Xilka

When my father told me that the twinkling lights in the night sky were the eyes of our ancestor tigers, I would not believe him. No one did, not after the old dirt roads and their wheel ruts were paved flat, and not after the first rain drained down those new, red clay shingles on the roof. I still remember how they clacked together when I handed them one by one to father, watching him piece together the home that we would have shared with mother. He said that she, too, watched us with glittering eyes. But that was twenty years ago. Everyone smiled twenty years ago. That was because everything was new back then, including me, barely five an