Morning
I awake to the sound of you getting down the ladder in complete darkness, and again as you return. I follow you out of the hut to wait for the sunrise. We are the first ones up, in the whole village, and we sit on a wooden step watching our breaths form small ghosts in the cold. Sunrise begins as a sharp streak of gold tearing through the sleepy pastels that make up dawn; perhaps this is why they call it daybreak.
Afternoon
On my descent to the river, I stopped to gaze at the mountains. You'd think we were in the sky; maybe if I stood here, a stranger from flat lands with the sea in my back yard hundreds of years ago, I would have indeed thought that I had come closer to the gods, seeing the clouds so close to where I stood. But I keep descending. Some small boys, naked as the day they were born, run swiftly past me. "Where are you going, big sister?" they ask, and I answer, to the river. To the river where you are. I laugh as I come upon you, an adonis in the rain brushing his teeth.
Midnight
"Come look...you can see the Milky Way."
For some reason, the skies had cleared in the night after an afternoon of unrelenting rain. I hurry dwn the ladder and join you in the dark, following only the pale figure your shirt cast against the night. This is the first time I had ever seen the Milky Way. It felt more like looking up into a chasm made up of stars, and the dense, fluid black that is what I imagine makes up the universe.
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