Two little kids were traversing the lonely mountains. They were looking for their parents.

"Li, are we the only ones in this world?"

Li shook his head. He did not know. Sometimes, in the epiphany of the shadows, it occured him that there were countless people and worlds as new as this one.

But never in the history of the tribe had they encountered another tribe. Sometimes, maybe pressed by the enormous solitude, the tribesmen gathered some leaves, little stone chisels and made some ink and drew pictures of their travels around the lands and the generations in the caves or at the stony cliffs.

For them, they were places they would never come back; the basin of a river, an ivory mountain, the cold Tundra. But they did anyway.

Ji, the little one, was carving with a little chisel and some ink the path they took, as not to get lost in the mountains.

"Father is always too reliant in his instincts. And mother in the Names," Li complained.

Ji's ears stood up. The Names. How did they manage to travel the inhospitable world, making themselves a place beneath the mountains or the plains? It was because of the Names. The women of the tribe could, sometimes, with a whisper, or a loud shout, pacify the tumultuous rivers. Li, his brother, was the only male in the tribe that could hold and whisper the Name, but only barely.

"How many names does Mother hold, Li?

"Two, Ji," Li answered. His brother loved hearing it. "Imai, the Southern Winds, and the Ji-balai, the Soothing Grass."

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Ji's gaze lighted up, and grinned.

"And you, Li?"

Li kept silent, pondering. He did not hold any Names, at least not like the women of the Altai did. He remembered the quiet whispers of the World, but seeing the expectant gaze of his little brother, he only managed to utter.

"Fire.

"Which one?"

Li looked at his brother and sighed.

"Only that, Fire. Look, there is a ravine. I see some footprints. They are light. Must be Father's. Come on, let's descend."

Soon enough they found their parents at the exit of the ravine, were a great plateau revealed itself. It was halfway covered by the mountains, and the outer half gave sight of the abyss and the horizon, where one could see, many kilometers away from the moutain range, a vast forest.

His father and his mother were erecting some huts. His father had used his old axe to cut down some trees and set up the skeleton of the circular huts, while her mother, with her rough hands covered them with fresh mud from a nearby creak, and expertly sealed them with hard plant fibers.

Ji left running to his mother, arms wailing.

"Mother, mother!

"Why have you come here?

"We were worried. Father said he saw the second moon."

The woman looked at her husband, and softly sighed.

"Li," called. "Can you start a fire?"

Soon, the tribe arrived. Father used the fire to call the rest, and mother used it to seal and dry the huts. Then the rest started raising their own. When the night came, all gathered around the great fire, and started to sing. The woman called the names they held, and the men beat long skins at rythm. The air around the tribe slowly started to tremble, and the night cleared. The winds, placid as they were, hovered around them, and the distant bushes whispered. The mysteries of the world were slowly dissolved, and the infinite solitude left.

"Are we the only ones in this world?" Asked to himself Li, and looked at his brother, happily drinking and hugging his mother. And his taciturn father besides them, looking distractedly at the sole moon in the night's sky.

"The second moon's rising." whispered Li. He felt something was going to happen. When he looked at the darkness, there at the other side from where the great fire danced, he thought he saw the old ghosts in the shadow laughing.

* * *