There is always something to distract us, something urgent, usually unpleasant, so I’m going to say this really fast, before I lose your attention: last night I heard the roar of the planet spinning on its axis, the deafening breath of an enormous creature.

I know what you’re going to say, that Earth doesn’t make noise when it travels through space, ok, so its electromagnetic radiation translated to sound if that makes you feel better. 

It’s not like my life is going to change tomorrow, I won’t go to bed smarter, stronger or more enlightened, it is unlikely that I’ll solve the world’s problems, or even my own, but I will remember to welcome that strange, loud and raspy breath of Earth into my lungs while I fall asleep. 

Music - Found by Stephen Keech

Where the ghost of reality waits in the wings

You’ll be wary and tired of the trouble it weaves,

And you’ll question its timing, and you’ll fail to believe

But as true as it is that you live and you breathe,

Its ghost will show up in the morning.

You will question the standing of unwritten rules

You’ll abide by the past and you’ll feel like a fool

While your life will get cast in a whole different light

And you won’t be excused from the truth that it brought

And whether you protest, you seethe or you doubt,

Its ghost will show up in the morning.

You’ll get mad at the waste that it made of your time

You’ll find people to blame and you’ll sulk, and you’ll whine

And the light will shine brighter in your tired eyes

Revealing realities you can’t deny

And whether you suffer, you run or you lie,

Its ghost will show up in the morning.

You’ll be shamed by the crudeness that’s thrust on your heart

You’ll be naked and scared, have your soul ripped apart

But the truth will be there, universal and hard

It will outlast your life, and your dreams and your pride

And whether you bargained, you feared or you cried

Its ghost will show up in the morning.

Have you ever watched the moon rise on the ocean 

on a bright summer night 

when all the stars are out 

and by their light alone, you see your shadow? 

When the whole world pretends to sleep,

and the air is thick with waves,

and rhythm, 

and the smell of salt and seaweed?

When the sand is cold beneath your feet,

and the breeze brings a shiver, 

and you startle when you accidentally walk past the water line

into a different substance 

you can’t see 

but which warns you 

you wandered into a no-man's-land between the worlds?

If you did, what did the moon whisper to you, my kindred lunatic?

It’d be awkward if it spoke to me alone.

A story of human evolution, discovery, friendship, and the brave insistence on imagining more than one is allowed. 

Join Cimmy on a journey where avid curiosity slowly melts the limitations of her environment, and witness her small acts of defiance turn into breakthroughs that change the world.

Chapter 1 - The Garden of Despair

Episode 3 - Greed

Episode 4 - The Purple Flowers

Chapter 2 - The Garden of Scorn

Episode 5 - Purple Thistles

Episode 6 - Rat!

Episode 7 - Everyone Deserves a Name

Episode 8 - Beyond Confines

Chapter 3 - The Garden of Angst

Episode 9 - The Drought

Episode 10 - Dig

Episode 11 - Open Waters

Can you hear us, friend?

The thoughts at your temples,

the love in your heart,

the will to remember,

the capacity to overcome,

the things you will make,

the paths you will take,

your life from outside of yourself?

What’s that you say,

oh, most real one 

from the realest of realities?

Of course we are all in your head, 

where else would we be?

We’re the dwellers of context and content

Your guests from the meta of real.

one small thing that matters,

even an echo in a canyon, 

even a faint scent on a breeze,

then we haven’t lived in vain, 

have we?

The world is strident,

painful loudness,

a babel of shrieks and disorienting jangle,

inside which that small thing

may be the only music that endures

long enough to seed the chaos 

with the nostalgia of order

after its source was silenced.

She’d taken them off because she couldn’t run in them, or dance in them the way she wanted to, and in the process rediscovered the feeling of soft grass under her bare feet, and the rush of the water around her ankles during the torrential rain.

She opened the other pane and stood in the doorway, her back against one of the wide wooden jambs, looking out into the garden at the clear puddles that had formed, here and there, in the gravel path, after the rain. The morning sunshine touched them gently, stirring glimmers and sparkles, almost like a dare to bring Cimmy out into the open. 

The latter giggled, delighted by this game nature was playing with her, and rushed out, barefoot, into the garden, splashing in puddles and getting drenched from above with the remnants of the night rain that the wind brought down from the tree canopies above.

