[https://i.imgur.com/iykunZn.jpg]

Another story that I used to hear from my mothers and fathers.

After the world was settled in its current form, Ulnad went to the Sky and lay asleep, and while he was asleep, Raven Dash, the mischievous bird, was flying all over the world in search of interesting things. He'd been finding remnants of white silver all over the Earth, and he'd been collecting them under his right wing. He'd been finding lots of red silver which remained from the fires and he'd been collecting it under his left wing. He also saw many obsidian chunks and while he did not know what that was good for, he still collected them, too, in his beak.

He flew a long distance and collected a lot of nuggets until one night he saw a hole in the Earth. Curious, he descended to the hole and studied it. It did not look deep, but it looked very dark, almost black, and smelled strange. Raven Dash started digging, hoping to see if it led somewhere or came from somewhere. He dug all night and some during the day until he reached a strange black matter that was floating at the bottom of the hole. It was bitumen, and it surged up and sprang from the Earth, and hit the Raven, who flew away for fear of losing all his precious nuggets. The bitumen burst out with a terrible noise and stench, and soon a whole lake of black appeared around it.

The mischievous bird quickly soared up to the sky and woke Ulnad up.

“What have you done now? ˮ Ulnad snapped and saw the black lake of bitumen that was growing on the Earth. “Oh, you nasty offspring of a sparrow! ˮ he screamed and jumped down to stop it. But the spring would not cease, and however Ulnad tried, he could not plug the hole. He threw a mountain into it, but that was not enough. He woke up Earth, but Earth did not know what to do. He woke up Water, and she swayed her waves over the lake, but only got filthy. He summoned the sky waters, but it was useless too. The black lake grew and grew in size, and soon it threatened to swallow the whole Earth.

Meanwhile, Raven Dash was circling above, fearing for his nuggets. He saw them sparkle here and there in waves of bitumen and tried to soar down and catch them, but couldn't grasp a single one of them. Then finally he managed to grab a sparkling piece from the black torrent, but that was not his nugget. He looked at it intently and saw that it was mica. Dash then circled some more and caught another sparkle, but that was not his nugget too. Again, he looked closely and saw that it was salt. He swooped down again and caught yet another sparkling nugget. He examined this one, and it still was not his nugget, but quartz.

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Just as Dash was doing all this, a huge, monstrous bitumen serpent crawled out of the hole and made a growl so terrible that even Ulnad himself was terrified. Dash caught another sparkle – this time it was malachite – and, angry, flew to Ulnad and threw all of the stones to him. Ulnad the Sky Owner looked at the stones and knew what to do. He took the malachite and fed it to the monster, who started choking. He then took the quartz and made a Crystal Knife from it and slashed the monster's neck and cut its head off. Its body turned into bitumen, and the whole black lake started flowing back into the hole. When it drained, Ulnad took the mica and plugged the hole with it, and then he took salt and spread it around to kill the stench and heal the Earth. Those salty planes exist to this day. We call them oshna* in our language, and they're scattered all over the plains, sometimes filled with water, sometimes oozing with bitumen, but mostly lying dry and empty.

As Ulnad was sowing the last handful of salt, the raven was still looking for his nuggets. But when he found them, he saw that all the silver ones were washed in black waters and turned into deadly spirits that were now looking to eat anything alive. Only obsidian was not affected, because it was already black. Afraid to tell Ulnad after all that happened, Raven Dash gathered the obsidian in his beak and grabbed the spirits, and buried them in different places around the world. While he was doing it, one of the spirits jumped out and scared him – he hit it with a rock and threw it back into a hole, but swallowed the obsidian in the process and became all black.

And to this day these spirits crawl underneath the ground, hungry for life. We call them fids**, and they are known to us as spirits of death. They are scared of Ulnad and his Crystal Knife, so they are rarely seen on the ground. They usually get out at night, when nobody can see them, and gnaw on the bodies of fallen creatures.

And that is why it's become a custom among humans to bury their deceased ones in the earth, so that the fids remain there, fed and satisfied, as long as possible, and do not get out and haunt the living ones.

Footnotes

* /ˈoʃna/

** - /fid/, pl. /fids/