Mr. Sunshine sits around an art table as children fingerpaint. His artwork depicts a crudely drawn yet cheerful meadow under a yellow sun.
“Beautiful, isn’t it. A picturesque vision.”
Sunshine dips his finger into black paint and begins to smear it across the page.
“But a great fog has surrounded this land, till all that the eye can see is shrouded by it.”
The black mixes with the yellow of the sun, turning it to a murky tone.
“Behind the fog, light tries to break through. Yet aside from a few fleeting monetary rays, the darkness prevails over our land.”
He looks at his painting, its beauty ruined by the smearing of the blackish-grey streaks.
“Sad, isn’t it Sunbeams?”
“That darkness is depression. It is a fog that has swallowed Arcadia. Walk through some of the darker parts of our land and you will see the its impact. Suffocating the downtrodden, those that have lost hope in ever seeing the light again.”
“For when people lose hope, they are much more easy to control. A depressed populace dare not fight back. Look at Klaus way and his traveling circus. Poor wee poppets.”
“All I tried to do was to shed a little sunshine in their bleak lives, but he didn’t like that very much now, did he?”
Sunshine stands up, looking over his group of Sunbeams. They chatter as they paint, happily.
“But I am the ray of Sunshine that breaks through the dark clouds. The positivity that pierces through that depression. Even for a fleeting moment, before Arcadia’s fog swallows it back up again.”
“That fog has tried to keep my light from shining. Canceling The Sunshine Club, for it gave the people too much hope. But here’s the thing about light, one cannot make it go away by covering it up. It will still continue to shine, looking for the tiniest of crack to poke through and prove to all that there is something else within this darkness.”
“For you don’t need a lot of light to break the dark fog. You only need… a little Sunshine.”
He sniffs the air.
“But it’s not fog that I smell, is it?”
One of the girls at the table pipes up.
“It’s not. Frankie farted…”
Sunshine smiles, ruffling the hair of one of the boys.
“No, Frankie… It’s smoke. That fog which surrounds the land, it’s no natural phenomenon. It was manufactured, in a lab. Meticulously and deliberately. For we Arcadians know that where there’s smoke… There’s Nox.”
“You are the fog, Smokebringer, that encases Arcadia in their depression. You are the darkness that covers the land. It was your smoke that kept that door shut, hiding the secrets that all of Arcadia deserves to know.”
“And you may think that your smoke is impenetrable. But all you need is a little Sunshine to allow people to breathe again. To hope. To smile. I am that light, ready to burst through your smokescreen, Nox.”
“Time has come for Arcadia to turn the frown upside down, and spread a bit of sunshine to brighten up this smoke-ridden land.”