The garden was very large, but Cimmy knew it well, because she had spent her whole childhood in it. She rushed past the tall sages and bent her head, without even thinking about it, when she walked under the arbor, where the roses were in full bloom. She had the wild canes of the climbing roses tangle in her hair more than once, and by now she could bow her head just enough to avoid them, even with her eyes closed.

She wandered past the tall lilies, which reached above her head, and whose dark, pollen laden stamens stained her fingers when she brushed her hands against them. 

Behind them, the umbels of milkweed welcomed hosts of butterflies, which were stirred into flight by the light breeze, only to descend quickly upon the bright orange flowers again, in search of nectar.

The narrow gravel path ended abruptly into the main alley, which was wide, covered in flagstones and lined by linden trees. 

Cimmy walked in the shade of the trees, breathing deeply the sultry perfume, her soles tickled by the moss and flowering thyme which was growing between the stones like a soft living carpet and yielded its spicy fragrance under her feet.

She felt the breeze from the pond and picked up the pace, eager to reach her favorite hiding spot before the rain started again, she could tell from the dance of light and shadow on the path that a second installment of the downpour that had fallen overnight was about to start at any moment.

The gazebo was out on a narrow strip advancing into the lake, strip which broke down towards the end, into a path of stepping stones, surrounded by the water, and Cimmy jumped from one stepping stone to the next with the agility of a mountain goat.

She jumped into the gazebo just seconds before the rain started again, with booming, rolling thunder and bolts of lightning, dancing above the trees; the rain fell hard and fast, drumming on the roof, and crumpling the placid surface of the pond with a myriad of ripples.

The hem of her dress was drenched and heavy, and had turned three shades darker, but Cimmy didn’t care. 

She sat down on the round bench that surrounded the post in the middle of the gazebo and gazed into the distance at the heavy clouds which were moving very fast, dropping their watery load over the heads of the cattails, and on the fleshy petals of the water lilies, and sifted it down through the tree canopies until only a sprinkling of water drops reached the ground.

The warm air over the pond turned into mist in the cool rain, and its soft white blanket padded the water plants, and the stepping stones, and Cimmy’s bare feet, while she sat there, watching, mesmerized, the intricate movements that made it feel alive, somehow, while she breathed deeply the scent of the rain, mixed with the overpowering fragrance of wet gardenias and orange blossoms.

Such was the beauty of Cimmy’s garden, and how proud she was of it! It was the most beautiful place on earth, she thought, this walled garden of hers, this heavenly shelter in the middle of existence, this place where everything was flawless.

She stretched out her cupped hands, and they were filled in an instant by the fast falling rain, and she drank from them eagerly, to appease her thirst. 

She then jumped out in the rain, from stepping stone to stepping stone, shivering and giggling, and ran through the fruit orchard, stirring the wet dirt between the trees and filling the lap of her dress with peaches, whose ripe skins were almost the same color as her wet dress was now, while the rain kept falling, thick and heavy, from above.

She couldn’t even remember how many times she had made her way through the peach orchard, hundreds, thousands maybe, to find the dirt path that weaved through the wildflower meadow and led back to the house. 

During sun baked summer afternoons, the meadow was covered in the bright eyes of chamomile and chicory, but not now, when the flowers had shut themselves tight to keep out of the downpour that was pounding their sappy stems and releasing their fragrance.

The young girl was about to reach the flagstone path when the rain let up and the sun started shining immediately, making every drop of water sparkle. Tiny birds, thrilled by the plentiful water, gathered in flocks to bathe in the puddles, boding good weather.

Cimmy wasn’t in a rush to get to the house, but her feet carried her back to the garden in front of her bedroom, just by the power of habit. 

She reached the little herb wheel, with tall anise growing around the fountain at its center, and there she stopped and sat down on one of the old garden benches, basking in the sunshine, to allow her gown to dry and to munch on a peach, in the peace of this plant realm of scent and wonder, surrounded by bees and butterflies, and the smell of the heated herbs.

Clouds passed overhead, playing with the sunlight, on, off, and on again, enticing the birds to sing louder, until their collective chirping drowned all the other sounds. 

A baby rabbit, a cottontail, jumped at Cimmy’s feet and startled her, and then turned abruptly, to distract potential predators, and vanished behind a shrub.

