Bila | Victoria Olt

In the time before the world was warm, the sky was dim, and the only heat came from the fires of Bila, the Sun Woman. She was a giantess and a cannibal, feared by all. Bila lived with red hunting dogs whom she sent across the land to drag victims back to her camp. The dogs never tired, and once they caught a scent, no one escaped.

Bila would tie her captives and roast them slowly over her great fire. This fire was her treasure, its flames the only source of warmth and light. She guarded it jealously, and the land beyond her camp stayed cold and lifeless. Sometimes, when her hunger grew great, she sent her dogs far and wide, even to whole villages, leaving them empty and silent in her wake.

It was the Lira brothers, clever lizard-men, who could stand it no longer. They followed the trail of her dogs, saw the devastation, and vowed to end her reign. When they found her tending her fire, they attacked, striking her so hard that she stumbled and her great flames spilled upward into the sky. The fire caught there, becoming the sun, spreading warmth and light to the whole earth.

Bila fled into the heavens with her dogs, but her hunger remains. On the hottest days, when the sun beats down without mercy, people say it is Bila’s appetite blazing still.