Mostly it was the sky that never changed.
The same star pictures were there years after year.
The Moon grew from nothing-
to a thin silver,
and then to a round ball,
and then back again into nothing.
When the moon changed,
the women used to bleed.
Sometimes they used to shrink down at noon.
He used to stare at them with awe and wonder.
Faraway lights blinked in silence,
and they planned to obey the rules.
For, Rules were sacred.
The stars were far away.
When he used to climb up a hill or a tree,
they were no closer at all.
And clouds came between him and the stars.
But the moon never ate the stars.
He thought they were his children.
They flickered strangely,
cold white faraway light,
many of them all over the sky,
but only at night,
he wondered what they were.
But if the stars were holes in his skin?
He became afraid!
He never wanted to fall down through a hole,
and into the flame of power.
He moved. He survived.
But, One day there was a storm,
with much “thunder, lightning and rain.”
The little ones were all afraid.
And sometimes he too was afraid.
But the secret of the storm was hidden.
The thunder was deep and loud,
and the lightning was brief and bright.
Maybe to be a wolf was bad.
Someone was angry, maybe up in the sky,
he thought for a second.
But then after the storm,
there was a flickering and crackling in the forest nearby.
He went on to experience.
It was a bright hot leaping thing, yellow and red.
He never saw it before.
He named it “flame”.
It carried a special smell.
In a way it was alive, he countered.
It ate food.
It ate plants, tree limbs,
and even whole trees if they used to let it.
It was strong but not very smart.
When the food was gone, it died.
It never walked, never danced,
but when there was more than enough food,
it gave birth to many flame children.
One day he had a brave and fearful thought,
to capture "the flame",
befriend it a little, and feed his taste of desire.
But the flame children were weak, they died.
But still, he used to shout out loud,
with all his good wishes-
“Do not, no, no...never die. Never! Never Die...”