Sonōsīderea

“Can you hear it, Mbali?” A girl asked the young elephant. They searched the pitch sky from a truck bed bumbling across Botswana. Dancing pinpricks of light murmured through the heavens. “With your ears, surely you can.”

She plucked a piece of dry straw from beneath them, “I know you’ve grown used to living out here. I have, too. Where the stars are the only lights. And elephants are our friends.”

The calf raised its gentle trunk to the girl, mussing through her dark curls.

“It will be different where we’re going. There are more elephants, more animals… but they aren’t the same.” Mbali brushed the strand of hay, umber eyes peeking into her friend’s soul. “I say goodbye and leave them there. Then I come back home. And do it all over again. The next time I see them, they’ve changed. They don’t want to remember me anymore.”

She raised the straw into the wind and released it from her grasp. It floated for a moment before disappearing into the night behind them. “I don’t want you to change.”

“Look up there, Mbali.” The girl pointed upward, a trunk snaking along her arm to follow toward the swirling sky. “Look, and listen. Those stars, they remember you and me. Even when you’re in the new place and I’ve said goodbye, those stars are still the same. You can still hear them twinkling.”

The teary-eyed girl kissed her elephant’s head.

“Every night, I will ask them to whisper to you.”