One morning we woke to find her motionless. She had always been alert, in motion, watching over us, over everything; she never stopped. Even at night, in our dreams, we seemed to hear her moving up and down, between our beds, from one place to another, tirelessly fixing or organizing things. Until that moment.

 

One by one, we gathered around her, waiting for a sign, but none came.

 

Mom was completely gone, vacant of all expression. The shine in her eyes had vanished.

 

We headed to the river, as usual. What else to do? Mom had taken care of us every day of our lives, so we did what we had always done: what she had taught us. First, we greeted the Sun and bathed in the river, then gathered ripe fruit from the trees — pears and peaches, mainly — and washed them in a river eddy. Finally, we ate them. It was our routine.

 

"Maybe she's just sleeping," Ipteo said between bites.

 

"When have you ever seen her sleep?" I replied bitterly.

 

"Never."

 

"Mom is not like us, she never sleeps," I drove the point home.

 

Then Iptema began to cry with a peach in her hand. I hugged her, offering comfort. Mom had never taught us what to do if she stopped, so we kept doing what we had done for years. The routine was all we had.

 

In the morning, the peaches taught us Mathematics and Physics, and the pears, Language and Literature. In the afternoons, we practiced what we had learned at breakfast.

 

In the end, we lost the hope that we had all secretly kept in our hearts: that Mom would activate again. But Mom didn't even close her eyes. We understood that she was no different from the elephants that disappeared, or the wolves that stopped howling, or the eagles that suddenly fell from the sky, stiff.

 

After some time, she was recycled.

 

We couldn't prevent it.

 

"Will we be recycled too?" Ipelaroma asked one morning.

 

"Maybe," Ipteo replied.

 

"Or maybe not," I replied. "We do sleep. We are different."

 

"Elephants and cheetahs sleep too," said Iptema, "and they are recycled."

 

"That's true," murmured Iptomeleo. "But maybe they are just pretending to sleep."

 

We continued with our studies, with our daily life, but in silence, withdrawn inside ourselves. We were sad, full of questions Mom could no longer answer. We missed her.

 

The peach that taught me how to differentiate and integrate must have contained something more, because that day I decided to travel north. Maybe it wasn't the peach; maybe it was the strawberries. I don't know.

 

"That is the land of forbidden trees," Iptomeleo objected.

 

"Mom never said they were forbidden," I replied, "only that it wasn't the time."

 

Iptema, Ipelaroma, and Ipteo followed me. Iperoleo, Iptomeleo, and the rest stayed behind.

 

After a few days of travel, we came to some trees we had never seen before, and whose fruit was unknown to us, but we saw the gazelles and other animals ate it, so we assumed we could eat it too.

 

I was the first to taste it, and the first to understand everything.

 

I saw the ring we lived in, and the ship that carried it. I saw the engines, the blinding glow of the particle jet propelling us. For the first time, my eyes beheld the vastness of the cosmos. I get how tiny, how alone, we were, immersed in nothingness. The silence. No one to ask. No one to turn to but ourselves.

 

No more hope, only wonder and stars.

 

We were an insignificant light in the middle of an endless night.

 

Not even the fruit knew our destiny.