Sun Story One: Revenge of the Green Isle

        The earth, sky and heavens were all in elation as the Sun and Moon finally merged into one sphere. The natural elements of trees, mountains, rivers, and land were an audience to the reunion set above them. The Earth below was covered in a soothing shadow  that contained small fragments of light. The Sun and Moon each have elements of the natural world that they befriended over others; not that any element was left friendless though. The Sun's closest friends are the land and the mountains. The Moon became close to the water and the trees. So as the reunion was approaching, each entity asked their friends for some of the best stories to tell  that would catch the other up on what was missed. The Sun decided to share the story of the Green Isle to the Moon and related it in the exact manner it was initially told.

                                                              Green Isle


        I, the Green Isle, am prone to having many things happen on my surface. I really enjoy that I have friends with me all the time because they find my soil enriching and are surrounded by good companies of animals. My favorite thing about being an isle is getting wet kisses from the sky that I soak up and I spread the love to everything that lives on me. My least favorite thing is the race of men. They can be so destructive and careless to what we, as Nature, have worked so hard for. I got my revenge on one man and he was too naive to realize what he had coming to him.

       There was a king who claimed his rights over my expansive shores. He was good to me and so we lived in harmony and even talked to each other once in awhile. The king had a beautiful daughter named Sunbeam. There were no worthy men in their kingdom to marry her so they waited for questing bridegrooms that would fight for her. While we were anxiously waiting for such a man to appear, an eagle dropped to the ground weeping. I asked her what she was so saddened by. The poor eagle related that all of her children were killed by a man who smothered them in fire. The trees and rivers wept with her. I led her to the Well of Healing and had her bathe in it to reduce her sorrow and she explained her sadness to me. She said that she saw the ignorant man who murdered her children getting punished by another man for acting foolish and trying to attack him for no reason. The offended man picked up the foolish one and threw him over a hill. She continued by saying she thought nothing of it because she was looking for food for her children. When she returned to the nest with food, her children were alive but when she left and returned again they were dead and there was the foolish man cooking the dinner that she brought for her children.
  Bathing Eagle           
    I gave her time to bathe without knowing that the man who she hated so much was not very far from her. I had another matter to attend to and that was with the king because a suitor had come to fight for Sunbeam. The trees had told me that the fighting was going really well and the suitor's fellow men were helping him to win. It looked as if Sunbeam was going to be married soon and the kingdom was preparing for the feast. In the far off distance I heard the screech of the Well of Healing. The well only screeches for death. That horrible foolish man had killed the eagle and was healing himself in the well from the scratches he received from the dying eagle. I wanted revenge! I would only put up with a few men but the kind who killed innocent Nature must not go unpunished. I held a council to find out what should be done to the foolish man. The grove of fruit trees had come up with the best plan for punishment and it was ruthless.

       The fruit trees were going to slip a little poison into a piece of their fruit and make it look so luscious that it could not be resisted. The foolish man walked right into our trap and ate two pieces of the most delicious-looking fruit that the trees bore. The poison inserted was magical because it did not kill him right away. I did not want to have the foolish man die on my soil and pollute it. The poison would only work once he landed on his homeland. I had told the king that since Sunbeam was to marry that I was going to move the island to a different location so the foolish man's kin would not try to invoke revenge on me. The wedding feast took place and the suitor's men wanted to return home and by chance they met up with the foolish man. I was so happy to see him go and felt relieved that the poor eagle had been avenged. As the men left in their boat I slowly drifted off in search of a new home.

       The Moon was delighted at the story and really cheered on the Green Isle for getting her revenge. The Sun beamed in delight and it radiated down to the listeners below them. The Sun still had one more story to tell before it was the Moon's turn to reciprocate the storytelling.

Author's Note:
      
The original story was told from the third person point of view about the men. There were two intersecting stories and I tried to keep that part of the story intact. I changed the narrator to the green isle where only the last part of the story takes place. The foolish man in the original did not die but I wanted to showcase that disrespecting nature was unacceptable so I killed him off.  I also left off the details of every piece of nature that the foolish man sat, stepped, or fell on. I felt that the details were the original author's way of incorporating the beauty of nature and I wrote from the point of view of nature so I feel as if I justified it by giving it a voice.  I have chosen a sequence of the elements of nature that I want to include in my storybook starting from the bottom up. I chose land as the first story because it the base on which everything else is placed upon.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Email me : The Scientist of the Sky and Earth----- Amber Sears

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                Ahead To ----      Sun Story Two             Moon Story One              Moon Story Two                     
                                                                                                                                                                            


Image Information:                                                                                 
          
Top: Isle of Barra. Photographer Unknown. Weblink
    
               Bottom: "Wind over Water" by Lynne Prentice, 1999. Weblink
                                                                  
Bibliography Information:
                       Title: Heroes on the Green Isle
                       Author: Donald Alexander Mackenzie
                       Book and Year: Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend, 1917
                      
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