Hira, the Lioness and the Northern Lights

Hira was born in the City of Stone. On its narrow, steep streets she learned early the weight of hardness: there was no sea to open horizons, only mountains carved from raw rock. To grow up there was to grow used to sharp edges. Hira’s feet grew thick, resilient—warrior soles. She knew every stone: the ones that steadied her steps, the ones that cut her skin, the polished ones, the jagged ones. From that harsh ground she forged her loyalty.

It was there, in the City of Stone, when Hira was only five—too small for anyone to believe in her strength—that the Lioness appeared. It was an ordinary morning, yet the mountains seemed to press heavier than the sky.

The Lioness came to her as if she had always been her guardian. She carried a royal bearing: eyes of fire, a mane glowing like a hidden sun, breath that made the earth tremble. But when she opened her mouth, she did not roar. She simply said:

— I recognize you, Hira.

The meeting felt inevitable, as if stone had summoned the river and the river had summoned the sea. The Lioness was more than a beast; she was a Queen, not by blood alone but by the sheer gravity of her presence. Her eyes saw far, and when they rested on Hira, they recognized what others had never noticed: a silent royalty.

The Lioness bore a weight that tied her to her own land—an invisible cage she could never leave. She knew weakness, wished she could cast it off, but it bound her all the same. Her life had been a gilded prison: daughters with golden manes, lionesses made to rule in daylight. And when her eyes met Hira’s, she saw something different: brown eyes that carried the depth of someone who had already endured much, eyes that could walk through night without flinching. The Lioness, as a predator, sensed something else too: the tremor of a heartbeat that did not sound like others. Predators always listen for the pulse beneath the skin, and the Lioness heard in Hira a rhythm both brilliant and dangerous, one that would draw coyotes to circle and lions to study from the dark.

The Lioness also knew that Hira was chosen to walk through night, for she had been born from darkness and had learned how to move within it. She saw greatness in her, yes, but also danger—because predators always find the ones who carry too much. So she told Hira not to stay. The words came softly, but the silence around them carried the weight of a lioness circling in the dark. Whether it was warning or hunger, Hira could not tell.

She did not speak of nearby kingdoms or easy roads. Instead, she whispered the legend of the Northern Lights:

— Imagine, said the Lioness, a stone like fluorite breaking free from the earth. It shimmers in greens and purples that never settle, moving like veils, as if the sky itself were breathing inside it.

"Once, the auroras descended to dance among men. Their beauty was so unbearable that some tried to hold them — and trapped a breath of aurora inside the stones. Thus, fluorite was born: sky imprisoned in crystal. But captive beauty is only a shadow. The true Lights cannot be held; only in the heavens can they be whole.

"When you look at it, the weight on your shoulders dissolves for an instant. The chaos within you opens into a clearing. It is as if the fluorite were a memory of who you are when night does not bind you: light, whole, capable of crossing. If one day you see them, you will know the world is larger than this mountain."

Fluorite had always been Hira’s favorite stone. She had first seen it the day she was born, when the midwife placed one in her hands. Not as a trinket, but as an omen. Green and violet danced within it, as if it held a sky of its own. From that moment on, people said Hira had been born with an oversized heart—greater than her body, greater than the mountain that confined her. A heart vast enough to hold both sorrow and light; heavy enough to slow her steps. At times it lifted her, at times it betrayed her. For a heart too large can drown its own bearer, just as surely as it can shelter others. And such a heart did not go unnoticed; the Coyote lingered at its edges, drawn to her fatigue, circling the places where her strength bled into weakness.

So Hira learned that her gift was also her burden: the weight that made her shine was the same that made her stumble. Which meant her life could never go unnoticed.

To Hira, fluorite was not just a stone; it was the first medicine given to her heart. Born with a heart too vast for her body, the fluorite taught it rhythm. Its greens whispered balance when her pulse raced; its purples whispered calm when sorrow threatened to drown her. The stone did not shrink her heart, nor protect it from every wound; but it showed her that even a heart too large could find order within its chaos. And so, all the fluorites she kept were anchors: proof that beauty hides even in the rough — and that within excess, there can still be harmony.

The Lioness knew. By likening the Northern Lights to fluorite, she offered Hira a symbolic key. She did not say, Go, because you must. She said:— Go, because your heart deserves to see stones of light.

But anchors are heavy. And when the time came to cross the ocean, even medicine became weight. The City of Stone and all the fluorites she owned could not hold her. To reach the northern lights — the stones burning in the sky — she had to set down the stones in her hands. She left behind the cure she had always carried, because the promise ahead was greater than the comfort behind.

And so Hira understood: she could not carry all the stones with her. Fidelity to the land was written in her blood and would remain, even across oceans. But to cross seas, she had to set down the burden. It was not loyalty that broke; it was the weight that had to be laid on the ground. Leaving the stones behind felt like tearing out a part of herself, and it hurt. Yet she carried their memory, so that even in Norway she might feel the pulse of earth beneath the ice.

The Lioness, unable to leave, freed Hira with that story. And Hira—born into the shadows, knew. She knew how to cross darkness, how to spot the Coyote that circles the vulnerable. And that is why the Lioness told her:— My heart was trapped by the mountain, made small by its weight. But your heart is larger than these walls. Only the sky can set it free.

From that day on, the image of the aurora borealis was etched into Hira’s soul. So powerful that when she would later cross swamps, treacherous cities, and seas, the weight of danger would not crush her. Her wounds numbed her senses, but the blaze of that vision guided her steps. And thus, the City of Stone could not hold her.

The Passage to the North

The memory of the Lioness blurred with the silence of the Shaman. The Shaman, who had walked through mud like a living poem, had vanished; only the trace of her footsteps remained, dissolving into the humus as if the earth itself wished to swallow her path. To follow her, there was no trail. Only a distant glimmer: the Northern Lights.

And Hira had not yet seen them. She journeyed to the frozen lands of Norway guided only by the Lioness’s promise: to witness the Lights, fluorites suspended in the sky. But before that vision could come true, the sea rose against the shore. A tsunami swept across fjords and villages, dragging boats, coins, houses, and memories, leaving behind only mud and silence. The prince then appeared, as if by chance, offering words of escape. But Hira no longer trusted empty promises; she knew her compass was larger than him.

For the Shaman was part of her ancestry, yes. Not a figure from outside, but a presence of blood and soil. That was stronger than the aurora itself. Even without ever seeing it, Hira pressed northward—not for the shimmer of the lights, but because the North was stone. It was pure ice. Harsh, yes; unwelcoming to any lone traveler. But solid. And those born of stone always seek firm ground.

When she told her mother she had seen the Lioness, her mother warned her that lions were treacherous.— A lion never strikes at once, she said. It watches. It circles. It studies the trembling of its prey until it forgets itself, and only then does it move to tear and devour.

Hira already knew this. She had been told since childhood that a heart too large is a heart that will one day be broken — that one could lose their life for carrying so much inside. And perhaps because she knew, she had nothing left to lose by going north.

From that day, Hira never saw the Lioness again, and never spoke of her at home. Yet she believed her words, for her heart told her they were true. That is why she kept on toward the northern lands, toward the ice where all was firm and severe.

Little did Hira imagine that, in the glacial silence, another lion walked behind her — a presence hewn from the cold, neither promise nor threat, only the echo of paws that refused to disappear.

And so the North kept its secret, carrying her toward a story greater than her own life.