Raven primped at his feathers while Eagle blew smoke.
“Very nicely done, Raven,” said Eagle.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Raven. “And thank you for your Ghost of Christmas Past routine. Very thought provoking.”
“One problem, though,” Eagle said. “Look.”
Raven looked and what did he see? People fighting each other over the Box of Knowledge. Angry, shouting, pummeling, vicious fighting. Over Knowledge.
“I’ve had it with these people!” Raven said. “Thunderbird! Thunderbird!”
“Why are you calling Thunderbird?” asked Eagle.
“It’s time for another Flood,” Raven replied. “It’s time to start over.”
“Perhaps that is not such a good idea,” said Eagle.
Raven reflected on the last Flood, brought on not by Thunderbird, but by his uncle, who had power over the tides.
“My uncle was the moon, you know,” Raven told Eagle. “Or so I was told. He kept his wife in a box.”
“That seems somehow…wrong,” said Eagle.
“It was a very trying time back then,” continued Raven. “My uncle commanded that my mother’s children be put to death, for he feared they would betray him to his wife, the one in the box—he was probably right —and so his men murdered my mother’s children. It was then that Killer Whale came to my mother—“
“I’ve heard it another way,” said Eagle. “I heard it was Heron who came to your mother.”
“It was Killer Whale with a hole in his dorsal fin,” corrected Raven.
“Stories can change over time,” Eagle said with a shrug.
“Killer Whale came to my mother and told her to heat and swallow a stone she found at low tide. She did, and I was born.”
“I’m not sure it works that way,” mused Eagle.
“Is Killer Whale my father?” Raven asked Eagle. “Or is my father Heron? Either way, I was born of stone. That’s the important part. My mother hid me away until I was big, and then my uncle sent for me. I went to him and he asked me to carve his canoe, which I did. But it was a murder canoe. It fell around me and tried to eat me! So I broke it in two and threw the pieces at my uncle’s feet. He was mad! He then commanded me to chop down a tree. The tree he sent me to was a flint tree, and shards of stone flew off when I chopped it. It would have killed me had I not been half-stone on my mother’s side!”
