Burning Warrior and Night Beauty
Written By: Maren Ott

It once was that a great warrior ruled high in the sky. His skin burned bright and gave the world heat and life, but it also brought pain. His people on the earth worshipped him, making sacrifices to him and offering up gifts into the sky. This ruling warrior was known as the Burning Warrior.

He was a cruel ruler. His whip struck the backs of those that toiled in the fields or dared venture without protection from their meager dwellings. To entertain himself he started fires in the dry fields, laughing at the pesky men struggling to put out his fury. He also dried water reserves, and put great droughts upon the land. And yet the people worshipped him. They feared not to do so, their treatment would be forever worsened. And so the years passed. The poor people toiling for the Burning Warrior, and the ruler having little mercy in his entertainment.

To one of the men on the earth was born a daughter. Not just any daughter, but the girl was beautiful from the moment of her birth. They named the beauty Orla. Orla was a sickly child, and she very rarely ventured from the safe darkness of her parents’ little mud hut. When she did go, for the birth, marriage or death celebrations, she had many admirers.

As she grew she became even lovelier, and with the beauty came the sickness. She grew sicker the more beautiful she became. Her parents blamed it on the generations of constant heat and light.

One day, as the warrior observed a prospective burning, a wedding ceremony, he spotted Orla. Her ebony hair flowed around her shoulders. Her pale face radiated from beneath her father’s spare wide-brimmed hat and her almost colorless eyes blinked in the blinding light. The Burning Warrior vowed to know this girl’s name and the reason why he had never seen her before.

On the way back to their decaying mud and grass huts, a fire stopped the band of folks that Orla was walking with. The mysterious fire did not burn the ground on which it stood, and it suddenly took the shape of a man. The hand of this fire-creature pointed it’s grotesque hand at the beautiful Orla, and the crowd knew to refuse a minion of the Burning Warrior would be sure death. So, with sad farewells, the girl followed the warriors servant as fast as her weak body could carry her.

The burning servant led her to the edge of the earth to wait for the great Burning Warrior. She stood there for a time unknown to her because she had no timekeeper, but it was one week’s time.

She was weary and even weaker than usual when he finally came, descending from the lofty heights from whence he ruled. As he came nearer to her, she felt the intense heat of this Burning Warrior, and the bright rays that came from his skin blinded her. She fell to the ground, covering her eyes and screaming from the burns on her pale flesh.

Seeing the beauty in pain, the warrior extinguished his flaming body in the Waters of the Abyss on the edge of the earth. He picked her up and turned her face toward him. Her once pale skin was red and blistered. Her almost colorless eyes were glazed and searching but saw nothing.

Taking pity on the girl, as he had never done before, he called darkness to the land. He hid her away in his great home, knowing that with the unaccustomed darkness, nobody would see her face.

For a year, to the day, darkness blanketed the dying land, and Suffering was a common visitor to the people. During this darkness, that the people called "Night", the great ruling warrior was a constant sight at her bedside. Gentleness had been found in the world’s ruler, and he loved Orla dearly. To his delight, Orla returned his love.

At the end of the year, Orla’s face had become the pale sight of beauty it had once been, and her eyes saw again. The ban of light had been lifted, and the Burning Warrior blazed in the sky once more. He came to find the land wasting away and his people pitifully sick and thin.

The once cruel Burning Warrior announced his impending marriage to the girl, Orla. The people were glad to know that the ruler had softened, and that one of their own had been the one to coax the gentleness into the light. They called her the Night Beauty, for she had brought beauty and an end to the suffering.

The Night Beauty stayed in the Burning Warrior’s great home while he patrolled the skies, making sure that the people were taking care of the land. After the people went to their dwellings at the end of the day, the ruler doused himself in the Waters of the Abyss before going home to his wife, Night Beauty. He never again wanted to hurt her, and he brought "Night" to the land before he went.

The people still see their benevolent Burning Warrior, calling his sighting "Day" and they still remember the suffering of that first "Night" that will forever stay in their minds.