Cimmy got up to take a look at one of the garden patches, which had not been planted yet, and spent a few minutes in front of it, trying to determine whether she should grow chives or dill, and she couldn’t help notice that the thyme seeds that she had carried on the soles of her feet had already started to sprout in her footsteps, making the whole decision process obsolete. 

She sighed, resigned, when she saw it happen, and allowed the garden to decide for itself, hoping that there wasn’t too much sunshine in that particular spot. 

She picked a few handfuls of purple pods from the pole beans, which were laden with flowers and fruit, all donning the same noble color, and smiled instantly at the sight of the huge squash flowers, whose cheery orange matched the brightness of the summer morning.

She looked at the pepper patch and regretted not planting the more colorful varieties, the purple, yellow, orange and red ones, and her thoughts seeded the fertile dirt, which bore fruit immediately, to accommodate them. 

Satisfied, Cimmy turned around on her heels and was about to return to the house, when a familiar voice shrieked through her beautiful landscape, ripping huge tears in its fabric and making her choke with dust.

“Cimarron!! Curse the evil moment that spit you into this world to burden my life! Wake up, you useless cockroach! Are you waiting for the sun to raise you? There’ll be no food tonight, so you know, we only feed those who work to earn their keep!”

The door slammed behind her, reverberating in Cimmy’s head like the sound of a trap closing. She sat up carefully, wincing because of her bruised ribs, and coughed up the dust that was filling her nose and her mouth. They haven’t seen water in months, and on the barren patches of thirsty dust, creased by deep cracks, crooked and swollen around the edges like scars, nothing grew anymore, not even weeds. Only the scraggly tops of bitter roots, whose sharp and ravenous filaments grasped onto the dirt so desperately that people worked their hands raw straining to pull them.

She’d been born to this place, Cimmy was, to this garden of despair, bitter and filled with harshness, this place where she was lucky to be fed and begrudged for being born, the place that hope forgot. Nobody understood, and Cimmy least of all, where that heavenly garden of her dreams came from, for surely there was no way she could have seen anything of the sort, or even heard stories about it. 

Nobody in the community had ventured past the tall walls of their garden, if one could call it that, in generations. 

When she was very young, Cimmy had tried to describe the pond, and the peach orchard, to siblings and friends, and got a vicious beating for her trouble, so she learned to keep her imaginary garden to herself.

She slept on the dirt floor, right next to the door, a place that was drafty during chilly nights and where the door hit her in the back every time somebody went in and out of the room they all shared. It was hours before the sunrise, but everyone else was already up, trying to get to whatever roots they could find before the others came and picked them clean. Cimmy got up too, dusted herself off and went outside. She was still trying to get the powdery dirt out of her mouth, but behind the crunchy, mineral bitterness that settled in the back of her throat, she could still taste the peach she had enjoyed earlier in her dream.

Richard, who worshiped the scientific method, tied a little string around the plant and marked its height on the pipe. He tried to snip a little piece of stem with leaves, but the stem was harder to cut than a steel cable. He managed to pull a leaf, after much struggle, placed it in the back pocket of his pants and tended to other things of interest, after all his secret weekend kingdom had so many things to offer. 

He wandered about a little bit, moving from the engine room to the pipe manifold distribution center, the most impressive area in the factory, and Richard's favorite spot. It looked almost like a gigantic organ, with tubes splaying out in every direction, through windows and transoms, along walls and bending around openings, snaking about a few inches off the floor, splitting and reuniting with the twisted patterns of a gnarled old tree. Richard spent hours wandering inside this mechanical forest, following its logical flows, trying to understand which steam pipe fed what, learning the inner works of its vortex flow meters, its pressure couplings, its every bend and elbow.

There was a place inside this knot of metal limbs, a clearing almost, a hollow, from which he could see the entire manifold branching overhead, and when he sat there, on a little concrete base that for some reason had remained unoccupied, it made him feel as if the entire power distribution system was an extension of his person, and that as small and weak as he was, compared to this enormous metal monster, he was its heart, the soul in the machine, the essential component that allowed the whole system to work. Even though he knew the distribution manifold very well, and if he closed his eyes he could see its every detail, he liked to take a walk around and inspect it every time, and then, with the relief of having found everything exactly the way it was supposed to be, he sat there on his concrete base for a while, and dreamed. And, indignity of indignities, that's where he found the plant again, inside his precious, sneaking out between two pressure rated flanges and then back in via an isolation valve. 

