myth for wood horsetail

You can still see the place where the snake transformed. Here the mountains ripple as the snake coiled around the limestone quarry and the field of emmer and swelled beside the river where the passionfruit sighed along the slope, gripping the worm’s body.

The serpent didn’t die when Sweetie tore into its flesh but it bled into the soil. Its scales dragged as the snake coiled, digging the shape of itself into the earth. The shadow that had been tied to it seeped into the ground. The cry from the snake was thunder in our hearts, stopping every movement - the chaos of the snow plant and the grass people - everything was upturned. With a shake, from its mouth emerged another serpent. An iridescent creature. How it shone in every color leaving the old body of the snake behind. Fumes infused the air from the stilled creature.

The essence of the old snake is now in the sky, hidden in every shade of day. It fled its skin and tore through the dodder. So the sun finally shone through.

What is left gives us all we need in the hills around the town. The shadow spilled as fog, ribbons of darkness wove through the earth, coming up into the trees and flowers, jolting everything to life with a sharp acid: a poison and a health powerful enough to make us change. The yellow flower - winter cress - reminds us of the shadow’s tenacity. The poison behind medicine reminds us how deeply the shadow knows how to tie our souls up in the earth. Walk to the dark side of the hill and hear his whisper in his kin, the crickets. The wood horsetail are his hands, embodied now, in earth, as plants reaching up to the sky, the last bones longing for sun. Maybe one day they’ll get there.