Echoes

Once upon a time, a girl, sitting quietly on a rock by the lake, watched as the sun came up and thought it shone only for her. She watched the moon rise over the mountain and believed the same thing. For her, the sun and the moon were hers. They were the light that carried her from day to night and night to day, and all the thoughts in between were illuminated by these orbs whose power was enormous.

On cloudy days she retreated deeply into herself, into a cave so dark and quiet that she could hear the heartbeat of the earth and the whisper of the wind as it told her stories of once upon a time. Stories of love and lust, joy and pain, determination and despair and she listened with an open heart and tears filled with eyes.

After a while she ached with a need to be part of these stories, to become a part of that which ebbed and flowed like the tide over rocky shores and so she set off in the middle of a thunderstorm so ferocious and fierce that her feet trembled upon the way and her ears were deafened to the words of warning coming from the wind, but she did not care.

Walking until her feet were sore and her clothing nothing but tattered rags, she finally returned home to sit quietly on the rock by the lake, watching the sun rise in the east and the moon as it rose over the mountain. Listening, feeling, knowing.

Knowing that all the stories were one story. All the feelings one feeling. All the love and lust, joy and pain, determination and despair, one experience flowing out of the earth’s heart and whispered on the breath of the wind over and over again. One story, echoing off a girl sitting on a rock by the lake.