Reading Notes: The Great Fire; The Origin of Light #1
In this story, there was a man who was in love with two women. He wanted to marry both of them, but they laughed in his face when he suggested it. So the man went North, and made a boat for himself to escape on. He set the world on fire behind him and escaped to sea.
But the fire grew faster than he thought and burned towards the south as well. It burnt the Earth, men, trees, animals and all the water.
The Old Coyote saw the Earth's ground burning and tried as hard as he could to put it out, so he put two boys in a sack and ran with them. He took fruit into his mouth, chewed it up and spit it on the fire so it was put out. But now that the fire was out, he realized there was no water and became thirsty. So he dug a hole in the bottom of the creek, covered it with Indian sugar he had chewed. The sugar turned to water and filled the creek so the Earth had water again.
But the two boys he had brought were lonesome, so they cried, because no one was left on Earth. So the Coyote made them a sweat house, split sticks and laid them in the house over night. In the morning, they all turned to men and women.
I liked this story because it had a happy ending, and I have tried to make all of my stories have happy endings thus far (even if that means changing a plot or the ending). I also liked how it had to do with animals and I feel like I could rewrite this story to go with my portfolio theme, perhaps keeping the coyote and changing the boys to visitors in the zoo, or maybe the zoo catches on fire instead of the whole Earth.
In this story, it talks about how darkness covered the Earth in the beginning and had no light. The animals always bumped into each other, the birds knocked against each other, and so on.
Hawk and Coyote thought about the darkness while Coyote felt his way into a swamp. He made a ball of dry tule reeds and gave it to the hawk, who flew up and spread the ball whirling around the world.
But the nights were still dark so Coyote made another bundle, and Hawk flew into the air again. These reeds, however, were damp, so they didn't burn as well as the first. That is why the moon does not give as much light as the sun.
I thought I could tie this back into my portfolio theme by making the Pangaea Zoo dark at first and then retelling this story for when it first opened.
Fire. Link here
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