The Floodlands Tickle your cheek and take your throne, pump your veins with gushing gold.

Have a novel.

Evening kept her face buried under her paws, not caring how she looked or how potentially vulnerable she was. Even this little bit of sun she was getting was making her skin itch and tingle, although that could just as well have been her imagination. Sometimes, the sun scared her, like it was some mythical living orb that haunted her on purpose, dangling up there in the sky like a demon, trying to ruin her day. The second it fell below the horizon, this irrational fear would dwindle and die out as she explored the nighttime world. But by dawn, the fear would come back, tightening her stomach and she would rush for the shelter of the trees, or a hidey-hole in the ground. There was some merit to this fear, however, as she had experienced a full sunburn before, once or twice, in her puphood. The pain had left her immobile for days.

“Actually,” she said, her voice muffled from keeping her face hidden, “I am dayblind, yes.”

Soon enough, though it still seemed to take an eternity, the other wolf told her that the sun was gone. She lifted her head, shook herself, and fully took in the female for the first time. Her lower body was wet from lying down in the floodwaters but she didn’t care. The flame-colored wolf had asked her what was up with her, and she tried to think of a concise answer. “I have a condition, as you can probably see,” she said, motioning with her head for the other to look at her body, pink skin showing through in places, as well as her strange pink eyes and nose. “I am extremely sensitive to sunlight. I sunburn easily. I cannot see well during the day, and even after sundown, I can’t see things that are far away. Everything past a certain point becomes blurry. So, I usually only come out at dusk, and by dawn I am holed up in a forest somewhere where the light can’t touch me.”

Evening did not normally talk this much in one go, so after her speech, which had been brought on by a need to defend her strange actions, she fell silent, looking away from the female and wondering where this interaction was going to go now that the wolf knew of her strange affliction.