Nüwa
the mother who mended the sky
earthNüwa shaped the first people from yellow clay, then melted five-colored stones to patch the broken sky; to dream of her is to be told that what is shattered above you can be repaired, stone by patient stone, by hand.
When the sky cracked and fire and flood poured through, she did not flee — she smelted stones of five colors and climbed up to hold the patch herself.
The sky still lists slightly to the northwest, where her patch is thinnest; every repair in the world carries its old wound.
Half woman, half serpent, she coils through the oldest paintings with her compass in hand; the mother of people was also the first engineer.
The figures she shaped by hand became the nobles, the ones she flicked from the rope became the rest of us; she loved the flicked ones no less.