myth for wheel cactus

There was a time when people thought earth was a place to dig oneself into the ground. For this reason people spent a great deal of time at shovels. Their backs were sore; they were tired all the time because the holes were never large enough, never deep enough. There was a turn of phrase they’d say to one another while they worked: “while the sky is above, we lose ourselves”. This strange saying had to do with a superstitious fear of they sky, which is far too big. And the stars too mysterious. It was bad luck to even think that far or wide.

Their ancestors had started digging because they were forced to by another people who were long gone and bored of watching them work. This was so many years ago the people mistook fear for myth.

The gods never came to those people because the people did not believe in gods. They didn’t believe in anything but their tools and the work they had to do. They had spent so very long digging there wasn’t really anything else but that. They would die in these places, speaking to one another through dirt and thinking that was the closest they could ever be to one another. There was one person who was a child, and had not yet built the strong muscles to dig their hole. Frankly, they weren’t very good at it. On a cool night in the mountains they lay down to rest in their cradle of earth they had made and they looked up into the sky and saw there the milky way - that ancient accident we all share. 

The child didn’t want to build a hole and be so far away from this sky. So they reached their hand up, and they realized that another hand reached back down to them with thousands of stars. For the rest of the child’s life they threw down stars into every hole of her people, so that they could see the stars too. And it took many many years, but the people rose back up as wheel cactus. They are the soft color of a star. Their bodies produced the prick that bring stars down to earth.

When you see the wheel cactus people of the stars you can put down your tools and look at the sky. After so many years the wheel cactus has learned to move slowly and stand together. If you listen very closely you can hear their story. When people find the wheel cactus, some stay with them for quite a long time.