At first he didn't want to believe it, of all the places this trespasser could choose to inhabit, to intrude on his beloved pipe manifold was simply unthinkable! He looked closer at the pressure flanges. The plant seemed to grow not through them, but from them, there was no discernible space between the stem and the metal. Richard was dumbfounded by this living puzzle, and in his bewilderment he failed to notice that the temperature in the room was significantly higher than usual until pearls of sweat started beading his forehead.

“What on earth?” he thought. “Do they turn off the fans over the weekend? This place is an oven!” 

He didn't remember it ever being that hot in the manifold room, and since the seasons were moving in the wrong direction for an increase in temperature, he had to accept that the reason for the unusual warmth could only be the other parameter in the equation. He turned around and touched one of the leaves, which was hot. 

“Oh, this can't be good!” Richard panicked. He agonized over the fact that now he would have to tell his father, it was the right thing to do, and face the consequences of his unauthorized access to the factory floor. On the other hand, if he noticed all of these changes, and they were quite blatant, surely somebody else, a grown-up, with any luck the very person in charge of this section, would notice too. How could they not? They'd have to turn down the heat, for one, nobody could work in that sauna.

But then again, what if nobody did, and his precious distribution manifold would end up fully engulfed in hot plant! The vision of a very large and strange tree, a fusion of green and metallic branches, with limbs made out of steam pipes and twisted ropes of green stems running between them occupied his mind. The thought made him burst with laughter with its absurdity. 

He headed home, eventually, so deep in thought he didn't notice the light drizzle that felt bone chilling  after leaving that toasty tropical greenhouse environment. When he got to his room, the leaf in his pocket was still warm. Tormented by guilt and curiosity, he spent all his weekend orbiting around his father, trying to strike up conversations in the hope of finding out if he knew anything about the plant. Surely somebody must have noticed it by now, it was literally taunting people, that cheeky vine, as plain as the nose on their faces.

Listen to the whole story here.

and see how life expands inside a bloom.

Because I’m me I dare to touch the sunset,

and walk at ease under a silver moon.

Because I’m me, my life is filled with wonder,

and every day brings strangeness like a gift.

Because I’m me I can behold tomorrow

before it had a reason to exist. 

Because I’m me I get to be enchanted.

Because I’m me, not anybody else.

I dare to lift the curtain of existence,

to peek behind and see its innocence.

You can’t assert nothing is real while taking in reality through your senses.

Nothing is what you thought, nothing is permanent, nothing has fixed meaning, but everything is very much real, because this is what real is: whatever you perceive, think and feel at the time.

heartening halo on horizon gleaming

silence bares the wholeness of the heart

wishes ring the airy bells of dreaming.

In the hazy gaze into forever

in the memory of thoughts to ponder

things are loved and praised and wished and weighted

by the ever changing scale of wonder.

Nothing goes and nothing comes of nothing

there is essence in the word of truth

we are small and meek into the vastness

of the worlds beyond the sights of youth.

Everything you see and do is easy

everything you watch and shape is too

life is but a softened breath of Heaven

in the conscious splendor of God's woo. 

I can feel grass grow in my surrender

dainty fingers of desire renewed

never soothe the restless lust of wonder

always ban the wares of solitude.

Listen to the wholesome pulse of all

bask in the reverberance of feeling

nothing wears the essence of the soul

when love moves forever into being.

“What about you, doyenne?” Aifa asked. “Haven’t you heard this before?”

“Oh, no, child. No two years’ teachings are ever the same. What would be the point of divine guidance if you could sum it up in one year. The wisdom has no end.”

As the summer festival approached, the little stack of messages the Twins left with Aifa to give their future selves grew into a sizable pile.

“What should I do with all of this?” Aifa looked to her grandmother for advice.

“Keep your promise to them, as did all the Caretakers, since they first arrived in Cré. Keep them in order and return them to the Twins next year, and don’t forget you need to be mindful of the timing.”

“Do you have any messages to give them this year?”

“That is between the Caretaker and the Twins, granddaughter. It is a question that is neither permitted, nor answered. You should read the messages you were given, as you organize them. Some of those are actually for you.”

