Told in Peru
By Anonymous
When the world began, there was no night-time, only day. No one knew what sunrises were or sunsets, or how stars sparkled.
In this world, there was a great, scary sea snake that lived in the deepest and darkest parts of the ocean. He had a daughter who married into another tribe: the tribes of humans, who lived in the rainforest. The daughter left the depths of the sea to live with her husband on land — and, so, in the daytime.
Every day that she lived on earth, she longed to be in her father’s kingdom with the shadows that comforted her. Her human husband called three of his men to bring some shadows for her wife. He asked them to go on the long journey to the kingdom of the sea snake and take a bag with them so they could carry the night back to land.
After many difficult days, they finally arrived to the depths of the sea, and the snake king gladly filled the bag with shadows. But he warned them, “don’t open the bag until you find the princess”.
On their journey back, the three men kept hearing the sounds of beasts coming from inside the bag. They were scared to be killed by whatever was inside and, in a moment of panic, they dropped the bag and out escaped the night-time. In a flash, the earth turned dark and the night was filled with the noises of the rainforest. What they heard was not the sounds of beasts but of the night birds and insects that sing in darkness.
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