The Lightningbird Myth

The lightningbird nests on the highest peak of the western shores. And every morning she gives birth to an egg. And every night as she returns from hunting the eastern sun, for there is no other object that will fit in her talons and there is no other direction to fly, the egg shall fall. Falling falling falling from the very top of the tallest tree on the highest peak on the edge of the western shores. And our wondrous lightningbird shall watch absorbed, with barely a beat of her magnificent wings, talons drooped, eyes sharp and motionless; hanging as if this has never happened before. And the egg shall smash as it always smashes leaving behind its contents, its spawn, a horrendous mixture of deformed mutants – each animal more piteous than the one before. Yet each monstrously beautiful, fantastically filled with such potential that the lightningbird is likewise filled with jealousy. She swoops down and devours the foul tasting creatures, products of her own misplaced creation. But, in her rashness she has missed one, every day for millennia one has survived the perils of that night heading east towards a new dawn of existence. Whether it be bird of the air, beast of the plains, fish of the sea, something that squirms on the belly of the earth or swings amongst trees. They all find their origin in the nest of the ferocious lightningbird.

It is said that if one night the egg did not fall then on the following morning out of it would emerge another lightningbird. And on that day the two lightningbirds would set off together to hunt the eastern sun. And then for the first time they would catch it and devour it and the world would be plunged back into darkness as it was before.