Aifa took some time, during the few quiet moments in the Hearth, to skim through the pile of messages, puzzled by some, amused by others, wondering if there was any point in delivering them at all, after all, in the year to come she might just as well approach complete strangers in the streets of Cré for what it was worth.

“The ways of the divine are not our ways,” she remembered the wisdom of her grandmother. “Everything happens for a reason; sometimes you have to trust before you get a chance to understand.”

It didn’t take Aifa long to figure out the older messages from the new ones. As time unfolded, the missives developed from short, childish comments or expressions of affection to long and elaborate communications, which were timely and precise to a fault.

“How is anybody ever going to understand this?!” Aifa blurted, exasperated, after she finished reading the detailed instructions for the construction of what, she could only surmise, was a flying machine. “Why would anybody ever believe something like this, or even attempt it? If we were meant to fly, we would have been born with wings.”

“Sometimes I wish you took my words, said in jest, a little less literally, granddaughter,” her grandmother couldn’t help but overhear.

Aifa pondered for a long time about what she was supposed to do with this mixture of wisdom and craziness, agonizing over the fact that it was, apparently, her responsibility to decide its fate. After she delivered the messages, they would most likely be lost, the Twins had no need for any possessions other than the shirts on their backs. If she didn’t deliver them, and instead kept them safe in box at the library, they again would be lost, because that defied their very purpose for existing and stunted the Twins ability to communicate with their other selves through time. She decided on option number three. As soon as she received a message, she wrote it down in a compendium, complete with the time when it was to be delivered and the events that surrounded receiving it. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could think to do.

“Flying machine indeed! Sometimes I wonder who is crazier, them or me,” she brooded over the latest message, then shook her head in disbelief, folded it and placed it in her pocket, to be processed later.

She could hear the other Caretakers’ heated discussion about decorating the chariots. It was almost time for the parade and there was still much work to do to get them ready, so she joined the others to help out.

The chariot wheels were quite large, to make it easier for people to pull them through the market square, so the Caretakers had to help the Twins climb into them. When Aifa held Ama’s hand to help her up, the latter left another folded message in the palm of her hand.

The chariots advanced slowly through the crowds, in the middle of cheerful exaltation, and dancing for joy. The people of Cré loved to see the Twins paraded through town in their full regalia, as the living, breathing embodiments of the divine that they were.

The market square was so saturated by color and emotion there didn’t seem to be any room for anything else, so much human emotion it overwhelmed the soul: joy, sadness, elation, longing, all melted into a thick, heavy blanket that weighed the Twins’ spirit down like lead. The people of Cré didn’t notice, each one of them focused on bringing their portion of this gigantic shared public emotion to the square, impervious to the others’, in a communal outpouring of the soul.

The Twins’ faces were impenetrable, like stone. One couldn’t read any emotions on them, as it was fitting for living deities, they seemed so far removed from the daily concerns and tribulations of the people, but as the burden of emotion became heavier and heavier to bear, the smallest teardrop gathered in the corner of Jal’s eye and made its way down his cheek, slowly losing its own substance in the process.

As if waiting for a sign, the clouds gathered over the horizon, so thick and waterlogged it felt like they were dragging on the ground. Jal looked at them, like he expected them to come, and his relief allowed a second tear to follow the first. Deafening thunder shook the heavens, echoing between the old stone walls before it retreated in a low rumble. Another tear flowed down Jal’s cheek. That’s when the rain started.

People cheered, elated, pulling the chariots around the square in the pouring rain, grateful for the blessing of the crops, grateful for the harvest, grateful for life itself. As Jal’s tears flowed freely on his face, water rushed through the stone streets, down ancient steps and narrow alleys, washing them clean. It flowed through hidden aqueducts back into the fields, to water the crops, parched by the summer heat, and rushed in beautiful waterfalls down the cliffs, back to the sea.

Aifa had participated in this festival many times, but she had never been close enough to the Twins to see what was actually happening. She always took it for granted that the Twins’ nature was in some unknown ways transcendent, but this was not a subject that occupied her mind. She had her education, and her family, and all of the activities and social events that marked the life of the city like an animated calendar, so metaphysical issues were never high on her agenda. These were things the elders pondered, mostly because they had fulfilled their social obligations and had nothing better to do with their time. But now, as she watched Jal cry rain from the sky, her heart skipped a beat and really started wondering what kind of beings the Twins were. They looked human in every respect, and in some ways they were very naive, childish even, and yet, Aifa could feel their presence touch her, even from a distance, in an undeniable way she had no way of describing.

