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The Sun Went Down As the Sun Went Up Someone, somewhere, made an observation once -- and I don't remember how or where or when -- that the world was always in the midst of change but nobody was ever noticing. So, you can imagine the morning when I noticed the sun rising on the horizon even as it was sinking. I blinked, thinking maybe the moon was in my view, looking like a second sun all dressed up for the stage. But no. The moon was also still in the sky -- waning as it is wont to do -- and ... two suns. One rising. One sinking. One. Two. I sank, too, right down the ground, to keep my legs from shaking, and the dog wondered at my confusion, nosing my hand to keep on going. Normally, we are on the move. I don't think the dog saw what I saw, but he sensed that something was not right. How does one go on, though, when what you thought was the world is no longer the world you thought it was? Dogtrax posted on 2018-04-17 at 16:26 Central Time. - link to this story -

I tried to rationalize possibilities. Maybe Copernicus was right but now he's wrong. Maybe the Earth is suspended between two suns still rotating once a day. Or maybe the Earth is dead still with two suns revolving around it. Maybe we will never see night again. Or maybe there's a giant mirror off to the west reflecting the sunrise. Maybe both suns are actually rising and soon we will see two moons. No, that can't be it or I would see a reflection of the waning moon now. No that would take two mirrors. Then we would see an infinite number of suns. And moons. There must be a simple explanation. Apply Occam's Razor. I've gone batshit crazy. But what about my dog? We've both gone batshit crazy. Can dogs go crazy? I'm not sure about dogs but I'm pretty sure about me. I've gone crazy just thinking about all this stuff. hairylarry 2018-04-17 at 18:01 Central Time.

The human is at it again. Just when I think the human has finally stopped acting like he has cats in his head, he goes and starts to wobble and yell at the sky again. Sometimes, I think that whatever Ursa Major was thinking when she created this world, she had it all wrong. But Ursa sleeps through it all. I've been pawing at the human's hand. All the human is doing is staring at the sky, at the two dinner bowls floating in the blue water of the above. I put my head on the human's leg now, hoping the moment passes, and it does. Now the human arises and I can barely catch up. Where is the human going so fast and why can't I stop to catch the story of the smell on that flower? Dogtrax 2018-04-18 at 19:05 Central Time.

I headed due north on the run, my dog following. I was exhausted after a half mile but my legs kept on pumping. I was terrified. I'm not sure why I thought I would be better off in the hills but I was making for them post haste. When I got to the edge of the woods I slowed to a brisk walk and began climbing, lungs pumping. I was literally gasping for breath. My dog wasn't even panting. He looked up at me and whined but climbed into the foothills beside me. I climbed up onto a rocky place and stopped to look at the sky again. "Oh no", I thought, "I was wrong." It wasn't one sun rising and one sun setting. Both suns were rising. hairylarry 2018-04-20 at 21:33 Central Time.

And strange enough, I noticed something else. A rope. Or string. Or wire. Something dangling from the second Sun. It seemed close enough to touch, or so I supposed, although I did wonder if it were merely some optical illusion, and if I would be following the end of a rainbow for days. Something convinced me otherwise. The idea of the unknown dangled off that wire, too, and I knew that if I didn't follow this sense of the unknown, I would never be able to live with myself. "Home," I commanded the dog. Normally, this would have resulted in a quick trot home. He was trained well. But not today. It was as if the dog knew something I did not, and would not leave my side. I shrugged, and made my way forward, towards whatever fell from that Sun, determined to figure out my future, or at least, to discover the unknown. The dog dutifully followed. Dogtrax 2018-04-21 at 13:20 Central Time.

The rope wasn't an illusion but it was much more substantial than it first looked when I finally caught up with it. Almost an inch in diameter like a rope you would use to tie off a large ship. I grabbed it and pulled and the second sun started coming closer and closer. I was reeling it in when it started getting unbearably hot. I guess what comes down must go up because the second sun bounced back up pulling me with it. I pulled back but I was lifted off the ground. The dog jumped up and grabbed me by my pants cuff. Realizing what I had got myself into I let go of the rope. It was further to the ground than I thought and it hurt when I hit. The dog was ok though, licking on me and barking. I checked my limbs slowly. Nothing broke. I got back on my feet. I could walk but it hurt everywhere. I hobbled over to a rock and sat down. I needed a drink. hairylarry 2018-04-22 at 18:59 Central Time.

The drink would have to come later, though. For, as if rope were playing games with me, there it was again. Just beyond fingertip reach. The dog looked at me. I know. I know. But I never was the kind of person who walked away from anything. I hobbled up to my feet, and stood now on the top of my toes to reach up. Up. Up. Up. A little higher. I touched the end of the rope. And then the rope lowered a bit. "Come on," a voice hollered from above me. My dog and I both looked up at the same time, startled by the sound. "Give me a sec. I'll lower the rope a bit more. Then, grab on and we'll pull you up." What could I do? I held on tight and felt myself being lifted as the dog made frantic circles on the ground below me. "Home," I yelled down to my dog, but the voice above me answered with a chuckle, "Oh, I don't think home is where we're going. At least, not right away." Dogtrax 2018-04-22 at 20:08 Central Time.

They pulled me right up into the second sun my dog howling below. But then instead of rising the sun went back to setting. Or maybe the ground was rising as we crossed the foothills and headed into the mountains. My dog got smaller and smaller even chasing us as fast as he could run. I lost site of him when we rounded a cliff. Where were we going anyway? We passed above a high plateau. Rose up above some eagles nests. Right up the side of a cliff and then we nestled tightly into a cave high up above the high plateau. How was my dog ever going to find me here? How was I going to find my way home? And just who was it who brought me here anyway? hairylarry 2018-04-30 at 12:13 Central Time.

As I looked around, I realized that what I had imagined all this time, in panic, to be a second sun was really a spacecraft of some kind -- a giant floating orb disguised as a star in the Earth sky. Ingenious, really. A hatch was opened on the surface about twenty feet away from him. I saw something rise up out of the hatchway. A face of sorts, friendly if strange to my human eyes, looked at me, and then its ... ear ... beckoned me forward. It's strange to describe, how what I assumed must be the ears of this creature called me over. There was a bit of movement on the side of its head, which was shaped like cube of some sort, and I knew that it was signaling me forward. I took one last look down below, at my planet. Then I moved closer to the hatch. Dogtrax 2018-05-05 at 16:51 Central Time.

I climbed right up that rope which was weird in itself because I never could climb a rope before. I was almost up in the orb when I heard barking. I looked down and it was my dog. Running toward the other end of the rope. He jumped and grabbed it in his teeth. He couldn't be climbing a rope. But then again, neither could I. But he was closing in on me anyway. I quickly entered the orb to get out of his way. However he did it he followed me in. He was so happy to see me he was jumping up on me and licking me. I was so happy to see him I almost licked him back. hairylarry 2018-05-05 at 18:47 Central Time.

The hatch opened up unexpectedly, and both the dog and I dropped, falling into what felt like hard gravity. Surprisingly, something soft caught us on the way down. Some sort of netting. We bounced a bit, settled, and then I was able to scramble to solid ground. I looked around, mesmerized by the lights. Dogtrax 2018-05-28 at 09:30 Central Time.

"The Sun Went Down As the Sun Went Up" started by Dogtrax. All stories are licensed Creative Commons-Attribution. You can attribute the writers like this. These writers contributed to "The Sun Went Down As the Sun Went Up" on Collab - Dogtrax, hairylarry