#transfolk

The Legend of Pümi, Who Scattered the First Colors

Before the world learned the habit of naming, before the sky was called sky or the earth was called earth, there was only the great, breathing vastness—the endless, luminous consciousness the sages would one day whisper of as Brahman.

It did not speak in words.

It did not move in steps.

It unfolded like a dream dreaming itself.

And within that dreaming arose a longing—soft as starlight, curious as first breath:

What would it mean to be many?

What would it mean to be known in countless forms?

From that question, like a ripple widening across still water, came Pümi.

Not born. Not fashioned.

But revealed—like color waiting inside light.

Pümi emerged in a form that refused to settle. Their body was a living horizon. One moment they shimmered with the grace of a woman crowned in quiet radiance; the next, they stood with the grounded strength of a man shaped by earth and storm; and then, in the sacred pause between heartbeats, they became something vaster still—beyond all naming, beyond all division.

Those who glimpsed Pümi did not know what they were.

So the oldest voices did not try to define them.

They bowed.

For in Pümi they felt a truth older than language—that the self is not fixed, but flowing; not singular, but infinite. The seers would later speak of Atman, the inner essence that mirrors the cosmos, and they would say Pümi walked as that mystery made visible.

Some whispered that Pümi carried the echo of Ardhanarishvara, where all dualities dissolve into unity. Others said they were a wandering thought of Krishna, escaped from divine play, still laughing as it reshaped the world.

But the oldest telling is the simplest:

When the One desired to become many,

Pümi was the first answer.

In those early ages, the world existed in a kind of sacred hush. Mountains rose like held breath.

Rivers moved as though remembering something they had not yet become.

Living beings walked the land, but all seemed cast in a gentle sameness, like a melody played on a single, unbroken note.

There was harmony. But there was no surprise.

Pümi wandered this quiet creation and felt its beauty—and its absence.

For what is beauty without contrast?

What is life without variation?

So Pümi knelt upon the earth.

They placed their hands against the soil, and the world seemed to listen. Even the wind stilled, as though waiting for permission to begin again.

Then Pümi reached inward—into that boundless place where self and cosmos are not separate, where Atman and Brahman are reflections of the same infinite truth.

From within, they drew forth color.

Not color as mortals would later know it, but color as essence—color as identity, as emotion, as possibility not yet constrained by form.

They lifted their hands.

And they scattered it.

The first color did not fall—it sang.

It moved like music through the sky, and the sky awakened, no longer a blank expanse but a living tapestry of shifting hues. Blues deepened into mystery, golds spilled into dawn, violets whispered of twilight yet to come.

Pümi laughed, and their laughter became light.

They touched the rivers, and the waters shimmered with hidden depths. They brushed the stones, and even the silent things seemed to glow with quiet individuality.

Then Pümi pressed their palm into the earth.

And the earth answered. From the soil rose the first flowers. Not one. Not a handful. But a thousand, unfolding in a single breath.

Some were small as secrets, trembling close to the ground. Others stretched wide and fearless, petals open like laughter. Some blazed with colors so bold they could not be ignored; others carried hues so subtle they revealed themselves only to the patient and the kind.

No two were alike.

No two were meant to be.

Pümi moved among them, not as a ruler, but as a witness.

They touched one bloom, and it deepened in shade.

They touched another, and it shifted entirely, becoming something never before imagined.

The field became a living truth: that harmony is not born from sameness, but from difference allowed to exist without fear.

Pümi knelt there for a long while, watching.

Not as a creator admiring their work, but as the universe delighting in itself.

When the first humans came upon this field, they stopped in wonder.

They had never seen such abundance, such unapologetic variation. Their eyes moved from flower to flower, trying to understand what refused to be reduced.

And as humans often do, they began to ask:

“Which one is best?”

“Which one is true?”

“Which one is as it should be?”

Pümi rose.

Their form shimmered again—now soft, now strong, now something beyond all opposites. They walked among the people, each step leaving a trace of color that faded only after it had been felt.

They touched one person, and their skin caught the hue of twilight.

They touched another, and their body moved with a rhythm no one had seen before.

They touched another, and something long hidden within them rose at last into light.

The people murmured, uncertain.

Pümi turned to them.

“Do you ask which flower is right?”

They gestured to the endless field.

“If the world had chosen only one,” Pümi said, “would it be a garden—or a repetition?”

The wind moved through the blossoms, and they answered in motion.

“No bloom hides its color,” Pümi continued. “No petal apologizes for its shape. The smallest does not strive to become the tallest. The brightest does not dim itself to comfort the pale.”

They stepped forward, their form shifting like light through water.

“Difference is not a mistake,” they said softly.

“It is intention.”

But still, a quieter question lingered in the hearts of the people.

It was not spoken at first. It trembled beneath the surface—carried in glances, in hesitations, in the unspoken weight of longing that did not follow the paths they had been taught to walk.

At last, someone asked: “What of love?”

The field fell still.

“What of desire,” they continued, “that does not move as it is told it should?”

Pümi did not answer immediately.

Instead, they walked deeper into the field, where the flowers grew wild and intertwined, where colors blurred into one another until no boundary could be drawn.

There, they knelt.

Among the blossoms were many forms of blooming.

Some flowers turned toward the sun.

Some turned toward each other.

Some grew in pairs so close they seemed one.

Some bloomed alone, radiant and complete, needing no witness.

Pümi touched them gently.

“Tell me,” they said, “which of these loves incorrectly?”

No one could answer.

The question dissolved like mist.

Pümi rose, and now their presence held something deeper—something like recognition, like the quiet joy of being seen.

“Love,” they said, “is not a rule given to you by the world.”

“It is the world recognizing itself through you.”

They moved among the people once more, and as they passed, something awakened—truths long hidden, desires long silenced, identities long denied.

“To love what is familiar is reflection,” Pümi said.

“To love what is different is discovery.”

Their voice softened, becoming something almost like a breath:

“To love beyond expectation is freedom.”

The flowers stirred.

A closed bloom opened.

Two blossoms leaned toward one another without hesitation.

A single flower stood alone, luminous and whole.

“All are sacred,” Pümi whispered.

And so it is said that Pümi never left.

They move still through the unseen edges of the world—where identities shift, where boundaries soften, where new ways of being dare to emerge.

They are there wherever difference is questioned.

Where love refuses to be confined.

Where a person stands in the fullness of who they are and does not bow to the demand to become less.

In every field of wildflowers that blooms without pattern, Pümi lingers.

In every sky that refuses to be only one color, Pümi breathes.

In every soul that expands beyond what it was told it must be, Pümi awakens.

Not as something distant.

But as something remembered.

For the universe did not create diversity by accident.

It created it the way a garden blooms—

with wild intention,

with fearless abundance,

and with a beauty so vast

it could never be contained

There is discussion happening across the US, at least, in orthodox spaces, about how to be welcoming and inclusive for both trans and nonbinary folk when the orthodox tradition is split by gender. Nobody has a perfect or universal solution yet, but I’m seeing a lot of work towards it.

Mostly shuls have said transfolk just sit with the gender of their declaration. That’s easy enough to solve.

In the bit that made me tear up a little is the shul that carved out a specific space for non-binary folk, and made room for friends and family to sit with them, so they would not have to sit alone

The trans girl reading this