The Story Sisters

The rain comes in torrents. It pours down my trunk, soaking the absence of my leaves. I look into its face as it comes, the rain falls like stars around me. I look up into the eye of the storm and see myself in the center.

A single drop falls in my eye.

I look around and cannot see my neighbors. Their presence is obscured by a curtain drawn between us. I cannot see my roots.

Somewhere on the other side of these clouds my friends race across the tops of them. The moon shines down, illuminating their play. My friends are white. They shine in the light of the moon and reflect her already reflected light. They dance on the hills of the clouds and jump from billow to billow. They play hide and seek.

I listen to their laughter from below. The rain brings me tidings of their games and I watch them. I see their smiles and I see them sneaking from one mountain to another.

A horse comes. It gallops over a well worn trail and halts before them. The two sisters look up at him in awe.

He towers above them but they are not afraid. They stretch out their hands and touch his nose. He lowers his head.

My friends walk around to his side and the older pushes the younger up. She struggles to grasp his mane and pulls as her sister pushes from below. The horse looks back at them, his mane whisping in the night breeze.

He reaches around and gives the girl a boost with his muzzle.

The younger sister reaches down her hand for the older one. Their hands lock and the horse looks back. His eyes glint in the light of the moon, two objects refusing to reflect the light. He looks back as the older sister clamors onto his back and they are away.

They gallop through the night on the back of a wingless steed. He takes them up into the stars and they gallop through the meteor shower. They look up as they pass through and see the comets coming toward them. They come toward them and then veer off to the side at the last minute striking a hole in the clouds.

The sisters look down as they gallop past the hole and see the faint lights of the villages below. The horse stops and they slide off.

Both sisters peer through a hole. Heads together they look down and imagine the life of those below. They look into our forest and see me, a lone tree looking back up at them. They create stories and tell them to the wind. The wind whispers through the heavens and brings the stories to the earth where he spreads them among the people. Stories of how we came to be, stories of why we live like this, stories of heroes and knights and better times. They tell of the woes of the world and of the future hope. They always tell of the future hope.

I look up into the sky and my heart reaches toward the sisters. They catch the mists of my heart as it wafts through their hole and examine it. They place it in a necklace and the younger one wears it—the testimony of our love for each other.