“Good morning,” Kum came to the two old trees. It was not easy for her to get used to the local world. No, not because of an accident – that very soft, tender grass was to blame…
They lived a life full of fun on a warm planet with warm gentle rains, with soft green grass … All their children died there. Mom always loved warmth, but didn’t tell much about it. “If you do not learn the alphabet,” says the father, “you will never find a friend for yourself.”īut he himself found, found his mother without any alphabet and without any words in a cold void, where she, exhausted and barely alive, no longer gave any signals… “Well, son,” the mother says, “If you work so badly, I won’t water you anymore.”Īnd he, having shaken himself, again begins to learn hard, although it was no longer necessary to water him. The first sensation in childhood was water: not cold and not burning, but gentle warm water from the spring, which he absorbed with his whole body… The joy of this remained for life.Īs he remembers now: he is 10 years old, his roots have long permeated the entire planet, his father teaches him interstellar signaling. Only for his sake his parents decided to take root here. Absolute zero on the surface and hot gases inside. Since childhood, he remembered this harsh planet: stones, frozen ground through which it is almost impossible to squeeze the roots, and a burning core in the center.
He knew that now his parents would be happy to have some water. Kum came to the spring – a small warm puddle among the cold stones – and drove the water along a narrow groove with a flat stone scoop. Kum has already taken his roots out of the ground and freely moved around the planet, and his parents grew old, grew into the soil, but, as before, remained slender and beautiful. Many years passed here before their son grew up… Here, far from the bustle of the big world, father and mother dug up the stony soil and lowered their last seed into the pit. Parents chose a small gloomy planet at the crossroads between two star systems. And because he was the last child of his parents, the only one who could continue the Kum generation. Why? Because his father was Kum and his mother was Kum.