September 29, 2018 AD
Lisa Smith's First Story Night at the Bixbus Bonfire
On an evening in late September, Lisa Smith gathered the children of Bixbus at the bonfire after the communal meal for the settlement's first organised story night. Most of the children were survivors of the school bus that had come through the portal and crashed in August, and many had no parent in Clivilius. Lisa had them build a story together, a line each, while the adults listened from the edge of the firelight. Not everyone thought it a good use of an evening.
The communal meal at the Bixbus Bonfire had finished and the pots were being scraped when Lisa Smith went round the fire gathering the children. She had spent the afternoon collecting blankets from anyone who could spare one, and she had laid them out in a half-circle on the near side of the flames. Some twenty children came and sat down. Most of them were from the school bus that had come through the portal and crashed in August, and many of them had no parent in Clivilius at all.
Lisa did not read to them, nor did she tell them a story of her own. She told them that they were going to make one up together. She would start it, each of them in turn would add one line, however silly, and nobody was allowed to say that anyone else's line was wrong. Then she began with a girl who had lost one of her shoes.
The first few children spoke so quietly that Lisa had to repeat their lines for the rest of the circle. As the story went round, the voices grew louder. By the halfway point the shoe had been eaten by a goat, the goat had been elected mayor, and the older boys were competing to make the younger ones laugh. The noise drew the adults away from the pots, and before long there were more of them standing at the edge of the firelight than there were children on the blankets.
On the second time round, the story stalled. A girl of about nine, when her turn came, said that the girl in the story should go home to her mum, and then said nothing more. The circle went quiet, and some of the adults looked away. Lisa took the next line herself, sending the girl in the story out to look for the road home, and passed the story on to the boy beside her. It found its feet again within a few lines, and it was the youngest child in the circle who finally gave it an ending.
The fire was built up with the settlement's words, Light the fire. Share the light., and Lisa told the children that the story was not really finished and that they would carry it on at the fire the following week. As they were taken back to their beds, one man told her, loudly enough for those nearby to hear, that the settlement was short of water and shelter and had no need of games. She thanked him for coming and did not argue. Then she went and sat with the girl who had wanted to go home, and stayed with her until she was ready for sleep.
