(Photo by Movidagrafica Barcelona)

Morning dawned and with it came the usual daily chores. Nis searched through the hen roost for eggs, then milked the goat. It was late summer and soon the crops would begin to ripen but for now all she had to do was pull the weeds and carry the watering buckets back and forth between the well and the field to ensure the crops didn’t die off from the heat. Her parents worked in the field as well, sometimes whistling, sometimes humming to pass the time.

Most days they each worked in different sections of the field to ensure they covered as much area as possible but today her mom elected to work beside Nis in the field. No doubt her parents had discussed the conversation Nis had had with her dad the night before. As the morning waned and the sun rose higher into the sky, Nis wished her mom would say something. The sideways glances and worried looks were making Nis feel anxious.

Sometimes, Nis actually liked the way her parents left her to her own devices. She’d had so many other parents that it was difficult for her to really feel a strong connection to her current parents. They were nice, but in the grand scheme of things they weren’t ones Nis thought she’d remember very much in her later lives. And yet, even with all her previous lives and their memories lending her a certain degree of maturity and experience, she still yearned for the care and nurture she knew a parent could provide.

“Are you here, Nis?” her mother asked, startling Nis as she realized she’d been standing in the same spot for a while, staring off into the distance.

“Yeah, sorry,” Nis replied and moved to resume her weeding.

Nis’ mom, however, moved up beside her and took her hand. It was a gentle gesture, somewhat awkward in its execution but Nis appreciated it all the same.

“You’ve got a lot going on in your head,” her mom said. “Want to let some of it out and tell me about it?”

Nis wanted more than anything to be able to do just that, but she didn’t want her mom to immediately dismiss her dreams the way her parents did every other time she talked about them.

“I’m just tired,” Nis said, taking her hand back from her mom’s and crouching down to resume her weeding.

“Dad told me about the stars you dreamed up,” her mom said. “I’m glad you’ve been able to recognize it was just a dream, though I hope next time you won’t feel like you need to sneak away in the middle of the night to figure those things out.”

Nis held back from reacting to her mom’s words. She didn’t like arguing and knew it was no use contradicting her mom now.

“I was thinking,” her mom went on, Nis still keeping her back turned to her, “it might do you some good if you stopped writing down your dreams.”

“What?” Nis spun around and looked up at her mom.

The sun was hidden behind her mom, outlining her in a brilliant halo and making the rest of her form little more than a dim blot against the sky. Nis could still tell from the silhouette that her mom was wringing her hands which was something she only did when she was truly anxious.

“It’s just that,” her mom pressed on, “your dad and I can’t help but notice how much your dreams can affect you and I know you’ve put a lot of effort into writing them down and keeping track of them but all it seems to be doing is making you…well, you don’t have any friends, you hardly ever speak to your dad or me, and you’re always off wasting time bothering the archivists.”

“I don’t bother them,” Nis replied, picking out the one argument of her mom’s that she felt she at least had some ground to stand on.

“The number of times I’ve had to come down there and drag you away from there so they can do their work–

“They never asked you to do that,” Nis countered, standing back up and meeting her mom’s uneasy gaze. “And I help them all the time.”

“You think you’re helping, Nis, but I bet it’s just busy work to get you out of their way.”

“Ask them,” Nis said.

“What?”

“Ask them if that’s true, if I’m bothering them or slowing them down.”

“And will you leave them alone if they say yes?” Her mom asked.

“They won’t.”

“But if they do?”

“And what if they don’t?” Nis wasn’t going to let this go so easily.

“It doesn’t matter what they think!” her mom burst out. “You aren’t going there anymore and you won’t be writing in your journals.”

They each stood there in silence, both somewhat shocked by her mom’s outburst. It was then that Nis noticed her dad was no longer in the field with them.

“Where’s dad?” Nis asked as an uncomfortable thought began to grow in her mind.

“He had some things to do at the house,” her mom replied and Nis recognized the same discomfort in her mom that she often felt herself whenever she was trying to conceal something.

“What…?” Nis trailed off as she turned to look towards their home and saw the trail of smoke rising up from the yard.