“What are they, doyenne?” she asked her grandmother, when the shock of what she had experienced receded.

“That is the mystery,” grandmother replied. “We have been the Caretakers of this mystery for many centuries, and still, nobody knows.” She looked up at the sky, from where rain kept pouring thick and heavy. “We need to bring the Twins back to the Hearth, we don’t want them to catch a cold.”

Since the roof had its circular opening right above their sunken water beds, Aifa was worried that they will find the Twins’ beds filled with water, only to discover, with bewilderment, that they were completely dry.

“How…” she started asking her grandmother, who stopped her question with a gesture of her hand.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to, granddaughter.”

The Caretakers ran around the Twins like mother hens, bringing towels and dry garments, and starting a fire to keep them warm, even if it was the middle of July. Outside, the rain kept pouring down, its even patter interrupted by the rhythm of powerful lightning and thunder.

The Twins were tired, more so than Aifa had ever seen, and curled up in their sunken beds like cats, mysteriously shielded from the rain falling from above, and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

“It is the rain,” grandmother said. “It soothes them. Maybe it reminds them of home, who knows?”

The Hearth turned very quiet, as not to disturb the Twins’ slumber. The Caretakers moved around like ghosts, attending to their chores, the shuffle of their bare feet on the stone floor drowned by the powerful rapping of the rain.

Aifa finally found time to get out of the wet clothes herself, and as she changed, she remembered the little message Ama had given her before she got up in the chariot, and reached eagerly for it. It was so badly soaked she worried it was going to fall apart in her hands as she tried to open it, but it didn’t.

The ink was bleeding onto the page, almost washed away in places, but the message was complete enough to read, so there was no doubt about what it said. Unlike the previous notes, it was very short, dated one year from now, and it only said ‘we did remember’.

“What are you doing, granddaughter?” grandmother surprised her. “Change out of those wet clothes, you are shivering.”

Aifa obeyed, with mechanical gestures, her mind fixed on something else. She wondered, since the Twins seemed to be tuned into their future selves, whether she could ask them questions about the following year, whether it was even allowed, and if it was, did she really want to know it? It was a great responsibility, learning about the future.

Her grandmother seemed to guess her inner struggle.

“I see that you found something else to place your fears on. Why don’t you fear the past instead, I’m sure there must have been something unpleasant in it, and the past is just as much with us as the future. Stop waiting for the next breath, granddaughter. You should be living your life, not allowing your life to live you. Fulfill your purpose, the reason that brought you to this life, the rest is irrelevant.”

“So, learning about the future is pointless?” Aifa asked.

“It all depends on whether what you learn helps you with your life’s purpose. If the Twins found it in their hearts to allow you a glimpse into their future, they must have done it for a good reason.”

It was still raining at night fall, and it was going to rain for days on end.

“Why don’t we sleep here tonight? There is no point in braving the elements just to have some place to come from in the morning?”

Aifa looked around and noticed that many of the Caretakers had the same idea; they were lighting candles and laying pillows on the floor, and brought soft blankets closer to the fire, to warm them up.

The rain continued through the night. Whether it was the rain or the exhaustion of a very emotionally charged day, everybody fell into a deep sleep without dreams. Aifa didn’t know what it was that awakened her in the wee hours of the morning, but when she opened her eyes, for just a fraction of a second, she could swear she saw a water surface gleam softly from the Twins’ beds. The vision disappeared immediately, as her rational mind went back to processing the reality around her, and she saw them as she was supposed to see them, two siblings, looking so much alike it was hard to tell them apart, curled up like cats under their soft blankets. Aifa assumed she was still dreaming when she first lifted her head from the pillow, because she couldn’t have seen what she saw. She glanced quickly at her grandmother, wondering if the latter had had the same experience, but her grandmother, like everybody else in the Great Hall, was fast asleep.

If there was one good thing about being thirteen, it was that one didn’t take things too seriously. Maybe it had been a dream, maybe it was something she was supposed to see, and if she did, what of it? Nobody would believe her anyway. Aifa shrugged, turned her pillow over and went back to sleep.

