly’s wings. She spun around in it until she was dizzy, sending her hair flying. Her pale cheeks flushed pink as she giggled and raced around with the others while flapping her arms. By the time they had all exhausted themselves and collapsed into a giggling heap, Evie was smiling wider than Sky had ever seen her smile.
At some point, Evie got too tired and went to sit at one of the low tables. Miss Johnson had told him before not to worry too much when a kid needed to rest during play. Some of the kids has less energy than others.
Still, the urge to see Evie happy and playing was hard to ignore. She had her head resting on her arms, her posture slack and tired. Not in the mood for running and pretending to fly.
Instead, Sky found paper and markers. Evie picked up her head and grinned.
“Prairie has little hills,” Sky explained, holding up his picture, “And lots of butterflies! And a blue sky!”
“Is that you?” Evie asked, pointing at the red shape.
Sky nodded enthusiastically, then pointed to the purple and pink shape beside the red one. “And that’s you! We’re catching butterflies.”
Evie’s face did that wonderful thing where her eyes lit up in excitement. “What kind of butterflies are there?”
Sky thought for a moment. “Ummm…only the ones made of light, I guess. But there’s also mantas, and baby manatees.” He gasped. “We should go when you’re feeling better! I’ll fly you there!”
Evie’s resulting smile wasn’t as bright as the one before. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“But before that,” Sky grabbed a fresh sheet of paper. “I need more project ideas. I’m asking everyone what they wanna do next time.”
Evie smoothed down the folds of her butterfly cape. “How about flower crowns?”
Sky scribbled it down, already planning which flowers he would pick.
The following week, Evie wasn’t there when Sky walked into the pink and yellow painted play room with a basket full of multicolored blooms that he had plucked from Prairie’s meadows. Sky sat with the others to teach them how to braid the stems of the flowers into a circlet, thinking she would come in later. He set some of the yellow flowers aside for her, stringing them together. Sometimes one or two of his friends wouldn’t be there immediately if they were resting or getting their medicine.
The others finished their crowns and either wore them or gifted them to their favorite nurses. Evie still did not show, not even after they all returned to the play room and Sky started telling them the story of the first time he fell down Golden Wasteland’s wind funnel.
When the play room hours ended, Sky remained behind, clutching Evie’s crown in his hands. Gina, the last one out, waved goodbye and went back down the hall.
Miss Johnson began tidying up the room, stopping once she saw Sky still in one spot. Her normally kind, cheery face fell a little.
“Are you waiting for her?” she asked softly.
Sky nodded. “She needs her crown.”
Miss Johnson closed a bin of markers and sighed. She sat on one of the low chairs, pulling out one for him to sit on. He slid onto the stool, placing Evie’s flower crown on the tabletop.
Miss Johnson took a breath. “Evie…went to a better place, Sky. I’m sorry. She’s not here anymore.”
The words swept over him like the darkness of Eden.
On some level, he’d known that sometimes the kids in the hospital were very sick. The kind of sick Rain had told him the people of the old kingdom fell to. He knew that humans could not come back like sky kids, and that once they fell, that was it.
Yet every day he came here, some part of him hoped and prayed that if he just got his friends to smile for a few hours, maybe they won’t be sick anymore.
“She didn’t always like coming here,” Miss Johnson said quietly, her gaze sliding toward the far window. “But when you showed up, she started talking again. She acted like a kid again.”
Her hand gently covered his, her warm skin comforting.
“You helped make her last days very happy ones.”
Her hand withdrew, placing something folded and brightly colored into his. After briefly engulfing him in a one-armed hug, she stood and left him alone.
Sky carefully unfolded the note she gave him, bright colors and words jumping out at him through his blurring vision. Sniffling a bit, he stood, holding the note close to his chest as he wiped his mask, the task ahead of him clear as day.
The sun over Daylight Prairie was perfectly warm as usual. A gentle breeze whispered through the lush grass carpeting the meadow. Butterflies of light bobbed among the freshly opened flowers. The air carried the scent of wildflowers, cloud mist and pollen.
On any other day, Sky would spend his time racing to gather light to forge candles, or just sit on one of the hills and lay down in the grass until the sound of the birds and wind lulled him to sleep.
Instead, he clutched Evie’s flower crown in his hands and set it down atop the hill in the meadow, placing her note beside it.
Bring this to Daylight Prairie, so I can catch butterflies with you.
Sky sat among the butterflies and birds, watching the clouds rolls by.
He often wondered where spirits went when they were not re-tracing their steps on the earth. They only ever appeared in Orbit when he passed through the gate to be reborn, then they shot back up into the stars. He never could quite see where exactly they went, but he liked to think it was someplace wonderful since they were so eager to go back.
Wherever humans went after their bodies fell, he hoped it was somewhere just as nice. And maybe Evie was there, flying with her butterfly cape and wearing a crown of flowers. The thought made the sharp ache in his chest dull into a quiet sadness.
Taking a steadying breath, he stood, brushing grass off his pants and turning to look one last time at the little shrine. He summoned a candle, placing it behind the note and the crown. The wick now lit, he finally turned away from the grass, the weight in his chest finally lifting.