literature

Menana

Deviation Actions

ArinadaDragonspeaker's avatar
Published:
531 Views

Literature Text

The stars sang to me, sang such sweet songs that father’s grip nor mother’s pleas could keep my astronomical spirit rooted in human life; I let them go and my feet found a path from the ground to the galaxy, and I thought I could be happy forever in my wanderlust.

Beauty, wonder, and awe I expected. It was the cold that caught me off guard. The nothing stretching between planets and stars, between supernovae and nebulae, chafed icily at my skin, and the weight of such fearful emptiness etched weakness into my shoulder blades. The longer I meandered, the more stardust felt gritty, the more starlight burned. When a thread of dark-matter memories caught at my ankle, I rejoiced, tracing the strand with my toe-tips all the way back home.

But it was a new home I was destined for; I lost my humanity somewhere between the little fisher and the seven dancing girls, and greater powers than I decreed that I must re-evolve and find it anew. I was reborn on the earth, first as a fluid spirit dancing in a waterfall, then as a shimmer-scaled fish frolicking with my spirit-cousins; slowly but surely, my scales flaked off to sparkle like stars in the riverbed. I knew that smooth skin and hair did not make me human, though, so when my scales were half gone I shimmied onto shore in search of love.

I found my human soul again in you, stalwart warrior, after the last of my shining scales had fallen away. I couldn't bear it when they forced you to leave me, when your spiteful tribe cursed me and my water-spirit family. The oh-so-coveted humanity I'd striven for dissolved like mist in the sun, and so did I, reverting once more to life as a spirit of the waterfall. I wondered if I should have remained a galaxy-wanderer after all.

But happiness was still mine to grasp. When you and your kindred ventured unwittingly into our waters, my fellows went to war, taking vengeance for me even as I snatched you from the grip of their torturous curse. Together we found paradise beneath that sun-soaked cascade, and I forgot the stars for good.
This is a retelling of a Native American folk tale, "Menana of the Waterfall", done for *Concora's "Of Myth and Legend" contest: concora.deviantart.com/journal…. The original tale I used can be found here: lair2000.net/Mermaid_Stories/S…

The Little Fisher and the Seven Dancing Girls are constellations as named by at least one Native American tribe (I'm honestly uncertain about which one(s) called the constellations by those names...I found them here: www.northern-stars.com/Native_…

The cover art I attached to this deviation is by Troy Howell, and was done for the compilation of stories called "Mermaid Tales from Around the World" by Mary Pope Osbourne (which includes Menana's story). This book was one of my favorite books as a child, and I was inspired by this contest prompt to finally purchase a copy and add it to my book collection. :D
© 2013 - 2024 ArinadaDragonspeaker
Comments12
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
MatthiasTeivel's avatar
This is an incomparably beautiful adaptation of this particular story!:love:
Kudos! :clap: