The Distance Between Here and There
At the highest hill in WAN, the five siblings discover that not everything that sounds like time is time, and not everything that measures distance can be seen.
---
The fourth evening came without warning.
By late afternoon, the clouds had disappeared.
The sky above WAN was unusually clear, and from the family courtyard, the hills looked as though someone had painted them against the setting sun.
BigDan stood at the doorway, staring toward the highest hill.
Big Dee noticed.
“Where are we going?”
BigDan picked up the old lantern.
“Up.”
John looked at the hill.
“Up where?”
“The summit.”
Faye immediately ran outside.
“Why?”
BigDan smiled.
“Tonight, we're going to count the stars.”
John groaned.
“With numbers?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
BigDan looked toward the darkening sky.
“With words.”
---
They climbed as the evening became night.
The path was narrow and winding.
They passed the old fig tree, crossed the little wooden bridge and continued beyond the last houses of WAN.
Below them, the village slowly disappeared into darkness.
One by one, the lamps came alive.
From that height, the houses looked like tiny glowing dots scattered across the valley.
Faye stopped.
“Look!”
The Milky Way had appeared above them.
A great river of stars stretched across the sky.
Esther stood beside her.
“It looks like another village.”
Big Dee smiled.
“Perhaps it is.”
John looked up.
“How far away are those stars?”
BigDan didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he sat on a flat rock.
“That's a good question.”
John waited.
BigDan pointed toward the sky.
“Some distances are so enormous that ordinary miles and kilometres become inconvenient.”
“So what do we use?”
“A light-year.”
Faye turned around.
“A year?”
John smiled.
“I knew it. We're back to time.”
BigDan shook his head.
“Not quite.”
---
He picked up a small stone.
“Imagine light leaving the sun.”
He tossed the stone gently into his palm.
“It travels extraordinarily fast.”
“How fast?” Faye asked.
“About three hundred thousand kilometres every second.”
John whistled.
BigDan continued.
“In one year, light travels an enormous distance.”
“And that distance is a light-year?”
“Yes.”
Faye looked up.
“So a light-year is a distance?”
“Exactly.”
“Not time?”
“Not time.”
John nodded slowly.
“So if someone says a star is ten light-years away…”
“They mean the distance light would travel in ten years.”
Faye smiled.
“That is strange.”
BigDan laughed.
“Language is full of strange things.”
---
They continued higher.
The wind became colder.
The sounds of the village faded.
At the summit, there was an ancient stone platform.
Nobody knew who built it.
The oldest people in WAN said their ancestors used to sit there and watch the heavens.
The five siblings settled around the edge.
BigDan opened the WAN book.
The pages moved in the wind.
Faye looked over his shoulder.
“What are we learning tonight?”
BigDan pointed to the page.
LIGHT-YEAR.
Below it was another word.
EON.
Faye remembered it from the previous evening.
“That's a very long time.”
BigDan nodded.
“How long?”
“Very, very long.”
John smiled.
“So basically, you still don't know.”
BigDan laughed.
“An eon isn't a fixed number of years in ordinary speech.”
“Then why use it?”
“Because there are periods of time so vast that giving them an ordinary number doesn't always help.”
Esther looked at the stars.
“Like the age of the universe?”
BigDan nodded.
“Exactly.”
---
Faye thought for a while.
“So a decade has a number.”
“Yes.”
“A century has a number.”
“Yes.”
“A millennium has a number.”
“Yes.”
“But an eon doesn't?”
“Not in the same precise way.”
“And a light-year is not even time.”
“Correct.”
Faye shook her head.
“Words are difficult.”
Big Dee smiled.
“No. Words are adventurous.”
---
A sudden wind swept across the hill.
BigDan closed the book.
“Now look at the moon.”
They all looked upward.
“Imagine someone tells you, ‘I'll see you once in a blue moon.’”
John laughed.
“That doesn't mean once every time the moon turns blue.”
“Correct.”
“So what does it mean?”
“It means something happens very rarely.”
Faye looked puzzled.
“Isn't that a number?”
“No.”
“Then why does it sound like one?”
“Because humans have always used familiar things to describe unfamiliar quantities.”
