Stand Together

Come closer, children. Come closer still. Sit where the fire warms your faces and the night wind cools your backs. Feel the earth beneath you; steady, listening; for she too remembers what I will tell you. Lift your eyes to the heavens. Do you see her? Yes, the Moon. She is watching, as she has watched since the first dawn. She has watched your mothers, and your mothers’ mothers, and all the women who came before. She will watch you, and the daughters who come after you, and the daughters of their daughters, unbroken until the end of time. Tonight, I will tell you the story of her covenant - the covenant between the Moon and her daughters. In the first days, when the world was still raw and trembling, the Moon wandered alone. She rose and fell through endless nights, waxed and waned without witness. Sometimes she blazed so bright that she turned the oceans into mirrors. Sometimes she hid her face, veiled in shadow, unseen even by the stars. But no one shared her rhythm. The Sun was too...

  The sun shined bright red even in the dark, on her mother’s forehead. She loved the glow that came from it and how it calmed her during a stormy night, such as this one, especially, since the sea could swallow them all. The small room at the edge of the world that they lived in had its moments. There were times when the sea would blow a calming breeze towards them and there were times when the tide would enter their home, threatening to weaken the make-shift foundations. There were also times when she laughed, as a child would, and there were times when she would experience pain she didn’t understand or know where it came from. The moments of pain were strange but familiar, like an enemy who you knew well but you don’t know either. Even in those moments, the bright red sun on her mother’s forehead calmed her, but it was the worry on her father’s face that made her anxious. Her parents had named her Angel at birth, but a year later, they changed it to Banhi, an uncommon word f...