Prologue:

(For thousands of years a fire burns dynamic and existential. This gift unique to man provides food, warmth, safety, stories, and light.)

Chapter One

Stories are told. They are told around a light: lantern or hearth. The light is in a home. The home is in a forest.

Chapter Two

For want of a light, one becomes lost in the forest. As time and feet stumble forth, a distant light beckons. Around a light, in a home, in a forest, a new story is told.

Chapter Three

As listeners grow old, as the light dims, as the home succumbs to ruin, blighted trees topple and the progeny of their neighbors inherit the sky. The story fades.

Epilogue:

(What remains to be gleaned from old stories? The archaeologist strives to be a storyteller.)