Ibrim climbed the stony rise with weary grace, a leather satchel of berries knocking against his hip. No antelope today. No goat. Only what the land had produced. His shoulders sagged wearily beneath the ache of providing for his family, and the old wooden staff he carried felt heavier than it ever had.
At the crest of the slope, the valley opened before him — a fertile cradle of green earth with a river flowing through it. This was the land he’d come to after long travels, the land he hoped his children would inherit. He took a step forward and his foot slipped on loose gravel, causing him to fall and bump his forehead on the ground.
He sat up, head spinning, regaining his bearings. And then, an ancient voice spoke: “I will show you your children.”
He looked out over the valley. There, below him, he saw his two sons, growing in lines of swift motion, like worms across the valley. He saw them running, arguing, laughing, building small shelters, and mending tools. Their paths glowed like threads across the dust. They grew old, and their children appeared, and lived their lives, leaving their trace stretched out across the valley as they went. Then their children’s children appeared. One by one, generation after generation appeared, until the entire valley shimmered with the woven trails of hundreds of lives, each one flowing from him like rivers branching from a single spring.
Ibrim saw villages rise, then cities. He saw people with different tongues and clothes. He saw tribes who forgot they were cousins sharpening spears against one another. He watched the sons of his sons take up banners and swords, their cries echoing through the ages.
His heart ached. “Why do you fight?” he whispered to the vision. “You’re all my children.”
The vision rolled onward. Centuries folded into one another. He saw towers of glass and metal, great roads that spanned the valley, and people who built cars and planes that flew into the sky. Humanity scattered joyfully into a plethora of civilisation before him, a thousand generations into the future. And still, they fought, they killed each other, over land, beliefs, borders, and pride.
The vision faded. Ibrim sighed and wiped the blood from his head. He straightened. The ache in his bones lifted. To know that his descendants would live, breathe, survive, and thrive… it filled him with joy, wonder, and a sense of meaningfulness. He breathed deeply in the valley’s evening air and felt, ever so strongly, that he wasn’t alone. That whatever beneficent deity had shown him the vision was with him, guiding him, strengthening him, and all his thousands of descendants, too.
He walked home humbled and filled with awe. His steps were steady.
There, outside the shelter, his two sons argued over a bone-carved toy. Ibrim knelt beside them, placed a hand on each small head, and said, “Peace, little ones. You’re of the same blood. Share.”
They calmed down. They listened.
Ibrim smiled quietly.
In that moment, as the first stars came out, the future felt a little brighter.
