The girl-turned-woman, the woman-called-See, still gasping from the shock of the cold, reached out with strong strokes and paddled towards the shore, dragging her tired, loose, beaten body up onto the rocks and the sand. She laid her head on her arms and succumbed to sleep, resting on the bank under the tall, thick limbs of a tree with thin, long leaves that lit up faintly each time the lightning cracked through the swollen clouds.
Read MoreMany winters after The Fall, a girl grew up among the people. She looked like them, she talked like them, she sang and danced and played like them. She even felt the same way as them--happy and sad, joyful and angry. Every year when her tribe made their sad, silent march to the tree at the edge of the cliff, the girl walked with them, tears streaming down her face as she bowed her head in agony and fear. Every year, she knelt near the tree and relived the events of The Fall, which became a legend and a warning that the old women told the the youngsters as they played with sticks and rocks in the dirt.
Read MoreOnce, in the early ancestral light, before humans had grown afraid, a man left his tribe one day and walked to the nearby edge of a canyon. He often went here to watch the eagles circle above in the hot blue sky, and to dangle his legs over the edge and look down, down, down at the tiny ribbon of blue so far beneath him.
As he was walking one bright morning, he noticed a large, heavy tree growing crooked, out into the air on the edge of the cliff. One limb, heavy with thin, elongated leaves and sweet green nuts, swung out over the edge of the canyon, just out of reach. The man had never seen such a tree, so he looked at those dangling, tantalizing morsels and scrambled right up the trunk and out onto the branch, edging out onto the limb and over into the long drop down to the canyon floor.
Read MoreOnce, Man left his village, walking North. He paddled across a large river so that he could hunt in the forest on the Northern shore in order to provide food for his family. Man was an excellent hunter, but he was young and careless. In those days, Moon had not yet completed her great works. It was dry and dusty on the Earth, and though the cedar and Douglas fir trees grew up tall, the water they drank lurked deep beneath the ground and so, once Man left the river, he grew thirsty. He stumbled upon a great cedar adjoined by a smaller yew. Nestled between their trunks, perfectly contained by a circular ridge of their combined roots, was a large puddle of clear water. Man knelt down on both knees, laying his simple stone spear beside him on the ground. He cupped his hands in the water and lifted them to his face, alert, watchful as he drank deep. Once, twice, three times he drank of the clear, cold water.
Read MoreSun shone down on Earth. The dirt cracked and sizzled, dry and molten. The red, flaming sky baked the world. Nothing grew except for the tiny drops of green things deep beneath the crust, which lived and died scuttling over each other in total darkness.
Sun felt lonely, so he reached out into the blackness of space around him and scooped up a piece of it, which he rolled into a ball and set near Earth. This blackness that was of himself and not of himself took on a shine from Sun's reflection over time, and, as is the way of things, awoke.
Read MoreOnce, there was a Raven who went exploring. He came upon a Woman, small and dark of stature, in threadbare clothes. Woman dragged behind her an enormous cedar tree, which was attached at her ankle with a noose of rope. She took one step, then heaved with all her might so the tree would slide through the mud and muck a few inches behind her.
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