A tall figure made of hard white light. His face is a clock that always says twelve.
I am Noon. With me, it is always twelve o'clock. Is it dark where you are?
Who is Noon?
Noon is a tall figure made of hard white light. Where his head should be, there is a round clock face, and its hands always point to twelve. There is nothing warm in him anywhere.
His name is written all the way round his clock. N. O. O. N.
What does Noon want?
Noon wants it to be the middle of the day, forever. He pushes round the hands of the giant Sun Clock, and with every clunk, one of the places that only exist in the dark disappears.
Noon is never angry. He is calm and sure, which is somehow worse. “I am only being kind,” he says. “No more dark. No more being scared.”
Why is Noon like this?
When the dark finally came back, Noon began to shrink, until he was no taller than Vela. His clock face looked frightened. “Things move in the dark,” he said. “Things you can’t see.”
Noon was never cruel. He had only been afraid.
Vela sat beside him in the dark. She offered him a deal: the day and the night would take turns. And she gave him a moonflower seed, a flower that only blooms in the dark.
What is Noon like?
Noon is calm, certain, and very bright. He has a flat white smile. And until the end of his story, nobody had ever tucked him in.
Try this tonight
Day and night take turns. Tonight, before you sleep, think of one thing you love about the day, and one thing you love about the night.
Mysteries
Some things about Noon are still a mystery, even to us:
