"Kevin!" A squeak sang. The little boy already knew who it was before he had a chance to lift his eyes. But he did, and he was met with the dirt road beside the wooden fence in front of his house before he saw her.
"What do you want NOW, Jenavi?" he groaned. The little girl pranced down with a smile and a large book in her arms, so large she had to hug it before her, and so used and aged that the covers were worn and tattered.
"Mama just took me to the library in the village!" she said, inviting herself onto the grass of his front yard. "She said I could come and read with you."
"Yeah?" Kevin snorted. "Well, I dun wanna."
"Where's your ma?" Jenavi asked, ignoring him. Kevin crossed his arms before him with a frown, but Jenavi kept her smile up and kept waiting. The sun was setting to his right, her left, and he saw half of her hair glisten yellow, and half of it shadowed in brown.
"In the backyard," he huffed.
"Let's go say hello!" Jenavi giggled. "And then we can read in your living room." She started off around his house before he could stop her.
"Mum!" Kevin shouted behind her. "Jenavi's here again!" He tried to groan as loud as he could so that both females could hear his aggravation. Sure, he had nothing better to do, and he was scraping a splintered branch against the back of his wooden fence until she arrived to relieve his boredom...
... but he'd rather be bored than read. Why can't Jenavi ever do anything fun? There were greetings traded and generic how-do-you-do questions asked before Jenavi led Kevin into his own house.
"Mama told me what a 'legend' is, today," she said in a matter-of-factly tone. "I bet you don't know what that is."
"Does it matter?" Kevin snorted. "Christmas will still come, even if I neva know."
Jenavi pouted as she sat on the center of the carpet and laid the library book before her. Kevin sighed and sat beside her, taking a peek at the cover before she flipped it open: The Children's Picture Book of Legends from Around the World.
"Let's read the first one together," Jenavi offered.
"The Beginnings of the Sun and the Moon," Jenavi read off the page. “It’s a legend from Lestris.”
"You can read it. I'll listen," Kevin suggested.
"Okay!" she agreed so easily, just as she did with everything else, and Kevin was reminded of why he ever kept her around as a friend. She was a real know-it-all pain, otherwise.
"A long time ago, before there was night and day, the people of the world could only ever see with fire. There was no sun, no moon, and no stars. But there was fire."
Kevin looked at the page with her. She read the words on one side, but he was more interested in the people drawn on the other page. Only half of their bodies were ever lit in shades of yellow and orange before flames. The rest of the page was black.
"Hundreds of years passed, before a man found a cave. He was lost for days, trying to find his way back to his wife. Walking into the cave, he found a pond of light."
"Lost for so long, he was very thirsty, and wanted to drink from the pond. However, when he reached his hands into the water, he found that his hands could glow. They shined so bright, he could see everything in the cave."
"The man took a swim in the pond, and his whole body glowed. He decided to bring his wife to the pond so that they would never need fire to see, again. He started running, and found that he could also fly."
"So he flew as fast as he could. He found his wife, but upon touch, his wife started glowing, and his own skin faded back into the dark."
"The man led her and her beautiful glow back to the glowing pond in the cave. When they arrived, he swam back into the water to glow again.”
“He decided he wanted to light up her world. So he took all the water from the pond and flew as high as he could into the sky. Once he couldn't fly any higher, he threw all the water into the night, in hopes that the drops would fall and light up all that was surrounding her."
"But instead, the water splashed onto the sky and stayed above the world, giving light to all of the lands below. She could not be happier, for the man had given her all the stars to see. She flew up to meet him, and they traveled across the lands, seeing all the world for the first time."
"Thirsty from the long flight, she took one of the droplets in the sky and drank the glowing water. The moment she did, she glowed much brighter, but she could not breathe, for the waters from the pond were deadly, and she fell."
"The man flew after her, catching her, taking all of her magical glow and giving her breath, knowing that it would take his. And as he died, his wife grabbed on to one of the stars beside her and regained her flight and her glow. She descended with the man and watched him dim back into the dark."
"With dispair, she flew back up into the sky and stayed among the stars the man laid before her. For her. Thus was the first night."
"The man later woke up from the magic of the glowing water, only to die again from still not being able to breathe. Thus was the beginning and the end of the first day, and the reason all days come to an end."
- Elias the Storyteller
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