Premise
As far back as anyone can remember, the sun's been a bit leaky. For the longest time, this hasn't really been a problem, since drops of golden sun only fall from the sky every couple of generations, and when they do, the fairies collect the golden ichor, and perform a magical ritual to have it sent right back into the sun. Unfortunately, some generations ago, a race of giant beings called 'humans' arrived and built a great citadel out from the sea, and began stealing the drops before they could be sent back into the sun. with every drop that was lost, the sun grew leakier and leakier. Now, it seems as though the sun will run out of golden light and go dark forever if it loses so much as one more droplet. A young fairy named Aesop is tasked with watching the skies for drops of golden sun, to make sure they can be sent back, but he arrives too late to his post one morning, and misses a drop falling right in front of his observatory. The humans have already arrived to take it away to their magnificent citadel, and Aesop realizes he has no choice but to follow them into this unfamiliar and dangerous territory to get the drop back.
I'm not entirely certain what the starting point was for this story's conception. I remember I had stopped writing for a few months in mid 2024 due to a severe loss of motivation, and one day, during a particularly long afternoon drive, I found myself distracted by the glare of the sunset on my windshield. Something during that drive caused me to want to write about the sun. A part of me also really wanted to take a crack at writing a proper fairytale. So much fantasy nowadays tries to be like Lord of the Rings, or the novelization of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I wanted something simpler. Something cozy, for younger audiences. Something that you'd be able to feel nostalgic about returning to years later. Major inspirations for this story include Fable (a video game for the original Xbox), Pan's Labyrinth, and the Arthur and the Invisibles movies (I know they started as books, but the first movie has David Bowie, so I like it more).
