Winter ended and with it came the Twilit Days. Mother woke us up before dawns and brought us to the top of our home. She carried me and I yawned in her arms, listened to her heartbeat.

  “Why are we out?” My plaintive voice.

  Mother smiled, “You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head.

  Medis and Akmuo spoke in unison, “Sunsrise!”

  Our parents laughed, and my mother said, “Just watch, little moon.”

  We waited for what seemed an eternity in the darkness of night. Then gradually the sky lightened. Looking round us, I saw Upe and others standing on their homes in the distance. Upe had her hands raised above her head. When I turned back to ask why, my brothers and fathers had their arms raised high, palms facing the sky. Their eyes closed, faces tilted up.

  Mother didn’t though. She just smiled at the brightening day and bounced me on her hip.

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  The sky was awash in colors. Red from the east and blue from the west. These colors formed a fluid seam at the middle of the sky and then gradually melted together until the entire sky was purple. Not like the purple of a normal twilight, but a purple fit for the gods. Well, you know how it looks. But this was my first experience with it. Or, not my first, but the first one I remember. Watching the sky pulse purple. How it wasn’t bright like a normal day but wasn’t dark like a normal twilight either. It was something else. This purple sky. Bright and powerful and endless.

  We stayed on top of our home the entire day, and the rest of the clan did too. No one ate, that first day of Twilight. The suns never rose all the way into the sky. They remained hidden behind the trees that surrounded us. Even as it came to be late into the night, the sky remained purple. The suns never set. And they wouldn’t set for the entire spring.

  Over the course of the spring, we planted our crops and resumed our life outside. The weather was pleasant and warm, except for the storms. Rain fell most days but only for brief periods and always gently, except for the storms. The wind ripping through the village, locking us inside for days. The ground sloshing and muddy. But every day getting warmer. We ran and jumped and screamed, even in the rain and sometimes in the storms. We ran to the river and bathed again, something forgotten in winter, when we had to carry water back from the river to our fires to warm it, so we could wash with wet cloths. But spring—the world blossoming. The forest coming back to life. A green so bright and full.

  It was a beautiful time of my life.