It was too late into the summer for most outdoor fires. The risk of it catching and spreading was too great, everyone knew that.

“No,” she gasped as she realized why her dad might have built just such a fire and she took off at a run.

“It’s better this way,” her mom shouted from behind, panting in her effort to keep up. “Those journals were never anything but trouble for you.”

Nis ignored her and willed her legs to move faster. She knew books burned slowly at first, the fire needing to work its way through the covers before it could reach the pages. Which past life it had been that gave her that knowledge she wasn’t sure but she trusted it to be right. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

As she came into view of the fire, burning high and hotly, she was relieved at first to see that it was mostly comprised of trimmings. Beside the fire was a stack of her journals and at a glance she knew it wasn’t her entire collection. Had some of them already been tossed into the flames or was her dad still gathering them? Either way her dad was nowhere to be seen for the time being. Nis chanced a look behind her and was relieved to see that her mom had given up on keeping pace with Nis and was still a good deal behind her.

As Nis reached the pile of journals her mind began to race for a solution. She couldn’t just scoop up the journals. Even this pile was too many for her to hold all at once. Looking into the flames she didn’t see anything that looked like a book. Even if she had seen any of her journals in the fire it was too hot for her to have been able to get them out.

“Nis?” her dad said and Nis looked up to find him standing in the doorway to their home, his arms full of her journals.

“You can’t do this!” Nis cried, placing herself between her dad and the fire. “Those are mine!”

“It’s…we know they’re important to you, Nis, but they’re hurting you.”

“No, you’re hurting me!”

Her dad took a few steps towards the fire and Nis stood up straighter in an effort to somehow block him from doing what he’d set out to do. Of course, he was a good head and shoulders taller than her and Nis’ small frame was hardly any challenge to him. Still, he hesitated, his eyes moving from Nis and the fire to the books in his arms.

“Nis,” her mom said as she finally caught back up and forced Nis to have to divide her attention between both her parents. “This is hard for you right now but it will be okay later on, as you get older.”

Both her parents took a few steps forward and Nis held her hands out towards each of them as if to ward them away.

“Stay back!”

“It’s going to be okay,” her dad said but not stopping in his advance towards the fire.

“We just want you to be happy,” her mom said as she circled around towards the pile of journals.

She wasn’t going to win this fight. If she held back her dad, her mom would burn the piled journals. If she protected the pile of journals then her dad would burn the ones he was holding.

“What if,” Nis began and thinking fast. “What if we gave my journals to the archives?”

Her parents paused, actually considering her words.

“And,” she added with haste, “I’ll promise to stop keeping a journals of my dreams.”

Nis held her breath as she watched and waited as her parents shared silent looks back and forth.

“Okay, Nis,” her dad finally said and she ran forward and hugged him tightly.

She was crying though Nis wasn’t sure if she had only just started to cry or if she had been crying the entire time. From behind she could her her mom sigh, obviously disappointed at the compromise but nonetheless she came and joined Nis and her dad.

“Let’s get these all packed up on the cart then,” she said, “though I don’t know if the archives will take these.”

“They will,” Nis stated with as much resolve as she could muster.

Her mom sighed again, still clearly disappointed but left it at that. Nis let go of her dad and took the books from his arms to carry them over to the cart.

“I’ll take care of these,” she said. “You can work on putting out the fire.”

She still didn’t fully trust that the danger to her journals was past and so wanted to make sure she held them to their agreement. Fortunately, her parents each took up a bucket from the house’s well and began tossing water onto the fire, slowly but surely diminishing its flames.

Giving up her journals would still be a significant loss, but with them at the archives she’d at least have time and opportunity to reread them from time to time. And although she promised to stop keeping a journal of her dreams she was already beginning to think about ways to work around that particular issue. Keeping a journal secret from her parents, she knew, likely wouldn’t work and be discovered before too long if she didn’t come up with a good enough hiding place for it.

Regardless of what she settled on, she’d wait a while before implementing any sort of new journal. Her parents would doubtless be on the lookout for any sort of journal keeping on her part for a while so she’d need to wait until their vigilance relaxed.