A Story About the Milky Way

Today, my folklore studies led me to read a beautiful tale from South Africa. I found it in Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters by Kathleen Ragan through a Fairytale Heroines course I'm taking with the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

The story about How the Milky Way Came to Be goes:

Up there, in the sky, there are billions of stars. No one knows how many, because no one can count them. And to think that among them is a bright road which is made of wood ashes,-nothing else! Long ago, the sky was pitch black at night, but people learned in time to make fires to light up the darkness. One night, a young girl, who sat warming herself by a wood fire, played with the ashes. She took the ashes in her hands and threw them up to see how pretty they were when they floated in the air. And as they floated away, she put more wood on the fire and stirred it with a stick. Bright sparks flew everywhere and wafted high, high into the night. They hung in the air and made a bright road across the sky, looking like silver and diamonds. And there the road is to this day. Some people call it the Milky Way; some call it the Stars' Road, but no matter what you call it, it is the path made by a young girl many, many years ago, who threw the bright sparks of her fire high up into the sky to make a road in the darkness. (p. 359)

(emphasis is mine)

For anyone whose found themselves in a dark season recently, I share this story as a reminder that sometimes the light we need to find is the one we carry within ourselves.