Border
When Old Grandmother was a child, she was taken by her lala (mother) and kalka (father) to the edge place where the steppes turned to stone. Old Grandmother spoke of this: her bewilderment, her fear, her lala and kalka explaining that to be grown one day she would need to prove she could walk alone as a person. In the village place she had heard other children mention it. She had believed what they’d told her were merely stories. That the first morning of a child’s tenth year they would be brought to the edge place to learn how to walk again. “Learn how to walk again”—how they told it.
A short story by Kyle Coma-Thompson.