Firelight flickered in the faces of excited children. They squealed with delight as Sabina punctuated the story with gestures. Especially if the fire sparked at the perfect time.
            She lengthened the pauses, to be sure the whole audience understood the message between the words. That message would be different for the children than the adults.
            Storytelling wasn’t easy. She had to know how to encourage the listeners. Sometimes, the audience simply didn’t like the story. Or, it was too close to a disaster they had lived through. Other times, the power of fire and story joined together to bring a fragmented community closer, and able to continue when the days seemed dark.
            In this village, famine had killed several of the adults since the snows began. Only a few were left, with many young orphan children. Children who struggled to understand what had happened.
            The laughter stopped. Time to move to the next part of the story. Sabina raised her arms up high to begin the final story segment.
            An unknown adult male interrupted her. “Are you finished? This is the longest story ever.”
            The whole crowd gasped. No man interrupted a woman. Certainly not a storyteller. A storyteller was worth more than any village, as she carried the stories of every local village with her on her travels.
            The leader of the village stood up. “Who are you?”
            The children chattered and pulled closer to Sabina.
            The man stepped into the light. He wore a dark hooded cloak. “I am Dunstan. Soon, you’ll be able to read the stories after I write them down. No waiting on a slow woman to recite them.” He held up a piece of parchment.
            Sabina waited. The words would come. Other storytellers had spoken of written words. “The words may be on paper. Written words will never move the listener as spoken with true meaning words do.”
            The man laughed. “You can change the meaning of words as you speak. You can’t once they are written.”
            The fire crackled.
            A dog barked.
            The circle sat silently.
            “How will you write the movements and motions of speech? The fluidity? How will you include the moonlight, the wind, the fire?” Sabina raised her arms, as a gentle breeze spoke through her.
            “Those will be written as words.” The man shifted his feet.
            “You have the ability to write, and read it. How will you find time to teach the other people here? They haven’t time to take from their daily lives for written words. Listening relaxes the soul. It pulls people together in a shared experience.”
            Dunstan waved his parchment. “People can share the experience of written words.”
            “Not at the same time.” Sabina stepped closer to him. “Even if there are enough copies of parchment for two to see the written words, they will not experience the same story in the same fashion.”
            The man backed away.
            It would never be acceptable to push even a vulgar man into the dark beyond the firelight. He had threatened no lives. Only the future of stories.
            No matter. His words would soon join the stories of all the other villages she knew. Sabina raised her arms to complete the story she had begun as the fire had taken light. Somehow, the mood had changed. She’d bring it back by repeating a line or two.

Gail Brown’s paired stories mirror daily life as it could be. Perhaps should be, in some ways. Her novels are on her website, and short stories have appeared in Alien Dimensions, Bards and Sages, Earth 2100