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(A FIJIAN LEGEND FOR YOUNG AND OLD CHILDREN)
A Goddess in the Garb of Mortality—A Garden of Eden—Temptation—Kasawayo and Kora the Mortal—The Battle—Flight to Shadowland.
AGES ago a goddess of shadowland sickened of the sacred halls of the passionless gods. One day a great desire to be a mortal entered her heart, for she had once been a mortal herself and had had the desires of mortality, but knew it not. She was sitting by her cavern door, gazing across the starlit singing seas of paradise, when she made up her mind to desert shadowland.
“My heart is lonely enough; I long for warm lips that will kiss my face and eyes and give unto my soul those impassioned tendernesses that I so strangely remember in my dreams,” she cried, as she listened to the moaning of the waves and sighing forest trees of shadowland. “Why, why should I sit here weeping, listening, for thousands of moons, and none to touch my lips?” So thought the goddess as she put her fingers up and softly twirled the skeins of tangled sunset that adorned her hair. Having made up her mind, she at once went off and consulted the oracles (who were the great dead chiefs of Fiji). Listening eagerly to them, she at once followed their advice, and so started to travel across the wonderful mountains of Mbula. It was in the great mountains of Mbula where she could kneel at the altar and feet of the great god Ndengi, who was the Supreme-Giver of shadowland. After travelling a long way, Kasawayo (for that was the goddess’s name) came to the entrance of a cavern in the mountain’s side. As she approached the entrance, a beautiful light streamed out upon her. She gazed round, and heard the tramp of the vassal gods who were passing across the outer plains. They were going off, she knew, to hang the stars and moons and fleecy clouds up in the sky.
On seeing the mighty heathen gods travelling along by the light of their own eyes—eyes that stared like beautiful moons across the plains—Kasawayo knew she had arrived at the wonderful halls wherein dwelt Ndengi. Prostrating herself before the sentinel gods (for such they were who stood for ever watching by the great hollow of the doorway where she stood), she said: “I am Kasawayo, the goddess of half-remembered dreams, and it is my wish to enter the mighty halls of Mbula.”