Solélé and the Lion

At times of upheaval or unrest, what we need most is to find the ground beneath our feet. Unfortunately, this isn’t something we often teach young ones (and it’s something I’m still learning in my thirties).

This story depicts an effort to teach grounding by reconnecting with where we come from. It reminds us to look into (not only up to) ancestors. It wants us to know, name and celebrate all the people, ideas and things that contribute to a more connected and safe society. And most of all, it wants us to break down the restrictions of blood we’re told to put on ancestors.

On that note, today’s reader is a sibling of sorts and the resident witch of Tomorrow Tales, Stephanie. She is a musician and narrative critic, who mostly hides her work underneath stones in forests. You won’t be able to find Steph online very easily but you can always return here to listen to her wonderful reading.

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Lion of the Sacred Gate, ca. 590 BCE, Kerameikos museum, Athens, Greece

Solélé and the Lion

Do you remember your relative Solélé? Insightful — unlike anyone you’ve ever met? Warm woman, round and ever-so-beautiful with skin like young cherry bark?

Probably not, now that I think about it: she lives in the future. Well… this story comes straight from her.

Once upon a time, Solélé needed to go on a long journey to recover her soul which was running empty. Where she used to be jolly and kind, she was now sombre and impatient. For months, a little voice inside had been telling her, Reconnect, you’re losing touch. For months, the little voice was ignored.

Solélé lost her patience at the bees, lost her understanding with her brother, and lost her love for gardening. Reconnect. Some losses are more permanent than others, the voice inside warned. Still, Solélé persisted, thinking she had too many responsibilities for such things.

The very next summer, she lost one of her prized chirping birch trees to an unknown disease. No one loses plants in the growing season, it isn’t meant to be that way, Solélé complained, regretting she hadn’t done something about it sooner.

Then, in Autumn, she lost her brother. He is younger than me and a strong lion! It isn’t meant to be that way. People should die in order of birth, Solélé cried, regretting that she failed to reach understanding with him again. The nights she spent by the Lion’s sick bed they sat through in silence.

If she had listened to the voice sooner, the journey to recover her soul may have been a short trip or even a “popping to the shop”. Instead, Solélé found herself on an outright quest! If she had listened to it sooner, she may have known what to say in those last nights beside the Lion’s bed.

She tuned her ear to the inner voice, couldn’t let more loss come without being prepared. The only way to fill up your soul, the voice said, is to get to know all your ancestors: both blood kin and relatives by connection. This is the medicine.

It was as good as resolved!

But before she could shroud herself in veils & step blind-foot into her visitations, Solélé had to make arrangements for her absence because she understood very well that our responsibilities don't go away when we do.

So, she found someone to take over her job, interviewing bees at the honey museum. She showed them all the best questions to ask, like:

What did the end of the bee monarchy mean for you and your family?

Or:

Are the human pollinators effective colleagues or do they just get in the way?

Next, she had to arrange someone to look after her prized garden. Solélé had a big yard that rolled across two hillocks. In it were lipstick geraniums and coco-crocuses on one side, moonflowers and blow-ssoms on the other, and a row of those tall chirping birches in the valley. She left the chirping birches in charge to regulate the garden, with help from underground fungus and bird’s droppings. They knew what to do.

With everything in order, she was ready to make her way.

Slipping off her slippers and veiling herself in veils innumerable, Solélé made her pilgrimage to the edge of the water – where all sustenance begins.

It was empty on this beach; precisely how her soul felt. Solélé mourned. How could she be the only one appreciating the crashing of the waves? Did she really have so little in common with the world around her? If only her brother were here!

Solélé sighed. With each breath out, she exhaled a different kin: blood ancestors who had her round face as well as chosen ancestors whose books she had read or suffering she had shared. Breath by breath, they were pulled out of her. Humans. Animals. Herbs. Even soil. Suddenly, the beach was absolutely crowded with lives which had shaped her.

Her soul smiled as it does on birthdays. So, this is everyone I come from.

But it was not enough to see all of them together. Too many, she could not name.

She worked hard at interviewing bees but never closely interrogated how she came to be herself: loving Solélé, almost in harmony. This was missing. No wonder her soul had gone dry.

Where to start? she mused.

