The StoryTeller

The Scene: One hundred years in the future.... a group of people are sitting around a campfire...listening to a young women..... .

I am The StoryTeller. I tell of our pasts collective and singular. I tell of our pasts and perhaps of our futures because only in the past can we see tomorrow. It is our history....and we must remember and pass on the stories; you must remember and tell our stories for it is the only way left to us and there are so many stories going back and back and back.

Tonight I will tell of a story that goes back before the Great Sickness, before the Tricity Blackouts....back to when people had a Puter God in their homes that connected all their caves. In those days you could talk to someone who lived many, many weeks away from you. The land was full of mobiles and the skies were full planes. This was before the Crash when all the motors stopped for good. In those days there were two people. The Lady was called Angel and the Man was called Hobbs. I know this because I have been told this story all my life. My mother and her mother before her, and her mother . . . back and back and back.

These two people shared a great Love. They had a connection that neither time nor space could sever. Why are these two people so important to us here? What can they possibly have to do with us today? They lived. They went after their dreams. They dared to defy many of the Great Taboos of their times: all for the sake of Love. They Dreamed the Great Dreams. They had Hope.

I see your faces in the firelight. I have heard that some of you still dream . . . and that others never have those travels in their minds as they sleep. I hear of the executions for those who dare to waste paper writing down something as wasteful as their thoughts and my heart cries out for the times back and back and back and wish that they could but know how free they were.

Yet we can still dream. We must. In those days Love was more than coupling. It was not about mating and birthing for a child altho' that was important. It wasn't the only reason that people Loved. It used to be called Making Love. Making Love. Think about those words for a moment. Whether it was to bring forth a child or share feelings, it was called Making Love. Once people dared much to share this Love. Hobbs and Angel loved. They shared dreams. They gave of themselves to each other and tho' they are but dust today, they still live. We must remember. We must still be. We must never forget that there is Love in a touch or a smile. That there are hope and dreams in a hug.

We sit here around a fire, sharing its warmth, for a while before we go back into the Cave and climb into our nests to sleep. Perhaps one of you will dream tonight and just maybe you will share your dream with us.

For there is more than gleaning the wheat from the fields. There is more than digging the clay from the river. There is more than the chipping of rocks and the scraping of skins. We need to dream again: To weave stories and dreams into smiles and love. We must if we are to live-to be alive.

With those words the Storyteller got up slowly from her rock by the edge of the dying fire. The night was cool, but she gathered her furs around her and walked, looking at the sky, seeing pictures in the points of light she thought were called stars.

She felt a tug and looked down into the small face of a youngling. Stor'Tel? My name is Angel too, she smiled. Here. The Youngling handed the StoryTeller a piece of flat rock with lines smeared on it with a piece of burned wood. . It was a crudely drawn person with wings.