One: Past- Solar Minimum

I don’t think there is anything beyond the forest. Not that I have ever wondered about it, or that I’m curious. It is simply a fact. We live among the flowers; we always have and that is it.

‘Who can tell us about the origin of the forest?’

I am also told that the sun shines above us, beyond the viridian sunflower petal-coated receptacles that shield us. I can see the colour of each petal, a bright yellow, but not its seeds. The elders tell me that they are a crystal white.

In this moment, all I can do is believe. I want to believe

I put my hand up. I sit cross legged in a circle with other little girls my age. The boys are in another group, further ahead in the valley. I have always been jealous of their lesson spot. We sit over exposed roots and muddy spots that sully our yellow robes. They get to sit over stem stumps.

And so I begin telling the rest of the class the story we have all known from the moment we took our first breaths, before we ever learned what our names were.