At the beginning of time, when Baiame walked the earth, he created two men and a woman from the red earth of the mountains. Seeing that they came to life, the creator showed them plants that they could eat so as not to die of hunger, and he himself moved on.
People obediently ate plant foods, but a drought set in, plants became scarce, and one of the men killed a marsupial rat. The first hunter began to eat the meat with the woman, but his other comrade did not want to touch the meat, although he was weak from hunger. No matter how much the woman tried to persuade him to try new food, he refused and, finally, angry, moved with all his strength to the west.
The well-fed couple decided to catch up with their friend and overtook him already far away when he approached a large eucalyptus tree. There he fell dead, and the first people saw a black monster with huge fiery eyes near the tree. The monster grabbed the dead man and dragged him into a hollow tree. Then they heard a terrible clap of thunder and saw with horror how a huge eucalyptus tree was torn out of the ground by its roots and rushed through the air into the southern sky. Fiery eyes sparkled from its hollow.
What followed was a touching scene: two white cockatoos started screaming behind a rushing tree. They were not afraid of the evil spirit sitting in the hollow, but only wanted to catch up with their nest, which was being carried away in the hollow.
The tree stopped at the edge of the sky, near the Milky Way, which leads to the heavens, and then completely disappeared from sight. People could only see four sparkling eyes: they belonged to an evil spirit and the first dead man who went to the next world. This is how the constellation Southern Cross appeared, and near it - a flock of cockatoos, which became the constellation Hounds.
The heavenly constellations reminded us that man is mortal...
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru