They picked her up off the air and fashioned her into a real live woman. Once, when no one was looking, one of the villagers poured straw in her hair and from then on she was blonde. Her hair had the texture of straw and the fine grain hair on her body like thin leaves of grass.

In her mouth they poured honey and her song was sweet. They smeared berries on her lips so the color was delicious, petals adorned her skin so it was rosy. Her legs were straight and strong. She was a hunter.

But what they’d forgotten was the blade to her tongue. Her wits were about her but they had nowhere to go, only out through the trill of birds in the back of her throat, the oratory of babbling brooks. Her tongue was dull as a dead branch and it hurt to move it.

Suns later she discovered an old rock at the banks of the river. Crushing waves had fashioned it into a kind of sliver on one side, smooth and electric. The other side was molded to a fat base. Pretty, she sang. Fish lapped at the surface and agreed. Pretty.

She picked up the rock in her laughing hands, running home on gazelle legs to hide it and keep it. As she ran, the rock sliced sheets of air. They fell away behind her and landed in piles. Villagers could see a thick cloud gathering in the distance, crawling its way towards them. It felt like storm.

The ocean between her legs was hungry, and every night she sang odes to the moon and caressed its humble face. In the time of the harvest it blushed from her kisses. But it never said a word.

She did not know how to ask for what she wanted. The pain in her ripe gut was growing more and more urgent. The moon, unresponsive, turned away from her songs. When day blazed she fumed mute as a kettle. The smell of flowers and spices danced in her heart to tease her. The storm cloud, which stood like a wall at the gate of her village, condensed into a kind of blue brick. No song or voice could penetrate it. The drum in her breast grew shrill.

She kicked at the sun, threw her fists at it and tried to shove it into her body. It would not go.

She slept in large trees, consumed by the forest and tickling leaves. But they did not satisfy.

Her wrath grew at night and the villagers could feel the burning of her red straw hair. It blazed and pushed at the storm cloud wall by her village but it could not touch it.

What she wanted was the soft wing flutter between her legs. There was a tempest brewing in her gut and she had to feed it. Her songs turned to screams. Her honey to gall. There was no one to give. No one knew what she wanted.

She began looming over the villagers in a frightful height. When she opened her mouth only the scream came out.

The villagers were frightened. The trees themselves trembled in the cold. The moon grew small at night and draped its solemn head.

Even the sun withdrew its pale frame. There were no more kisses, no more grass. All straw was on fire and the villagers did not know what to do.

What she wanted was to open her mouth as wide as the world. But her dead tongue stuck out and flapped in the gusts. She tried to keep it shut, like a great cave, dark and forgotten. But her mouth raged hail, could not get past that blue brick wall before her violent eyes. It hurt every time a bird tried to trill.

What was she to do with her dead tongue? Who is the highest, the most beautiful, the most natural?

The villagers huddled together at night.

Her mouth slept alone, half lucid, half lunatic and running up and down and back and forth to the river where she cooled her feet.

At the river she remembered the fog and the blue wall. She remembered the slices and the thick air. She could not breathe in it but she remembered. She felt the static of the rock pulling her in from the space in her small home.

She ran through the wall to get to the rock.

The villagers felt the earth tremble and did not know, could not know what it wanted.

The trembling subsided and she found the rock. It was vibrating.

On one end, the blade of the rock grew smoother and more subtle.

On the other end, it fashioned itself into a kind of cone, that twisted and twirled around, pulsing with little kicks.

She ran back to the river where she found it and the earth trembled again.

At the bank of the river she opened her mouth and opened her legs. In the dense blue of the wall of air the silence was suffocating.

She took the sharp end of the rock and slit into her tongue, slowly and precisely. Red juice poured out and it smelled like milk and fresh dew.

When she bathed herself in red juices she took the pulsating side of the rock and inched it into her body, as deep as the hurting went.

Her screams and her limbs turned to air that night, so fast did they thrash about.

The thick blue wall that hung like a plague over the village disappeared.

In the morning they could see the sun, and it dripped like an egg.

In the morning she picked pieces of straw from her soft face and felt for the first time a soft tongue with a sharp tip.

In the morning she felt expansive and drifted into the heart of the village where everyone could hear her.

She said, “Give me your body.”

That was the day when people became divine.