swirlsofpurple

“What’s this?” She presses her small face to the glass, pointing at the stone inside and the weird marks on it.

“It’s old English, it says America.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what this place was called, a long, long time ago.”  

“Did something bad happen?”

“Yes. A lot of bad things did happen, here and in the rest of the world also. There were dark times. But a lot of people fought, very hard, and made good things happen too. But then, after a while, the good things were undone, and the bad times came again.”

She gasps, covering her face with her hands, “And then they all died?”

They chortle. “No. New people fought very hard, and they made the good times come again.”

“So what happened to them?”

“Oh, they moved on, journeyed out into space, made homes on other planets. Nostalgia kept some here for a few thousand years, but eventually this planet was mostly forgotten.”  

She bounces on her heels. “How did we get here?”

They give her a scrutinising look. “You know this part of the story.”

“Tell it anyway.”

“Our world was dying. The humans came to help us, they spent an age looking for a world that wouldn’t be toxic to us, but eventually they realized the best place would be Earth. And we have shared this world with them ever since.”