“I was beautiful once. “
The humans took something from her more precious than all the gold in the world. And here she lies, waiting for the day she can fulfill her revenge.
“My sister.”
Her sister was the sea turtle, whose path was followed by the waves. The humans feared that their home would be lost beneath the sea. The humans needn’t have worried. That was where her sister laid her eggs, where her children would learn to walk on the land. She would never have let anything happen to the island.
But humanity is a scared and frail creature, they butchered her to ‘save’ their own skins like the animals that they were.
“The moons.”
She took from them what they cherished the most. Each of their precious lights in the night. Their moons tasted like ashes in her mouth. Revenge would not bring her sister back but it would teach the humans the price was high when dealing with the dragon.
“The thunder.”
She swallowed them one by one. When she reached the seventh the masked goddess intervened to save her precious light.Then the humans did something. They let loose thunder and noise, the likes of which the Bakunawa had never heard before. She spat up the seventh moon and retreated beneath the depths.
“And here I wait, until I am beautiful again.“
They say that she will once again regain her true form when she stops hunting the seventh moon, but in the hearts of man they know that will never come to pass. The humans took something precious from her, something irreplaceable.
“I will not stop until they know the true meaning of loss. “
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Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Bakunawa myths
Bakunawa Illustration by Ku Rei