The Fulgarkinesis Adversary

It occurred that one night while I was stargazing. The clouds foretold a storm, so I ran to take cover. That’s when lightning struck me, sending me crashing to the ground, almost paralysed. My whole body was shaking. I scrambled to take shelter once more.“How didn’t I die?” I thought as I went to bed. As I turned off the night light, I accidentally flicked my fingers, and suddenly, sunlight flooded the room. The familiar sound of my parents' alarm echoed through the house. “Wait... It’s daytime now? This quick?”At school, rumour spread that someone held the power to turn night into day. I knew they were talking about me, but what troubled me was the mention of another: one who could turn day into night. But who could that be?

Days blurred together in Sommarøy, our little island adrift off Norway’s coast—a place where clocks had long been surrendered to the sea. Visitors once left their watches on the Sommarøy Bridge, as if time itself were a burden too heavy to carry home. For sixty-nine sleepless days, sunlight ruled us. People painted cabins at midnight, children played by the fjord in endless gold, and mornings arrived without meaning.

Yet lately, the light had begun to feel wrong—too fierce, too endless. It seared through curtains and eyelids alike, bleaching the sky into fatigue. The fishermen no longer sang; even the sea seemed to squint beneath the glare. Sommarøy, once the island that laughed at time, was now quietly breaking under its own brightness.

One dusky evening, I wandered to the water’s edge and saw him.A boy stood there—barefoot, solemn, the night gathering around his silhouette like a cloak. He called himself, Nohr. His hair was in a frenzy and shone like black ice, his eyes a stormy hue of blue-grey—unfathomable, unreadable. He looked my age, yet carried a gravity that made the world hush.

“You’re the one who bends the light,” he said, his voice smooth as snowfall. “But you’ve upset the balance.”“I didn’t ask for it,” I replied. “I only wanted to see the sun again.”“And I,” he said, glancing at the dimming horizon, “only wanted to dream in darkness.”

A strange calm passed between us—the kind that precedes thunder. Above, the aurora borealis writhed in agony, its ribbons tearing between emerald and gold. The island trembled, caught between day and night, a creature pulled apart by its own heartbeat.

“If the light never sleeps,” I whispered, “then nothing can wake.”Nohr nodded. “Then let us teach the world to breathe again.”

He extended his hand. The moment our palms touched, the air split open. Lightning and shadow collided, swirling into a storm of silver fire. The sky screamed—and then exhaled. The sea stilled. For the first time in months, half the sky shimmered with daylight, the other half softened under the stars. Balance had returned.

When the silence settled, Nohr was gone. Only a crescent mark glowed in the sand beside a single line: “Until balance breaks again.”

That evening, my mother served steaming lapskaus—thick stew and rye bread—and I sat by the window, sipping warm sjokolade melk. The fjord glimmered amber beneath the first true sunset I’d ever seen.

And as I watched the light yield gently to the night, I understood. Power means nothing without restraint; even brilliance must bow to rest.

After all, what is day, if night does not remind it to be kind?

Hasiny Umayal Manikandan