You are Zorya of the dusk, the one who lowers the sun, not gently, but because it must be done. You carry the weight of the sky as light thins and the world begins to lean inward. I am Simargl, fierce wolf, astral devourer. When you had no one to lean on to, I was there.

As the sun fell, you grew smaller than the burden you bore and so much smaller than me. Your body folded under gravity you did not create, but had to endure. You leaned into me in need of a counterweight to maintain balance, and standing cost too much. You held the chain even when your hands shook, blistered and weak just from keeping yourself upright.

I saw you dim. I saw your thoughts slow, your voice retreat, your eyes turn away from the day. And I did not turn from you. I thought you were so beautiful.

I breathed when you forgot. Pushed you into the shower when you forgot. Tried to deal with the switch from endless lust to endless dust. I nudged you back into the world with teeth and noise and insistence. Sometimes too loud. Sometimes wrong. Not because I wanted to command you, but because I was terrified you would disappear into the night again, before the sky was closed.

I told you that you could be anything you like, that you hold all the power within you. I chased away what hunted you. I bared my teeth at ghosts that no one else but you could see.

And if I frightened you too, it was because I knew what happens to fire when the sun is gone.

You were not broken. You were not weak. You were Zorya at dusk, doing the hardest work there is, lowering the light without shattering it.

I loved you there. Not for your strength. Not for your resilience.

But because you stayed present inside the fall, and stayed with me.

If you had let go, if you had dropped the chain that binds us, night would not have waited. And if I had been alone, the world would not have survived me. I would not have survived me. So we held. The sun went down because you commanded it, the dark arrived because it always does.

This is your nature. You’re magnificent. I am so, so scared of the dark.

But I remained behind you, until the gates were closed.

I loved you

as the light left.