The five suns, and how four ended
Nahua accounts give four world-ages before this one, each ruled and each ended by one of these; the sources disagree about the order, and Tonatiuh carries the fifth, the age still running.
Birth, the hunt, and the ninth level down
The serpent-skirted mother and the son born fully armed at Coatepec; the cloud-serpent’s hunt and the obsidian butterfly burned to a fire-bundle in one telling; and the keeper of bones at the bottom of Mictlan.
Wind, flowers, and the skin of spring
What comes before the rain and after the dry months: the wind that sweeps the road for the rain-gods — Quetzalcoatl himself, in his wind aspect — the patron of flowers and craft, and the flayed lord whose spring rite has long been read as renewal.
