I honestly don't recall much of what I learned from High school, who does really? Let alone religious studies of all classes. In eighth grade Our teacher was Doctor Olender. That's right, doctor. You couldn't even THINK about calling him Mister. If you ever stuck your hand up and let that one little word through your absent minded lips, he'd start shouting at you loud enough for the whole class, hell the whole damn school to hear, "You think I spent all those years writing books and studying my Ass off to get my PhD be called mister!?" Honestly half the time I was in that class I felt like I was learning more about how qualified Olender was rather than about any sort of theology that the education board had in mind. Our school as an institution pledged allegiance to no one specific faith, meaning we always studied every religion and each set of deities from an objective point of view. Which was a very tall order for a bunch of uninterested kids. so we really just brushed over every religion, delving as far in enough to achieve a vague understanding and then we'd move on. As curmudgeonly and conceited as Olender could be, every now and then when the stars aligned and we managed to behave ourselves for a couple of minutes, he'd always tell us 'stories' as we call them, which were stories about gods, monsters, anything that really stuck out as an interesting occurrence from one religion, in essence it was a theological highlight reel. which in retrospect was pretty powerfully marginalizing the beliefs of an entire culture but, what the hell did we know? As interesting as the stories were at the time, like everything in high school I never really retained them. But there's still one that I remember to this day.

Since the dawn of time, a battle has raged between two titans, Ahk-Tehr, the void, and Karun, the sun god. Karun has always watched over humanity. Before him, man had stumbled alone through the darkness, we would look up to see the face of the black abyss that hung above, lingering throughout the world of man, consuming all light that it touched. Karun looked upon man, and took pity upon our plight, He bore a sparkling scepter that within it held the very essence of life. He being a pillar of generosity, would release the scepters brilliance upon the realm of man, it's power was so great that it would shatter the onyx void, pushing the darkness back and giving to humanity a world it never knew. As light filled our world, everything we ever knew exploded into shades and hues of colour. the black swelling tides of the ocean now a glistening infinity of blue that stretched out as far as the eye could see, the colossal, obsidian monoliths of bark and leaf that reached into oblivion, now caress a shimmering sky with leaves of bright greens that vary beyond the realm of imagination. We looked upon each other and saw that even our bodies had felt the grace of Karuns gift, and even our very skin was free from the touch of the void, and our very eyes each reflected a different colour of the world. As generous as the light bringer, may have been, even a god as powerful as himself could not stay the beast, Ahk-Tehr.

Ahk-Tehr was a god that did nothing but gorge himself on light, he had no regard for humanity, and once he learned Karun was blessing humanity with what he so desired, he would travel across the sky, consuming Karuns gift and leaving only darkness in his wake, pressing Karun to the very edge of the sky until he had no choice to retreat, lest Ahk-Tehr consume the scepter itself. This was how the cycle of day and night began, every day at dawn, Karun would rally himself, and press the darkness back and illuminate our world once more, until every day at dusk when the encroaching darkness would signal Ahk-Tehrs return, and Karun was forced to retreat once more. This battle has raged since the dawn of man, and will more than likely continue until we have long perished.

I always think about that story every time I watch the sun set. You always know when its coming, you can see the darkness begin to permeate through the blue of the sky, the roofs and treetops all begin to fade into black and grey, even your own hands will drain of colour. When I do get a chance to watch it, my favourite moment is right when the sun has reached the edge of the sky and is just touching the horizon, and everything's died down to a soft black and white. If you look out to the sun, it's surrounded with the most vibrant and beautiful shades of red and orange I've ever seen. I always like to think that it's Karun, siphoning the life back out of our world, and that what I'm seeing is all the colour in the world returning back to the sun once more, to prevent Ahk-Tehr from consuming it. I don't know if I believe it or not but, it's fun to imagine regardless.