Legend of Tallulah Gorge
Dusk was building his house in what seemed a fair land, full of promise both for planting and for hunting in their seasons, when a rumbling beneath his feet set his knees to tremble and caused him to sit lest he fall headlong to the ground.
Before him the earth opened; the bedrock split, and opened into a great granite-walled gorge. The depth thereof dizzied him, and though Dusk pushed legs madly against the void, the yawning chasm drew him toward the precipice, as if the Earth Mother herself drew him in with her breath.
A river carved out the bottom of the gorge with high falls and narrow rapids. Many names could be given it: Alleyah, which announces a ‘guide of others,’ Galilahi, which is the word for ‘attractive’ to one people, or its like, Galilah, which to another nation means ‘God shall redeem.’ But its true name is Tallulah, which dissolves all in its meaning, ‘running water.’
Tallulah River has always been, though before it had run deep underground. And its currents have always swirled around the legs of maidens busy at their bath, their toes grasping granite pebbles in its bed.
There among them was Dawn. And as soon as Dusk saw her all her companions faded into the shadows, lingering only as the song of water splashing against stone and rising in a mist of chatter and laughter. The aroma of Dawn caught Dusk as a scent he had been born remembering; it entered his nostrils as a freshness, a perennial newness which intoxicated him before ever he tasted her lips.
All which Dusk had built, all which he had planned now seemed as naught – mere distractions which had occupied him until this moment of beholding her. He did not know her name, but if compelled he might have falteringly spoken the epithet, Hope.
And hope she flashed when she cast her eyes up, piercing questions into the heavens. Her glances had not yet discovered Dusk atop the granite cliff. After each blink Dawn quickly lowered her face to her bathing, demurely avoiding again voicing her prayer that this be the day she’d always felt approaching.
He no longer resisted the precipice, and slid, falling, floating over the edge. Dawn turned her face to the sky again, and beheld Dusk as a cloud settling into the gorge. But rather than blocking the sun which she had so recently discovered, it set a glow in her face, a blush in skin which before had been hidden from warmth, and pale. Indeed, the sun drew a silver edge to the cloud, presenting a shape for Dusk to Dawn.
Dawn crawled upon a stone to see what this cloud might be. Though the sun seemed so tiny and far away, it had already warmed her bed; its light burst into colors sparkling in the mist, and seemed to be not behind but within the cloud, and swelled as it descended to her.
Dusk touched her, gently at first, and as his cloud settled upon her and his mass grew the moisture alternately warmed and opened her skin, and cooled and quickened her. In pulses Dusk pressed her deep into the boulder, then raised her up within the walls. Dawn floated, she was crushed, and the waves were within her as well as without. He sustained his rhythm and she withdrew into the swirling rapids within her, and he changed his rhythm and she opened her eyes to Dusk as a living presence come, having chosen her, and frightening - no, thrilling her.
In this way Dusk lifted her ever higher. And as he did, the sparkling granite walls opened around them as a night sky bristling with stars. There is only this short hour in which Dusk and Dawn come together; they are unlike and do not know the same world, for Dusk has walked the surface of our Earth Mother, and Dawn is a seed newly emerging from her womb. Yet there is this moment every morning and every evening when they are one and the same.
Every day our wives go about their tasks in the village, and our husbands leave for field and forest, but, like Dawn and Dusk, we begin and end each day with a kiss. Thus do our families and our village grow and prosper.
