The days passed quietly.

Li raised his hands against the immensity, Ji, behind him, looked interested:

"Today, we will start raising the tribe!

"Come on, come on, Ji, start gathering the branches."

The brothers had found some nice places around the plateu where they would start raising the Tribe of their dreams. As they laughed, they gathered leaves, branches, and prepared the creeks from they would collect mud. The sun, young as the day, observed them placidly.

Soon, a dozen of little, badly erected huts rose against the winds. Some of them were on secret faces of the peaks, some beneath the great rocks that witnessed the abyss, some on distant mounds, and in all of them the soft winds blew, as if blessing them. And as the day advanced it seem as if the shadows themselves elongated themselves to cover them, to guard them in their embrace, to soothe the burning hotness of the midday.

At the end of the day, the chose one on the side of a peak, and lit a fire outside.

The wind blew and sweetly caressed their young cheeks, moving their long, dirty hairs.

"First, we will make a city for the Gods."

Li, with a stick, drew in the fresh soil a shaky diagram.

"This one, for the Mountain, this one for the Tundra, and this one for the Rivers. Then, one for Mother and for Father..."

Then, with a look, said:

"Go on now, Ji, I'll remain here thinking for a while."

Once alone, in the little hut, he gazed the distant landscape, and with a hand drew strange symbols in the air.

"Where is our home?"

But then thought, while scribbling more plans in the sand: "There is no time for that. The Tribe awaits us. The Gods are impatient. Mother is cold and Father has the miasma eating his lungs. There is no time to lose." Some sense of urgency tinged his little, young heart, and he sighed.

The sunset slowly came, and with it the darkening of the mountains. Li heard a sound reverberating and echoing in the air. Picked with curiosity, he reached the entrance of the hut and then slowly climbed up the peak, behind a rock, where he started listening and saw a warm scene;

A slow breeze roamed the infinite steppes, playing with the wild straw, licking the great rocks. A woman sang.

"Long are the days and you, my love, so far away,

In the God's steppes, where the winds play until they die..."

A faint, sweet touch of sadness permeated her words. They stretched and got lost in the lands. Suddenly, from somewhere, a little bird with a blue tail that became black as the sunset fell sat on her shoulder. It was the spirit of her long lost daughter. It hopped around as candidly as the baby that never came to be was supposed to do. Chirped and pecked lovingly her ear. Some distance away, from atop a rock, a little boy descended and tiredly rested in her lap. It was Ji, that had been playing under the watchful eyes of his mother.

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"Will we ever have a home, Mother?" Ji asked her thoughtfully. He had know the travel of the sierra, and the life in the plains. The parting had, more than anyone, hurt him deeply.

"These now are our mountains. Our home. As the plains were, little one."

"Will we all die like Enui did?"

The gaze of the woman got lost in remembrance.

"I don't know..."

Behind the rock, where Li attentively listened, the Words spoken made the world vibrate. His heart vibrated too, it shook with some strange remembrance, as if his soul remembered some distant, everpresent origin. Then he heard her voice:

"Li, son, come here, you don't have to hide."

Flushed with embarassment, he went and sat with his brother and his mother. Ji, in her embrace, just looked at his brother, he himself enjoying the peace and softness of her lap and her hands.

"Li, Ji, hear me." said their Mother, suddenly and seriously.

"Huh? Mother?"

"Sometime soon, the Young Ones will come. And we will finally meet."

The boys didn't understand.

"Who?"

"Our brothers and our sisters. People like us. But they are younger, and the world is all new for them.

"Li, Ji. The woman of the tribe, and also the men, have seen the signals and the omens. The moon herself called for her long lost brother. The grass, in her movements, divines the things to come. They are warning us. The Words in the Name themselves reverberate strangely, as if awaiting. Every sister hears it." Then she looked at her oldest son. "Did you hear it too, Li?"

Li doubted a second. Then assented. He knew, in some senses, the Name was for him something more profound, but more confusing than the primal emotion it evoked in the woman of his tribe. Nonetheless, he had also read the signs, and witnessed the omens.

"Is your job to teach them, Li, Ji. Soon they will appear. Remember that we are their Older Siblings, and we have the duty to guide them. With love. Remember this."

Confused, the boys nodded.

"Who are they?" Asked Ji. His voice was almost lost in the creases of his mother's clothes. The mother looked at the vast expanse, the abyss and the distant plains.

"Travelers like us. But alas, we travel this world that is ours. They do not have one."

But as she gazed the vast abyss, Li was certain to see in her eyes a complicated, hurt, abandoned look.

"What did you see, Mother?" He asked himself.

Up in the sky, the infinite stars blinked, and the sky whistled the things to come.