The Beginning
When a great storm separates a young lioness from her pride, she runs through the rain and the lightning until she finds shelter in a cave. In the darkness, she meets a wise serpent — and the serpent begins to tell her a story.
Sarpa and Siṃhī: The Beginning is written for children and for the people who read to them. Because some stories are written for children and arrive like a gift for the adult holding the book.
Its language is simple. Its questions are not.
This volume contains two complete stories. The first is a picture book, illustrated on every spread — original black-and-white drawings accompanying each page of the young lioness Siṃhī as she finds her way through grief and fear toward courage and home. The second moves into chapter book territory — the language deepening, the illustrations stepping back, the story beginning to carry its own weight.
Sarpa does not comfort Siṃhī with easy words. He tells her a story. And inside that story is a teaching as old as the language it comes from — that darkness is where the journey begins, that grief is not the end of love, and that courage waits on the other side of fear.
Together they are the beginning of Siṃhī: The Becoming — a literary novel in thirteen books that follows the young lioness from lost cub to adulthood, through the old stories of the Indian tradition. Stories of fire and devotion, of courage and sacrifice, of loss and homecoming.
Each book is a story complete in itself. Together they form a single journey.
The name Siṃhī comes from Sanskrit, one of the world's oldest languages, and means lioness. A note on pronunciation is included for all names.
For readers of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, Richard Adams's Watership Down, and the old Indian fables themselves.
For ages 5 and up, or as young as a child likes to listen.
To be read aloud, together.
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First Edition, 2026 · Published by Embody Healing Center LLC, Ashland, Oregon
Available now in hardcover and Kindle.