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A Thousand Thousand

The forest went on forever. There were clearings here and there, or prairies or mountains, but mostly, there were trees, dotted by camps set up by tribes hundreds of miles apart - a distinct one spotted easily due to the smoke rising from their fires and, on occasion, a brown head poking up from the canopy, with long brown hair and curious brown eyes, glinting in the sunlight as she observed the sky.

It was a quiet day. The potter sculpted his clay, and the tanner refined the hides, but there was no loud dancing, no great music or shouts. A musician played quietly for his daughters, the son still too young to dance and suckling at the breast of one of his mothers. Among them was not Kshana, the youngest of the women. Old enough to be allowed out on her own, but too young to join the others as they care for the children. And so she sat at the top of the trees with the wind running its fingers through her hair.

Mother, she thinks. I dreamt again of the stars.

If she thinks loud enough, then it would reach them. The stars. Her mother. It had to, because no-one else would listen. No-one else was her mother.

She dreamt of the stars so often that Kshana began believing that they formed pictures in the sky, images from stories long forgotten so that no-one knew how they ended or began. Even the middle had been lost to time. And yet they were there. Stories lived in the stars with dreams and memories and lost ones who watched over the children before they were born. In her dream, Kshana met a woman from the stars. They were always women, though never the same, and never her mother. But they were always a beautiful woman who came down slowly, with silver skin and golden hair and eyes as dark as the night sky. And she would stand before Kshana and kiss the hearline on the heel of her palm, for that was where her fear resided, for why else would hands shake? And the stars kissed it away.

Why am I afraid when I meet them?

There were always some stars in the sky, pinpricks of light despite the sun's best attempts to overpower them. It was these stars Kshana clung to. These stars she watched closely, for they never moved across the sky, neither for seasons nor for hours nor anything else. Sentries of old, guarding the people Kshana knew and had known before she was born, and the people who came before and who will come after. Like the leaves never fail to bend between her fingers, feeling their love for a gentle touch, so too would the stars always do what they must.

She counted them, one-two-three, until she reached eight, but there was one more star to be counted. Nine. Nine spots of light in the sky, and the last one moved. Grew larger as it went across the sky. Kshana watched it, wondering if it was fleeing.

Do they fear me?

It fell lower in the sky, and she feared for the star now. Was she injured? Was she in pain? On the horizon, Kshana saw the star fall, and the forest turned red. A thousand thousand threads wrapped around her heart and every tree in the world pulled all at once and drove her forward, down to the ground and between the trees, towards the spot the star had chosen to rest.

Mother?

Her hands shook with the fear, and Kshana knew this was the reason she feared the star, though she ran towards it, faster and faster.

Why does the forest cry out in pain?

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