Page 18 - Mateo and the Gift of Presence audio flip book Ch 1-2

Mateo and the Gift of Presence

With his tummy grumbling loudly (unless you gave him
the sandwiches), Mateo sat on a branch, his bare legs hanging
into empty space, and watched the sun go down. He didn’t
actually see it set, of course, as he still hadn’t bothered to climb
high enough in the trees to do so. If he had, he would have
seen the sun disappear into a beautiful tropical ocean, shaded

by puffy clouds tinged with gold. But Mateo knew it was setting
anyway because the sky mellowed into a soft blue-grey, which
eventually faded to midnight blue, and stars began flickering to
life where the once-bright sky had been.
Within half an hour, Mateo could see dozens of stars,
shining like the fires of a distantly encamped army, spread at
uneven distances among unseen hills and valleys. It was a vast
army, Mateo decided, one that carried horse-loads of delicious,
piping-hot food for the sharing. But try as he might, the imag-

ined food just wasn’t the same as real food, and his tummy
rumbled and complained louder than ever (unless, of course,
you gave him the sandwiches).
Mateo didn’t know the names of the constellations at
home and couldn’t point out anything but the Big Dipper on
a good night. So he didn’t realize that the patterns of the stars
above him were completely new. What he did notice, however,

and with some confusion, was that as soon as the sky was quite
dark, it began to get light again, as if the sun was coming back
up after merely dipping below the horizon.
An eerie kind of twilight gradually took the stars away as
he sat there, staring at the sky and fantasizing about food. The
constellation that had looked vaguely like a pile of steaming

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