It is night. Not a dark or stormy one, but a beautifully clear and impossibly silent night. You look up to see the ocean of stars, the few constellations you know completely invisible in the vast cosmos. All across the sky, in the few dark spaces between the stars, you can see the tiny points of light, streaking away from the horizon like shooting stars. For a moment, you manage to forget      your troubles and just absorb the billions of points of light. Then, a friend      taps your shoulder, and you are brought back to Earth. Your gaze shifts back downwards, and you focus on your footing.

         You and your      friends are traversing a massive desert, following a caravan of people on foot over the massive dunes. You travel at night to avoid the heat, bouncing from cave to cave. Some of the caves were small, too small to fit everyone within. On those days, you would hide under some of the carts carrying wealthier people’s luggage. But on nights like tonight, the cave was enormous, fitting every single person with room to spare. The caravan made it to the cave just as the sky was starting to lighten, all people safely within the cavern’s depths.

         You put your head back, relishing the feel of cool stone on skin as the air begins to warm with the heat of a hundred bodies and almost as many cooking fires. Then, abruptly, you feel something small collide with your knee. You hear a small “sorry” as the child scampers away. As you look closer, you start to notice that almost all of the children are heading in the same direction. Curious     , you follow them.

         You track the little hellions down to a campfire far removed from the rest of the camp. The fire there is almost down to its embers, casting dark shadows all around the cavern. The children are all facing the fire, sitting in a rough half-circle. Children from the whole caravan are here, nobles and street rats sitting side by side. And as you look, you notice that there are even a handful of adults sitting in the back, their faces just as eager and hungry as their younger counterparts. And facing them with her back to the fire is a single woman sitting on a stump. Where in the desert this woman managed to find a tree stump, you have no idea, but there it is. You think that you’ve managed to avoid being noticed by the stranger, but she turns the silhouette of her head directly at you and speaks.

         “Hello. Have you been here before?”

         You shake your head, and then motion for her to continue. She then shrugs.

         “All right,” she says with a strange accent. “I was sad that we didn’t get to meet up last night, but I am really excited for tonight. Last, we covered the story of General Hua Mulan. Now, who wants to hear the adventures of Heracles?”

         At that, the entire audience groans.

         “Can’t we hear something new?” an adult voice from the back shouts.

         You watch as the woman closes her eyes. Her long hair drifts in front of her face as she angles it downwards. The people before her take it as a sign that there isn’t anything more to tell and begin to disperse.

         “Wait.” The woman says, her words seeming to dance across the stone walls.

         “There is… one last person, one I have never spoken of. Their story is long, complicated, and infested with challenge and adventure. Would that work for you?”

         “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Another woman in the back asks.

         The storyteller hesitates before responding.

         “This story is the longest one I know. If I were to begin such a story, I would not have enough time to tell any other. This story means more to my people than any other. If I begin this tale, I cannot stop. Even if there was only one person left in here, even if I was only telling it to the rats which have found refuge in your garment bags, I would not stop until I finished. So…” The woman looks around the crowd. “Shall I begin?”

         There are very few verbal responses, but even in the dim firelight you can see that most of the people are nodding.

         The Storyteller chuckles. “Good. Here we go.”