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To: Hold My Name
From: Andréa C Mason#foundry

You mythologize, I hear, about trickster gods. Can I hear a good one about a coyote?
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\subsection*{Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps}

Andréa,

It might be more accurate to call me a collector rather than an active mythologizer (for which you might seek out May Then My Name Die With Me; her \emph{An Expanded Mythology of Our World really is a work of art}). However, given our place up in the skies, I will tell you one that I read originally in comic form — something ancient that was uploaded shortly after AVEC was introduced — and perhaps we can expand on it from there, yes?

Way in the beginning of time, back when the earth was young and not yet fully formed, back before even the small beasts of the trees awoke, the sky was all dark. There was some time spent on the sun and moon, yes, and those are stories of their own, and some day you will here the one about who took a bite out of the moon to sample its savor and found it wanting.

What I am going to tell you, though, is why the stars are such a godawful mess.

You see, one night, the great spirit was out placing stars in the sky one by one and in careful order, for placing the stars up in the heavens is important work. How else will the beasts of the land know where to go? How else will they tell the seasons?

It is important work, yes, but incredibly fucking boring.

Coyote came up to the spirit and said, "Ahoy up there, what are you doing?"

"I am placing the stars," the spirit said, "so that the beasts of the land will know where to go and will be able to tell the seasons."

"Oh," Coyote said. "Can I help?"

The great spirit heaved a huge sigh. This was trouble, they knew. After all, come on. Coyote? But all he'd need to do is place the stars up in the sky, and the work really was fucking boring, so... "Alright, you may help. Here. Take these stars and place them up in the sky. I was thinking if we had– hey, wait!"

"There is the buffalo!" Coyote cried, having placed the stars just so. "And there the crab! And look, see? There are the two sisters!"

Another huge sigh. "Well...okay, I guess. They have to go somewhere, and those will still show well enough at night. Keep up the goo– uh...well, keep up the work."

And so Coyote placed the stars, drawing all of the great beasts in beautiful points of light.

"God, this is fucking boring," he thought to himself. "I am too wise and too clever by far for such a menial task. Fuck it!"

With that last thought and an oversized shrug, he tossed the rest of the stars haphazardly up into the night and went about his business.

Poor Coyote, though, he got too impatient for his own good and forgot to make a drawing of himself in the sky, and that is why, to this day, he howls up to stars in sadness, yip yip yi yi yi yip yip yaroooo~

And there is where the legend ends, but it is not where our story ends, yes? What paw do you suppose Coyote had in the stars as we know them? What place does he have in the stories we have told ourselves about our lives up here in our System in the sky? And what of Castor and Pollux?

Perhaps we could tell the story, as our dear May Then My Name did, of how we yearned to see who lived around those campfires in the black of night, how we would build ourselves an ark to sail the seas of space to find out.

"Ah! The people! They are going up beyond the moon! How cold they will be!" Coyote might say, his usual helpful self. "I will stoke those fires and make them shine all the brighter when they are above the very air itself. Perhaps that will warm them and keep them cozy."

What might Coyote do when all that did was make us long for more?

All my best,

Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know of the Ode clade
