The Seven Sisters

“I remember the sky before it had a name.

We were not yet a story then—only sisters, moving together, as we always had. The air was softer, the nights longer, and the world below us still whispered rather than roared. We walked the earth in those days, our feet touching soil, our laughter carried by wind through olive trees and saltwater shores.

People like to say we were placed among the stars to be admired. That we shine so others can find their way, there is some truth in that, I suppose. But they forget that before we became light, we were touch, and voice, and hunger, and warmth.

I remember the sea most clearly.

It is strange what remains when everything else fades into myth. Not the grand moments, not the fear or the transformation—but small things. The way the tide would pull back as if thinking. The taste of figs, still warm from the sun. The quiet understanding between us, needing no words.

We were never identical, though from afar we might seem so. Each of us carried something different: a restlessness, a tenderness, a stubborn fire. We moved as one, but we felt as many.

And then, like all stories that last, something changed.

I will not tell it as others do—with drama and spectacle, with gods and pursuit and fear stretched into legend. The truth is quieter. Change came like dusk: slowly, inevitably. One moment we were of the earth, and the next we were remembering it from afar.

Now we are here—suspended, distant, constant.

They look up at us and give us meaning. Sailors, farmers, wanderers. They trace patterns between us, build stories, find comfort. I wonder if they know that we, too, are looking back.

We still remember.

Not perfectly. Memory softens at the edges, like worn fabric. But enough remains to keep us close to what we were. To keep us from becoming only symbols.

Sometimes, when the night is especially clear, I imagine I can still feel the sea. Not as it was, but as an echo—rhythmic, patient, enduring. Like us.

We did not choose to become stars.

But we chose to remain together.

And perhaps that is why we still shine.”

In Greek mythology, the Pleiades are the seven daughters of Atlas, transformed into a cluster of stars. Their story shifts depending on who tells it—sometimes they are placed in the sky for protection, sometimes in memory—but what remains constant is their presence: distant, yet guiding.

For centuries, the rising and setting of the Pleiades marked time. Farmers, sailors, and communities looked to them to understand when to sow, when to harvest, when to travel, and when to pause. They became part of a living rhythm between sky and earth—an early calendar rooted in observation, patience, and trust in natural cycles.

This connection between the stars and the land feels especially relevant when thinking about food.

Every ingredient carries its own timing. Olives are harvested at a precise moment. Honey depends on seasons of flowering. Grapes follow the slow transformation of sun and soil. Behind each product, there is a rhythm not so different from the one once guided by the Pleiades—a quiet coordination between nature, labour, and care.

Pleiades, as a project, draws from this idea.

It is not only about the final product, but about the journey it takes—from the producer, to the hands that gather it, to the table where it is shared. Along this route, stories are carried: of places, of people, of traditions that continue to evolve.

Food becomes a way of tracing these constellations on the ground.

And just like the stars once helped people navigate the world, these stories offer another kind of guidance—one that connects us back to where things begin, and to the meaning they hold along the way.