Softness brushes the glass pane, steadily patting at the window with delicate plush soles, the kind that make intricate embroidery patterns on freshly fallen snow, but no sounds, no sounds at all, ever.

Showing up from thin air in response to a thought, she unravels unhurried on the front porch, a humming russet and gray puzzle watching the world through amber colored lenses.

Her inquisitive temperament nuzzles my spirit with the trusty innocence of new life, in hope of comfort, protection and sheltered playfulness, while its being wraps itself around my ankles in physically impossible ways for no reason at all, just to amuse itself, undulating with the unrestricted sweeps of water, twining my feet in a live kinetic bind.

She gazes into the distance, with wisdom unknown, seeing more than me, or at least seeming she does, then quietly draws furry curtains over the glowing ambers of her soul.

Play simmers down like the end of a dance while shiny wisps of gray and brown are still stirred by the lightest breath. She curls up in my lap oblivious to want and care, a living pillow filled with meows winding itself in progressively tighter circles like the spring of a clock, and I don't know anymore where softness ends and where I begin.

Music: Lilting by Cast of Characters

She could hear the other Caretakers’ heated discussion about decorating the chariots. It was almost time for the parade and there was still much work to do to get them ready, so she joined the others to help out.

The chariot wheels were quite large, to make it easier for people to pull them through the market square, so the Caretakers had to help the Twins climb into them. When Aifa held Ama’s hand to help her up, the latter left another folded message in the palm of her hand.

The chariots advanced slowly through the crowds, in the middle of cheerful exaltation, and dancing for joy. The people of Cré loved to see the Twins paraded through town in their full regalia, as the living, breathing embodiments of the divine that they were.

The market square was so saturated by color and emotion there didn’t seem to be any room for anything else, so much human emotion it overwhelmed the soul: joy, sadness, elation, longing, all melted into a thick, heavy blanket that weighed the Twins’ spirit down like lead. The people of Cré didn’t notice, each one of them focused on bringing their portion of this gigantic shared public emotion to the square, impervious to the others’, in a communal outpouring of the soul.

The Twins’ faces were impenetrable, like stone. One couldn’t read any emotions on them, as it was fitting for living deities, they seemed so far removed from the daily concerns and tribulations of the people, but as the burden of emotion became heavier and heavier to bear, the smallest teardrop gathered in the corner of Jal’s eye and made its way down his cheek, slowly losing its own substance in the process.

As if waiting for a sign, the clouds gathered over the horizon, so thick and waterlogged it felt like they were dragging on the ground. Jal looked at them, like he expected them to come, and his relief allowed a second tear to follow the first. Deafening thunder shook the heavens, echoing between the old stone walls before it retreated in a low rumble. Another tear flowed down Jal’s cheek. That’s when the rain started.

Music Lagos by Ian Kelosky

That afternoon Aifa and the Twins were out on the daffodil meadow, which Ama and Jal seemed to be particularly fond of, when all of the sudden the sky grew dark and shook with rumblings. Any other children would have run for the hills, screaming their lungs out, but not the Twins, who looked mesmerized towards the horizon, as if they have been waiting for this particular event their entire existence. Covering the horizon, gigantic and proud, their wingspan the width of a mountain, their feathers and scales the color of fire, their mighty cries a deafening rumble, the thunderbirds had returned.

Their first rumble, like a slow rolling thunder, had brought everybody out of the city, running to welcome the return of the glorious birds, which flew, majestically, over the city, like they did every year, to cheers of joy and waves of ribbons in every color of the rainbow. The thunderbirds had returned!

According to the old legend, the mighty birds, whose powerful talons could easily carry a castle, arrived each spring to bring people the thunder, and the first true downpour of summer. When they flapped their wings, large sparks ignited the clouds, releasing their charge to the thirsty ground in thunderbolts as thick as ropes. Their arrival signaled to all the birds and animals that it was safe to return and populate the hills and valleys, and rebuild their burrows and nests in the forest.

They were powerful and dangerous, the Birds of Thunder, with the power to give life and the power to take it away, but fiercely protective of the city of Cré and its inhabitants; this doting had secured them a prominent place on the city’s crest, and turned them into a symbol.