Sleepless Night

Sage couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned and rolled and sat up. Looking around, he watched his sleeping family nearby. He listened to the sounds of the night forest outside. He heard the scurrying of a raccoon. He heard the hoot of an owl and the rush of feathers as it took flight from a nearby redwood tree. Crickets played a symphony of chirping. Rather than lulling him to sleep, all the sounds were making him even more awake. Sage quietly got up, put on his satchel and went out into the night.

The night forest was so different from the day. The moon was bright so he could see well. His feet stepped lightly on the ground. Sage wasn't sure where he was going. He let his feet carry him on the path.

Sage stopped to watch the owl pass over his head. He heard the howls of a distant coyote pack. Nature was busy at this time of night!

Sage looked up and his eyes were surprised to meet the eyes of another person! A young girl who he hadn't ever seen before. "Hello," he said. "Hello," said the girl. "What are you doing out here?" she asked. "I couldn't sleep. How about you?" "Me neither," she said. "My name is Luna. What's your name?" "Sage," he told her. Luna told him, "My family is traveling through. We are traders. We have feathers and abalone shells and want to trade them for obsidian. We stopped on this mountain since it has such a special feel and such abundance of food and water. We aren't planning to stay very long."

Sage was happy to meet this girl. He didn't have a lot of friends on Poppy Mountain. He looked at her long braided hair and her angled nose and jaw. She looked familiar, like he had known her before. But he knew he had never met her until now. Her eyes were bright in the moonlight and she looked like she may have just a little mischief in her.

"Want to see something I just found?" she asked. "Sure," said Sage. Luna walked him over to a rocky ridge. He followed silently. Only a very careful listener could have heard their footsteps. She stopped in front of a large boulder. "Look there," she pointed at the rock.

The two children watched as a family of scorpions came out from under the boulder. There was a father and a mother. The mother scorpion was carrying her litter of babies on her back! They were going out to hunt for their meal. Scorpions eat insects. The scorpion has two pinchers and a tail that curves up and over its back with a stinging tip. The scorpion stings it's prey, releasing a toxic venom and paralyzing the insect. Sage and Luna silently followed the scorpion family from a distance and watched as they hunted. They had a lot of babies to feed! About a dozen baby scorpions clung to their mother's back. They were almost white and see-through because their exoskeleton hadn't formed yet. The babies were totally dependent on their mother for their survival, until they became strong enough to venture on their own.

Eventually the scorpion family made their way back to the boulder where they lived, having hunted and eaten their fill for the night. The moon sat low in the sky. The crickets and night bugs were silent. Sage and Luna didn't think the scorpions had known they were there, since it seemed they had no notice or fear of them. But after the scorpions had gone away, the moonlight revealed a small gift left behind for Sage and Luna. It was a complete exoskeleton, that father scorpion had recently shed. It was left just outside the entrance to their home. Sage picked it up gingerly, holding it in his palm. Luna looked at it with wonder, realizing that the scorpions had known they were there the whole time. She said to Sage, "You keep it. You can look at it and remember this special night." He gently placed it in his satchel, and when he looked up to thank her, Luna had disappeared.