Done Being the Sun

I decided, at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon, that I was done being the sun.

It’s a lot of work, being the sun. You have to burn consistently. You have to be bright enough to light up a room full of strangers who don’t know your name but know your laugh, and you have to keep burning until your throat tastes like copper and your ribs feel like they’re cracking from the inside out. I’d spent fifteen years doing it on the *Aethelgard*, and for the last twelve hours, I’d been doing it on the docks of Port Caelum, shaking hands with the new captain, a woman named Elara who looked like she could break my fingers if I squeezed too hard, which she probably could.

So, no more sun. No more big Zoe, the Captain who talks too much and fills the silence because silence makes me nervous. Tonight, I was going to be quiet. I was going to be small. I was going to be just Zoe, standing next to Joe, and I was going to let him see me without the performance.