“I believe it was an Obsidian tree,” said Eagle. “And the shards were glass...”
“Nevertheless, my uncle next sent me to kill a great octopus, very large and devilish,” said Raven. “He hoped the octopus would eat me! But I shrank that octopus and brought it to my uncle’s house and made it big again, so it filled the entire house with slimy octopus!”
“Ha, ha!” Cheered Eagle. “Your uncle was foiled again!”
“I shrunk that octopus small again and sent him out to sea. My uncle left, and he was mad. That’s when he commanded the tide to rise higher than it has ever risen. That’s when he made a flood to wash away the world.”
“I remember that part,” said Eagle.
“I flew up to the top of the sky until my beak stuck in the blue and I waited there many days until the tide retreated, and then everything was fine and my uncle was gone.”
“That’s not how I recall it,” said Eagle.
Raven was indignant. “Who are you to recall my stories?”
“People recall things and they tell the stories and those stories change with the recollection,” explained Eagle. “Our stories are fungible by definition.”
“I don’t like the idea,” said Raven. “What is this other ‘recollection’ you have heard?”
“Ah,” grinned Eagle, “simply that during the Great Flood, which we both agree was a cataclysmic event, you, ever resourceful, turned into a stone!”
“A stone!” Raven squawked. “Gak! Like the Stone Man from the plaza?”
“A stone!” Eagle confirmed. “A little round, flat stone. Because you are half stone! You’ve told me that yourself. You turned into a stone and settled to the bottom of the sea to wait out the Flood, and when the waters had finally retreated and the land had reappeared, you became yourself again and found your mother, floating in the duck skin you had given her!”