BigDan pointed at the moon.
“A blue moon became an expression for something uncommon or rare.”
John nodded.
“So it is not an exact measurement.”
“Exactly.”
---
Big Dee suddenly smiled.
“I have one.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“What?”
“Forty winks.”
John laughed.
“That one sounds like forty.”
Faye immediately asked:
“How many winks is forty winks?”
BigDan smiled.
“Not necessarily forty.”
John shook his head.
“Then why call it forty?”
“It's an idiomatic expression for a short nap.”
Faye laughed.
“So if I sleep for three hours…”
“That isn't forty winks.”
“What if I sleep for four?”
“Still not necessarily.”
“What if I count my winks?”
BigDan smiled.
“Then you have misunderstood the expression.”
The family laughed.
---
They sat quietly for a while.
Then Esther pointed toward the horizon.
“What is an age?”
BigDan looked at her.
“Another interesting word.”
“Is it like an era?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is it like a century?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So how long is an age?”
BigDan smiled.
“Long enough to be recognised as a distinct period.”
John sighed.
“That's another answer that doesn't have a number.”
BigDan nodded.
“Because some words describe **meaning**, not mathematics.”
Esther looked thoughtful.
“So when people say, ‘It happened ages ago’…”
“They aren't giving you a precise number.”
“They're telling you it feels very far back in time.”
“Exactly.”
---
The moon climbed higher.
The family remained on the summit.
BigDan turned another page.
There was a drawing of the Earth.
Beside it were three words:
DISTANCE.
TIME.
ERA.
He placed his finger beneath each one.
“Tonight, you've learned something important.”
He pointed to decade.
“Some words give us exact quantities.”
Then era.
“Some describe periods whose length depends on history.”
Then eon.
“Some describe immense spans of time without giving us a simple fixed number.”
Finally, he pointed toward the stars.
“And some words that contain time are actually measuring distance.”
John nodded.
“A light-year.”
“Yes.”
Faye smiled.
“So if somebody asks how long a light-year is…”
“Tell them they're asking the wrong question.”
Everyone laughed.
---
On the journey home, Faye walked beside BigDan.
The village lights were visible again below.
“BigDan?”
“Yes?”
“Which is farther?”
“What?”
“An eon or a light-year?”
BigDan stopped walking.
John, Big Dee and Esther stopped too.
BigDan smiled.
“They don't measure the same thing.”
Faye thought about it.
“One measures time.”
“Yes.”
“One measures distance.”
“Yes.”
“So you can't compare them?”
“Not meaningfully.”
Faye smiled.
“Then I have another question.”
BigDan sighed dramatically.
“Of course you do.”
“If a person says, ‘I waited an eon for you,’…”
“Yes?”
“…and John says, ‘I walked a light-year to get here,’…”
John interrupted.
“I would never say that.”
Faye continued.
“Who travelled farther?”
The whole family burst into laughter.
BigDan shook his head.
“That,” he said, “is tomorrow's problem.”
---
They reached the family house just before midnight.
BigDan hung the lantern beside the door.
The others went inside.
But Esther remained outside for a moment.
She looked back at the hills.
The stars were still shining.
She thought about how strange language was.
A decade could be counted.
A century could be counted.
A millennium could be counted.
But an era depended on what happened.
An eon depended on the immensity of time.
And a light-year had nothing to do with waiting for a year at all.
She smiled.
Perhaps words were not created merely to make numbers shorter.
Perhaps they were created because the world itself was too large, too old and too beautiful to be measured in only one way.
She stepped inside.
BigDan was already closing the WAN book.
Faye called from the room:
“BigDan!”
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, you're teaching us everything else.”
BigDan smiled.
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“How much is everything?”
Faye thought carefully.
Then she answered:
“A myriad.”
BigDan laughed.
“Now you're getting dangerous.”
Outside, the ancient hills stood beneath the stars.
And WAN slept once again.
But somewhere between the earth beneath their feet and the stars above their heads, the five siblings had learned something numbers alone could never quite explain:
Some things are counted.
Some things are measured.
And some things are simply too vast to need a number.
136
