One evening a man, whose name was Sapalo, lay down on a mat outside his hut and began to look at the sky. He saw a beautiful star in the sky and wanted it to come down to him in the form of a beautiful woman. And then he dozed off, tired from the day. Suddenly someone woke him up, and he woke up in fright. Two women stood in front of him.
- Who are you? - he asked them.
“We are the ones you ordered to come down,” the women answered.
Both stayed with him. And both were so beautiful!.. Sapalo went hunting and brought them a lot of game. But the women refused to eat meat, saying that they had never eaten anything like this, but always ate the resin of the mastic tree. And they had never seen such animals either.
And when the next day he dipped the feathers of the muguma bird in resin to make himself a beautiful bracelet, the women attacked the resin and ate almost all of it. Therefore, Sapalo had to go with them in search of the mastic tree. But he didn't find it. Then the women, seeing a bakabu palm tree hung with fruits, forced Sapalo to climb the tree, and they themselves followed him. Then the tree began to grow. Sapalo tried to jump from the tree, but the women warned that if he did, they would shoot him in the buttocks with arrows.
And he had to rise higher and higher until he disappeared from sight. The women rose after him. And the tree grew and grew. Finally they reached the sky.
In heaven, Sapalo felt very bad. He did not eat anything, because everyone around him ate only the resin of the mastic tree. Seeing how he was suffering, the heavenly beings made a strong rope from the fiber of the tucuma palm tree and attached a huge clay jug to it so that he could descend to the ground in it. And they began to lower it, and when the rope that held the jug ran out, they tied another one to it. And after some time, the heavenly inhabitants shouted, asking Sapalo if he had reached the earth.
“Not yet,” he replied.
Then, having tied a new piece of rope, they lowered it even lower. And again they asked whether he was on earth or not.
“Not yet,” the man answered.
However, when there was very little left to the ground, the heavenly inhabitants let go of the rope. And the jug shattered. Its fragments turned into different turtles, and the rope turned into a cobra. This is how turtles and cobras came into the world, which did not exist before.
The man in the sky became so thin that he could barely stand on his feet. And, returning to his native places, he told everyone that the stars feed on one resin, the resin of the mastic tree.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru