myth for spatterdock

It all started when one friend whispered to another friend at the pond. The first friend was bitter and the second was sweet. The bitter friend told the sweet friend a secret she did not think she could tell anyone else.

After this secret was shared, out from their necks sprouted a single yellow flower, one for each friend, and a spatterdock leaf that covered their heads, as they worked in the summer fields. If anyone drew close they could hear the gentle story the flower would tell. It would tell everything and the women were free to be friends.

One day the world became very dark. Great demons rose from the ocean and circled the sky like cursed kites and the young women were split up. The friend of bitterness fell into the night with her family, and the one of sweetness felt as if she was rotting from within. She could not have her flower any longer, hummed above her so beautifully. She ripped the flower off her neck, and she ripped the leaf off too, leaving a large scar. She put the secret into the flower’s center and ate it. There she kept the secret in her stomach where, like a lost penny, she almost forgot it entirely.

No one but the spatterdock remembered the friendship, and so the story began.