Solélé by-passed her mothers, whom she knew all-too-well, and stepped over a walking fish ancestor. There were so many interesting looking creatures here among all the gentle human faces. Her gaze was looking out for a pair of lion’s eyes.

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She spotted a child. “You're very young for this crowd of ancestors.”

The child looked up. Having no concept of the limitations of age, she wasn’t at all sure what the funny woman meant.

Solélé tried again: “What were you doing right before you were brought here?”

Confidently, the child responded, “I was organising a tree planting program in my village. Look, my hands are still covered in mother” — which is what she called earth — “then suddenly, I was washed up here!”

“I'm sorry about that,” responded Solélé. “I suppose I needed to know you existed but I must not keep you from the good work too long. What is your name dear so that I can send you back?”

The child was perplexed now, but intuitively knew she could trust a woman dressed in colourful veils. “I am Hope,” she said.

“Of course you are.” Solélé took her hand and placed one veil from her dress into it. “Thank you for thinking about the future of the forests, Hope. I will remember you and praise you. I will do as you do.”

With that, the child was returned to her village and her packets of seed.

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Suddenly, a squirrel monkey ran between Solélé’s legs and wove through the crowd, inviting a game of chase.

Don’t mind if I do, thought Solélé, picking up a heel in pursuit of the monkey. She followed him between some fantastical creatures but lost his trail when faced with a nettle bush (another ancestor). Using her nose was the only option left. So she slowed down and trod carefully to the right, to the left, left once more.

When she found the monkey, he was wetting himself in laughter: the perfect image of uninhibited being.

“You must be Instinct, one of my dearest and closest kin,” Solélé said through her nose.

The monkey grabbed at a veil from her dress & disappeared.

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A hand grasped Solélé by the shoulder and turned her into the arms of someone as large as a boulder. Her voice muffled from being pressed into the giant: “And who do you think you are?”

“I'm Tenderness,” replied the boulder with a voice at least as strong as the body.

Solélé pulled away. “You really come for people with full force, don't you?” she teased.

The boulder laughed and scratched Solélé on the back gently. “I can be too much for some people.”

Which Solélé knew too well from her experiences, but she had sat with Tenderness in the past through the discomfort to find what was good there — better understanding and love than she could have wished for. “I accept you Tenderness as my teacher and ancestor,” she told the boulder. “Thank you for you lessons.”

By passing them a veil from her dress, she sent the boulder back to whatever mysterious realm they came from.

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Another coarse voice was heard yelling over the crowd. Solélé needed no introductions. She immediately called the ancestor by name, “Anger, you are as much a part of me as anyone else here.”

Anger's voice stopped.

“Sometimes, you are necessary. Sometimes you give strength.” Solélé stepped over to Anger and handed her one veil. “I accept you.”

She got no more words in before Anger vanished into thin air.

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So it went on, the meeting and naming of each ancestor. I don’t have the time to recount every single one of them; it took a whole year from start to finish.

For Solélé, the lonesomeness disappeared little by little as she handed veils from her dress to one and another, uncovering more and more of herself. Uncovering more of her unknowing. It is difficult work, sometimes, to come face to face with everything that created you.

The last kin she approached was her brother, the Lion.

“An honour to be saved until last,” said the Lion, characteristically proudly.

“You deserve this and many other honours,” Solélé replied quietly. “From you, I inherited fierce wisdom. There is not a chance I could have faced all of those ancestors without the bravery I got from you.”

The Lion curled his tail into his body and said, “We grow together with people not from them.”

Solélé considered this.

“I could keep you here if I never name you,” she wondered out loud.

“It wouldn’t be fair. You would never be able to return to your life,” he said, “so your fate would be as sealed as mine. Enjoy this moment. But know when to leave.”

They watched the light disperse along the water together. Small moments of impermanence and beauty.

Solélé took the last veil to wrap around a curl of the Lion’s mane. “For your ancestor name,” she said “you could be Power or Grace, but the name I feel is best suited is also the one that binds us together more each time I call you by it: Love.”

She tried the name on him like a garment. And just as it brought them closer together, the Lion vanished like the light along the water.

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By the time she returned to the honey museum and to her garden, Solélé’s soul was joyful, loving again.

She heard the bees’ stories generously.

She tended to suspicious branches in her garden on time.

And whenever she felt her soul running dry, she did not quieten the voice that told her so. She asked it to speak louder.