Second Sun Over Glass City
No one believed the second sun would last. When its silver rays struck Glass City, walls trembled, and the clock-towers warbled. Mika started keeping audio logs on day seven.
I woke up on day seven with the familiar static at my window—the shimmer that wasn’t daylight, but wasn’t darkness either. It was silver, like the glimmer of crushed mirror sand, leaking across the ceiling and bleeding into my dreams when I closed my eyes. A month ago, Glass City sparkled for the tourists. Now everyone huddled inside. No one trusted the light that came after noon.
I hit ‘record’ on my handheld, more out of habit than hope. My voice sounded rough. “Personal log, Mika R. Day Seven, post-second sunfall. Still seeing double. Official report says, ‘remain calm and hydrated.’ Official report also swears nothing is wrong with time, even though my wristwatch thinks it’s two in the morning. Neither sun. Window time’s broken. Still—”
The sound of breaking glass split my words. My neighbor, Ellis, was at my door, hair wild with sleeplessness. I opened up, letting him dart inside with a fluttering glance at the silver outside.
“You recording again?” he asked, hands fidgeting at the bag slung across his chest. “You know what they say about the logs, right?”
I shrugged. “Let them listen. Can’t fix what they don’t admit is busted.”
Ellis dropped onto the bench. “I lost Wednesday,” he muttered.
“Everyone did,” I said.
“No, I mean I lost Wednesday. I can’t remember it. One second it was Tuesday, the next the calendar skipped ahead. My feeds too—messages missing, backups all jumbled. I thought I was going nuts but then—”
He held up his jacket sleeve, rolling it to reveal a pattern circling his wrist. Not a bruise, but a ring of sparkling glass, fused into his skin. It tingled to look at it, like something my eyes couldn’t quite process.
“When’d you get that?”
He shuddered. “Last night. Went out looking for answers. City square.” He hesitated, glancing at my recorder. “You’ll think I’m crazy, but—I saw someone in the light. Said my name. Barely human.”
I set the recorder down and pressed my palm to the wall, feeling its feverish hum. Since the second sun appeared, some people glowed. Some people lost days. I hit ‘record’ again.
“Personal log, Mika R. Day Seven. City time skips. Sunlight bends. Ellis says he saw someone—maybe something—in the light.”
We fell into silence. My screens were unreliable now, flickering news and hostile reassurances from the mayor’s office. Everyone in Glass City knew: official time was a lie. Saturday bled into Thursday. Afternoon melted into endless silver-tinted dusk.
I started seeing the second sun inside, in reflections—watch face, kettle, the swirl of Ellis’ glass ring. Listening to the log, my own words sometimes sounded wrong, as if spoken by a stranger. I heard myself say: “Don’t trust what you see,” even when I remembered saying, “Don’t trust what they tell us.”
Ellis left, frightened by the ghost in my recorder. I stayed up, returning to old logs. Tuesday’s entry—that should’ve been two days ago—was gone. In its place, a minute of whispering static. It said my name.
Late on day nine, I ventured outside. The city was empty of people, but full of phantom movement—the shimmer of sun on glass, a faint echo, footsteps not mine. Time bent as I walked. My watch said 3:12, but my heart beat faster, out of step. I reached the city square, the place Ellis named.
At the center was a monument, mirrored to reflect both suns. In its surface, the second sun was clearer—silver, not gold, with rings like fingerprints cycling around it. I reached out and saw my reflection split: one Mika, then two, eyes wide with confusion.
Standing behind me in the glass, a shape loomed. Human, but not—bent in the wrong direction, face made of shards, each showing a different day.
“You’re Mika,” it said in Ellis’s voice.
“Am I?”
“You’re the one who remembers,” the shape replied, angling its head. “Or tries to. That’s why you record. There is a cost to holding broken time.”
I didn’t look away. “Where’s Ellis?”
The figure raised its jagged arm. “On Wednesday. Or maybe Thursday elsewhen. We’re all lost somewhere, now. You can stop recording. Or you can keep holding fragments. Both hurt. Both have a price.”
I stared at my own mirrored face. Distant, unfamiliar. Something ached in my chest.
“I don’t want to forget who I am,” I said softly.
The second sun flared, shadows rippled over the square, and the world felt like a spinning disk, pausing mid-turn. My recorder hissed in my pocket.
“You won’t,” the shape promised. “But remembering out of sequence isn’t remembering at all. Glass City is only whole in the broken.”
Its voice faded. I blinked, alone on the stones. My wrist tingled. A thin thread of glass circled my skin where I’d touched the monument.
I walked home through rolling glitches of dusk and dawn, wondering if the recorder made things better or worse. At the door, the silver sunlight wavered. Ellis sat inside, same as before, but his eyes were sharper, marked by the stain of knowledge.
“Did you find it?” he asked, voice echoing.
“I found myself, in pieces.” I pressed my palm to my chest.
He nodded, understanding. “Think we’re stuck with this?”
“For a while. Maybe forever. Maybe just until the next reset.” I smiled, traces of new possibility threading through my tired bones. “Glass breaks, but it makes new shapes every time.”
We sat by the window, watching the two suns blend, sharing the silence and the burden. Even as days repeated or vanished, we kept piecing ourselves together, memory by memory.
If Glass City had to fracture again tomorrow, at least we’d remember.
###END###
