The flatland loved dawn. It was the time when night departed, leaving behind dark marks that got paler in the light and turning the stars off; and the Moon would grow ever whiter and more translucent, like a faded button in the linen of the sky. At first, a barely rosy ribbon would appear where the flatland bordered the sky. Then it grew, pushing away the darkness by its back, growing warmer and turning to the colour of ripe Sun. The flat palm of the flatland shook off the silence of the night; birds were waking up, topping it with introductions for the music of the day. Behind the horizon the Sun was already peeping. Its first rays decorated the flatland with pearls of dew that generously glistened like the richest dowry. The dawn ran her slim, bright fingers through crowns of the trees, taking off the darkness from every leaf, making them glisten and shine with colour. She patted the spikes of grains, combed the moustaches of maize, twisted around the grapevines tickling the grapes. Roosters shook, letting the dawn know they were awake by their song, and confusing the still sleepy dogs, barking dreamily for no reason at all.

Zora loved the flatland. And dawn. For Zora was born at dawn, a dawn now long gone, and that was why they gave her that name, hoping that she would be good and hard working, that her soul would be bright just like a dawn ought to be. And because a person is the name the person bears, Zora was just like that in all of her lifetime, closely keeping to her name.

Ever since she could remeber Zora would get up before dawn. At first her nose could hardly reach the window stool, even if she stood on the tips of her toes. She would crawl under the curtain and wait for the first trace of light, even the faintest. The night cold bit her bare feet and she shifted from one onto the other while her mother, half asleep, scolded her from the bed. At the first trace of light she would take her grandmother’s heavy triangle shawl, put it on and, with the tassels dragging behind her, quietly leave the house. She would sit on the threshold, wrapping the woollen shawl-scarf around her, and watched her namesake, the dawn, announce the day. When she heard the house waking up, rattling of the pots and plates along with the murmurs of her just awoken family, Zora, still dragging the shawl behind her, would roam through the yard, look if there was anyone on the road, stand enchanted by the freshly washed expanse of wheat fields and vineyards. She seemed to hear an army of sunflowers slowly turning their heads towards the Sun, the half of it that peeped from the flatland as if from water.

And as she grew up, got married, left home, and had her own children, watching, as the years passed by, wars, happiness, droughts and floods, hot summers and snowed in winters, she would rise before all others, stand by the window and wait for the dawn. Then she measured the backyard by her steps, checking to see if everything was in order and in its place, lest the night had upset something. She fed, watered, and let into the light all that waited for her, and then she entered the house to check if the day was beginning as it should – with a whiff of bread and still warm beds.

Zora loved dawns, and did not count them even when they piled up into years, making her walk with a cane. To her, every dawn was a beginning, assurance that there was no end, the happiness of a new day. Tapping with her cane as quietly as she could, so as not to wake up anybody in her, fortunately, full house, Zora would rise, approach the window with the curtains that she, herself, had embroidered, greeting with a smile the first light of her name; she would throw on a thick shawl and sit in the chair in front of the house. Breathing in the dewy air still cold with the night, she waited to hear the first voices, the sounds of never-ending life. She and dawn checked whether all had risen, whether they knew what and how things ought to be done that day, watched over the day’s work order. Patient and eternal, dawn and Zora praised the light of life, knowing in their kind souls that there was never a night that lasted past dawn.

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Zora*- in Serbian it means dawn (part of the day) and personal f. name, Dawn