Two Hills | a parable

Two hills sat on a voided canvas.  Bright sun burned and cold stars quenched.  The sunrise swept away the dark.  Morning followed night on endless repeat as the centuries peacefully passed, countless and infinite.

One small, youthful, pile of rock and root looked at his Sister contentedly.  He felt the firm plains and undulations of the ground sweeping out beyond the setting sun each evening.  It was enough.  He passed the time in idle satisfaction.  Thoughts beyond what lay before him were but a whim of fancy, distracting Brother from basking in the sun and singing to the stars.  His Sister too, observed the budding shrubs and sparse tundra spreading beyond their sight to the distant rounding edges of their earthly home.  She too was content.  But Sister dreamed, not just of what lay in front, but what could be found underneath.

It was Sister whose curiosity flowered slowly into passion.  At first cautiously, she learned the language of the molten fury, of the storming heat in the cavernous depths below.  Her Brother also sensed the warmth.  He felt the same whisper of curiosity.  But the stars' light he could see, the sun's soft pleasant rays he could absorb.  The depths provided only uncertainty and hardship in their dark, beautiful, treacherous power.

Sister and Brother shared the winds and rain high above, the shifting and changes of autumn into spring across the meadows and forests around.  And as they sang from their hilltops to the life in front of them, Sister began also to call and welcome the unknown below.  At first, the tunnels of raging heat tickled.  They tested her interest and gave her a choice they called "pain and possibility."  A hint of the magical.  While Brother admired the trees and frolicking life that embraced both siblings' modest beauty, Sister reached also slowly, deliberately, into the trial and mystery below.