Every morning, before the sun’s rays brightened the horizon, Truffula placed fresh fruit, nuts, and bread into her wicker basket, grabbed her book of stories, and headed to the forest.
When she arrived at the temple of the forefathers, she set the basket next to the small pool that separated the village from sacred tombs.
Then Truffula sat cross-legged, placed the book in her lap, and began reading adventures in far-off lands and romance stories.
After finishing each tale, she would throw a small piece of bread or nut into the pool for the fish, who eagerly gobbled it up. Truffula’s people believed the fish were a host to the ancestors’ spirits, so they hungered for human food.
She continued reading until the sun was high in the sky. After this, she took the fruit and laid it at the feet of each of the five stone figures as a gesture of love.
“I bring you this fruit from our land, which you secured so long ago. Thank you, Grandfathers and Grandmothers. We honor you in our stories so you may live on through us.”
This practice was the way of the Opala people, who lived deep within the ancient forest and honored all life, past, present, and future.
Truffula was their teller of tales, a connection between the ancestors and the people of now. Through her stories, the circle of life was held steady, and the old ones could hear their stories told, affirming a link between the past and the present.
The seer Malthus said over two millennia ago that remembering and honoring those who came before us humbles our greed and strengthens our will to move forward.
“Even a great oak was once a sapling,” Malthus said. Truffula liked those words, so she chose to be a teller and help her people’s stories move into the future.
Folksburywoods Story Blog 
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