Prelude to the Gifting 
	
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	"But, Granana...?"

	The child's question trailed off, waking me from my lapse into the
waking dream that seemed ever and always a part of my days now.

	"Yes, Myriide?"

	"Didn't people always have Gifts?"

	"Well now, that's a good question.  No one really knows if there was
truly a first Gifting like the legends say or even why we have them in
the first place.  That's why we call them Gifts, you know.

	"Because a present can be for anything, but only a gift need have no
reason or burden, save that of acceptance?"

	"That's good, Myriide!"

	"Nana told me that, but I don't really understand.  How can accepting
a gift be a burden?"

	"Well, if I gave you a present, perhaps a rake, you'd be obliged to
give me something in return to maintain the balance, right?  But a gift
is given freely and wholeheartedly with no expectation or hope of
something in return.  So, what if I gave you a rake as a gift and not a
present?  You wouldn't be obliged to give me anything in return and you
could accept it or deny it as you chose.  What would happen if you
accepted it?"

	"I guess I would have a rake?"

	"Right, but what does the owner of a rake do?"

	Her face falls slightly.  "Um, rakes things?"

	"Also correct.  As the owner of a rake, you would now have to bear the
burden of raking things when the need was there, even if you didn't want
to.  This is the burden of acceptance.  If a gift is given and accepted,
then while you have no obligation of repayment to the giver, you become
responsible for using that gift.  This means that you must always think
through the consequences of accepting a gift very carefully.

	"But what if I didn't want to rake things?  If it's just a gift, I
wouldn't have to use it, right?"

	"Well, that's something you learn as you grow up, dear heart. 
Remember, no one can force you to use a gift, but sometimes you should
even if you don't want to.  For instance, what if Yearshift came early,
and all the leaves from all the trees were to fall at once.  Wouldn't it
befit the owner of a rake to help out with the mess?"

	"I suppose..."

	"Anyway, that's enough for now.  What's got such a young girl
pondering such weighty matters today?"

	"Well...  I heard Nana talking with that man who came today and
they kept saying the strangest things, all about gifts and Giftless and
something called an Exodus.  I don't understand at all.  Doesn't
everybody have gifts?"


	Out of the mouths of babes, they say.  So many things that I haven't
thought of in years and my favorite great-granddaughter manages to bring
it all back to me.  Perhaps that is part of the role of youth, to remind
the aged what it was like to be free, innocent, ignorant of so many,
many things.  Perhaps they are here to bring back life's pure simplicity
where truth and right are always crisp and gray is only that place
between questions.  Giftless is such an ugly word, a word best left
to the messy depths left behind by the now to be absorbed by the
ever-growing past.  As a gift.  Afterall, history is what you made of
it.

	And, sometimes, it is better to leave a gift unused.