Ian throws the plastic ball, and his brother swings and clips it with the red bat. The ball doesn’t go very far.
“That wasn’t a good throw,” declares his brother. “So it’s called a ball.” He kicks it toward the middle of the yard.
“How many of those do you get?”
“Four,” says his brother, hesitantly. “Then… I get a ghost runner on first. The other ones go to third and fourth.”
Ian’s positive there wasn’t a fourth base when they started, but he got out for missing it last time. He picks up the white ball out of the dirt.
But Sun hated the light.
“She said ‘Earth hurts my eyes!'” Mishaal hunches his shoulders, and his firelight shadow becomes round and menacing. “‘I will eat its light.'”
She rose up and began to swallow it, but Earth only made more.
“Sun shrank in pain,” hisses Mishaal. “The bright light crushed her to a tiny ball!”
At last, Sun cut a hole in herself to let the light out; she could keep eating forever, then, even as she swelled and fell.
“Earth saves its light by night,” says Mishaal, “and Sun heals, and the stars are her blood on the sky.”