The friends sat outside the healing tent, eating corn on the cob. The sun sank behind the horizon, staining the sky blood red. The healer poked her head out of the tent flap.

"You can come in now," He said. The four sky children entered the tent and saw Rayem sitting on the floor.

"You OK, buddy?" Zaira asked him.

"Yeah, I don't even remember what happened..." He sat up, quickly putting his black wooden mask on again.

Edna started explaining what had happened

"Something poisoned your light magic with shadow magic. I'm doubtful that it didn't do anything." Rayem groaned and flopped onto the ground, nearly squishing Ao.

"Great"

Edna shrugged and tossed him a corn cob, re-heating it with sparks of gold.

"Anyone want to mindrace?" She asked.

"Anyone want to what?" Sunny questioned.

Edna rolled her eyes "Mindrace. It's where you shoot light magic at another sky child. Pretty fun actually."

"You FIGHT?!" Eclipse shrieked, appalled.

"No, you try to just knock the other over," Edna replied with a sigh, "Like this."

She shot a stream of golden light at Zaira, throwing the small child onto the ground. Sunny, overprotective of her twin, whacked Edna with her piano, like always. How could someone so protective of their piano use it as a weapon so often? Zaira glared at Edna and sat up.

"How are I and Eclipse going to play? We haven't summoned our light magic yet!"

The thought hadn't occurred to Eclipse, and she was glad Edna had a solution.

"Well... what if we work on that first! Rayem and Sunny can practice, and you two can summon your light!" Edna replied, already making her way over to the tents' entrance.

✵

"How are you so good at this?" Rayem said, getting knocked over by Sunny yet again. Sunny shrugged, helping him up. Eclipse turned her head away from the sky children and focused on summoning her light. She didn't get very far when a thin stream of pale yellow light tickled her ear. Looking in the direction it had come from, Eclipse spotted Zaira waving her hands around to guide the shaky stream of light. Eclipse groaned

"Now everyone has summoned their light except me!" Edna shrugged

"You'll do it eventua-" She got cut off by a bolt of shadow narrowly missing her face. Eclipse shot over to Edna.

"There is someone waiting, every time, for us to do light magic." Edna hissed, "Then they do shadow magic and poison it."

Eclipse frowned, "Why would they do that?"

"No idea," Edna said, "But I think they left now... I can't sense any shadow magic. Tomorrow at the gathering we can talk to the spirits about it. For now... just be careful."