When the Maya Woman Returned from the Past

She had always carried the sun in her eyes.

Every morning, she stood with her little brother on the wide stone steps of the great Maya temple. Together, they would look upward—faces lit by sunlight, hearts filled with joy, eyes reflecting a world where gods still walked the sky and the land hummed with sacred breath. She laughed easily, held her brother’s hand tightly, and wore her warrior pride like a second skin.

Her people knew her well. She was not only strong, not only graceful—she was the daughter of the Maya king. A princess by blood, yes, but more than that: she was a protector. She trained with spears, danced in sacred fires, learned the glyphs carved by time. Her braids, bound with red and turquoise ribbons, marked her lineage. Her jade necklace shone like the first light of morning. She was everything the Maya believed in—bold, wise, sacred.

And then, without reason, without warning, time shattered.

One breath, she was standing at the top of the temple, watching her brother smile up at the sun. The next, she was alone. The temple was gone. The trees were different. The sky seemed sick. Her feet touched hard black rock that burned, not stone carved by her ancestors.

She had come to the future.

But how? She did not know. She had not called the gods. She had not stepped into the underworld. It was as though the wind had opened a secret path, and her soul had stumbled through it.

Around her, everything roared and blinked. Metal beasts raced by—cars, she would later learn. Giant birds of steel split the sky—planes. People walked past, strange clothes tight and stiff, faces blank, their eyes trapped in small glowing boxes. These “phones” lit their faces but not their hearts.

She did not know the language they spoke. Their voices were quick, sharp, too fast and too thin. She tried to listen, but the words fell like rain on stone. She did not understand what they ate, how they moved, or why they never looked at the sky. She reached once for the stars—but the city lights had hidden them.

Most of all, she could not understand how a world could be so full of noise and yet feel so silent.

She remembered the slow, sacred mornings in her land—smoke rising from incense, the call of birds through the trees, the way her father, the king, stood proudly as the sun touched his shoulders. She remembered her little brother’s laughter as they climbed the temple steps, his hand in hers, his eyes trusting, fearless.

Now she stood alone, her huipil catching in the wind, ignored by rushing strangers. Her jade beads meant nothing here. Her silence, once a prayer, was now invisible.

But she felt the pull—the voice of the stone still called to her.

She searched. Days passed. And then, far from the glass and concrete, she found it: the real Maya temple, still standing, still breathing, though the world around it had changed. The jungle had thinned, the stones weathered, but it was there—waiting.

She climbed.

Each step was memory. She placed her foot where once her brother had stepped. She brushed her hand along the carved wall where her father once stood. The past poured through her like water through stone.

And when she reached the top, she fell to her knees.

She looked to the sky, and this time, she did not try to understand the planes or the satellites or the distant sounds. She just closed her eyes.

Tears came—quiet, like rain before dawn.

She cried not in fear, but in memory. For her brother’s voice. For her father’s strength. For the breath of gods she once felt on her skin.

Time had taken her. But the temple had given her back her heart.

And there, in the silence of stone, she whispered to the wind:

"I am still the daughter of the king."