125
THE BLUE FEATHER
homes. When it comes to war, Bardala noted, people have two
types of trauma: The physical type, with broken arms and legs
and cuts and bruises, and the unseen type, with damage to their
minds and emotions. The second type of damage is the more
difficult to heal, as it is not visible to the eye. When the people
were lined up, Bardala and Tital slowly went down the line,
healing each person both physically and mentally as well. The
vast amount of people with physical injuries were more than six
hundred and seventy, but the people, both young and old, that
were damaged mentally by the horrors they had witnessed,
numbered in the thousands. Hours passed by, as each person
took considerable time to fully heal. Finally, Queen Kiya stopped
Bardala and Tital’s work, insisting that they must feed themselves
with the food and drink she had prepared for them. They were
near to exhaustion, so they rested and ate their meal. While they
were eating, Queen Kiya asked them where they had come from.
“We are from a different place, and a different time. We
come from a place that is like one of the stars that you see in the
night sky,” Tital told her and her son, who sat next to his mother.
“I have often thought there might be people on those points
of light,” said Ronú, as he politely passed Bardala more bananalike fruit to eat. “When I was little, I tried to touch the little lights
in the sky, but my arms were too short. I know now that the light
must come from very far away. We have several elders who
study the movement of fast moving stars. Do you have such
people?”
“Yes, we call these people astronomers, and those fast
moving stars you talk about, we call them planets. They are like
this place, Vivia, as it is a planet also. It spins around your yellow
sun. It is much the same throughout the Universe,” Bardala