((art by @.i1ymanasama on twitter!!))

Sunday had been wandering between shelters for days, turned away at every doorstep. The light had grown too bright even for him. A sun swollen with hunger, spilling white fire across the sky until it devoured its own color. The earth beneath his feet was cracked and blistered, air rippling like heat off a forge even in the dead of night. The world no longer smelled of life, only of salt and scorched dust.

He passed houses before. Empty husks, burned clean from the inside out, their walls still humming faintly with the last echoes of prayer. But this one is different. It still breathes. There's movement behind the boarded windows, the faint, uneven rhythm of someone- or multiple someones- who have not yet been consumed.

He stops at the edge of the shadow the house casts- a fragile patch of darkness in a world of blinding light. His small wings shift against the sides of his face, feathers trembling with the residual heat. The air around him shimmers, bending away as though unwilling to touch him.

For a long while, he only stands there, listening. The boards creak. Something inside whispers.

Then Sunday raises a hand and knocks once, twice. Soft and deliberate, the sound almost reverent.

The door opens.

He can’t see who stands beyond it; the wings had folded forward over his eyes, shielding them from the brilliance pouring through the gap. Still, he smiles, voice calm and quiet as a benediction.

“The moon is awfully pleasant tonight,” he says.

The faint rustle of feathers, the sound of something shifting in the light.

“May I come in?”

And with that, the wings draw back from his eyes, and the gold within them catches the glow of the burning sun.