In ancient times, a girl of an ancient people - she was the first girl on earth - pretended to be sick and stayed at home. She was lying in a small hut that her mother had made for her. All the women, her mothers, went to dig up edible roots, but she did not go with them, she lay in her small hut, and her digging stick stood nearby.
So she stayed in the hut, and her mother brought her food. The mother made sure that the girl did not eat the game killed by the young men. She could only eat game killed by her father, since he was an old man. If she were to eat the game killed by the youths, her saliva could get on the gazelle meat and then go on to the onions. Then the bow will become cold, the hands of the young men will become cold, and the arrow, the arrowhead, will become cold.
The mother brought the girl edible ghuin roots, but the girl was angry that her mother gave her too few roots, and she could not go for ghuin herself, although she was hungry. Because she was lying in her hut.
Then the girl stood up, put her hands in the wood ash and threw it into the sky.
She said to the wood ash:
“Let this wood ash become the Milky Way.” Let it stretch across the sky as a white stripe, and let there be stars near it.
And so the ash became the Milky Way.
In order to make the stars, the girl threw roots up into the air. These were the fragrant edible roots of ghuin. There were mature red roots and they turned into red stars, and young white roots turned into white stars.
The Milky Way turns along with the stars, which smoothly move on their way. And when the Milky Way reaches the earth in its movement, it turns and the stars also turn and go back, because they see that the sun is returning, making its way. And the stars go away, and the dawn comes after them. And then the Milky Way lies quietly. And the stars should also stand quietly around. And when their time comes, the stars again float forward in their tracks. The stars always follow this path.
And the Milky Way, approaching the place where the girl threw up the wood ash, slowly descends, and then moves on and moves across the sky. The stars turn and make their circle across the sky. The sky lies still. And the stars float across the sky, they come in, come out again, they float, following their tracks. When the sun comes out, they turn pale. And when the sun goes down, they come out again, turn around and follow the sun.
Darkness falls and the stars turn from white to red. And so they shine brightly, because now it is night and they can float further across the sky. When people go somewhere at night, they know that the stars light up the earth for them. The Milky Way glows softly in the darkness of the night - like wood ash. This girl said that the Milky Way should give light to people so that they could find their way home at night. At night the earth would be completely dark if it were not for the Milky Way and the stars.
The same girl made locusts by throwing into the sky the peel of a gtsuissi root that she had eaten.
She first threw wood ash up into the sky, and then threw up ghuin roots. She did this out of anger at her mother for giving her too few roots.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru