myth for chili pepper

A proud creature emerged slick from the waves in the morning. This creature looked human. She had fallen in love, though, with the flame that lives in the center of our earth and decided she must find them. 

On her journey to find the door to the center, the goat told her she must take its eyes to see in the dark and exchange it with her own, which were like flowers. The pigeon said she must fly over the ocean of fire, so she must wear its wings in exchange for thumbs. The snake said it must use its tail to feel the hand of the fire so that she might coil around it and capture it at last in exchange for legs so it might learn to run. The human did not know seduction yet so these beings gave her the pain of losing her legs, eyes, and arms. She could not woo the flame without the fresh pain of a broken heart. 

So her eyes were the eyes of a goat. Her arms were wings and her hind quarters were a snake. 

When the human slithered her way through the dark tunnels with her keen eyes she could smell the melting rocks and minerals so very hot she could feel herself losing her mind, burned the minerals melted into and out of each other. 

No one had told her about the heat. No one had told her that the fire would burn her wings. She soon found that her time to find the true hand of the flame being to lift the being up would have to be discovered in moments because her entire body blazed. In a weak attempt to catch the first shadow she could make out she fell into the burning sea. She was mistaken.

The flame saw her fall and approached. They put a deep red skin over her entire body and fixed her eyes black. She clung to the fire being and the creature regarded each other before she remembered she must trap the being. In a moment her tail wrapped around the being. It broke the flame being’s heart to see a wanderer so very lost. 

Even the dead didn’t find their way here. 

“Make the fire of the earth with me.” She said. “I traveled too far to let you.”

The being didn’t want to leave but the snake’s tail would not let go. 

She dragged the flame through the dark tunnels that flickered with the flame being behind her - in the sun she saw her core was coal and lumped as char. Crisp white ash settled in the cracks of her body and flew off her body in a storm like snow. 

When we eat a pepper we remember the fire of our ancestors. They are telling us about the way they saw fire. They might have died by fire. They may have learned to work with fire. They may have burned their hands. 

The flame became green, and the human being became pepper, growing in the dry earth.

But it will tell you more that that. The taste of the pepper will transform you. You will know the fire inside you - the fire in the center.