When the great one grew old and the land withered in empathy with his step, he was eaten. For the long years that he lived, longer than the forming of the first nations, which had not yet happened, the spirits had been hungry. They had no need to eat, and no want, at first, but within them grew a feeling of hunger that yearned to be filled with something. And so, when the great one walked the earth one day, he was eaten.
It was said that the first to bite into his being was wind, staling inside his lungs and in around his footsteps, taking the very sound he made and gobbling it down. Around the great one there was a cloud of sand, thrown about by wind, and where wind was once silent as it moved through the sky and the trees, now it screamed and whistled like the great one. You hear the sound of his footfalls in the clouds as they beget lightning, and if you go out on a windy night, wind still hungers enough to nibble on your own voice, adding it to the choir it keeps. When wind had eaten, not sated, but having taken all it could, it moved on, leaving the sand on which the great one walked still and silent.
In the evening, cold settled down on the great one like a blanket as he slept, and like wind, it swallowed the great one whole. All through the night, it sat upon him, flakes of snow descending until there was no more than a white pile on the sand. Cold ate his movement, fixing in place the joints that had carried the great one on his walks and stealing away the very beat of his heart. As the morning rose, Cold flowed off him, leaving an immobile statue in its wake as the ice-blue of its water snaked off to steal whatever warmth and movement it was able to.
Were this the end of the feasting and the gluttony, he might still sleep there, still and silent but alive. The great one was not so easy to kill as we have come to see death. For five days, he lay out on the sand, and then on the sixth day fire walked up. He had resisted his hunger up until then, but wind and cold found him in a cave. Wind howled at him, laughed with its new voice. Cold flowed around him, moving with its energy. They taunted fire, so little and powerless, just a small glow that sat in that cave. They told jokes and danced around, trying to get a reaction from fire.
That sixth morning, as wind and cold slept in the cave, fire took a little sound and a little movement from his brothers, so little that they would not wake upon missing it, and he went to the great one. Fire felt a pity and a sadness as he looked upon the great one, reduced to a mere stone in being. He could not give back what had been taken from the great one, even if it had been enough to restore a portion of dignity to him. And so, fire ate him. Where his brothers had only taken, fire changed in his eating, taking the essence of the great one's being but leaving behind something new in its place. He burned in his eating, leaving ash in his wake. He left nothing behind as his brothers had, for that seemed to him shameful. The ash was not the great one, it was a changed thing. And that changed ash that spread upon the ground brought about more change, growing up grass and trees.
Fire like his brothers, was insatiable with hunger, for after he started eating he could not stop, feeding on the being of all he touched. But in his meals, he found the bits of sound and warmth that he had taken from his brothers grow like the grass, fueled by his feast. Wind and cold woke from their sleep to the fire and the grass, hounding their brother, yelling and running all around him, but he dodged wind and pushed back cold, smiling all the while for the old one was properly buried.
This is why we say that fire is a good spirit, called for his gift of warmth and the laughter he brings. We call him also to ward off his brothers who mean us ill with their prideful ways. However, fire can not stop eating, and if he is not fed he leaves for his hunger is so terrible a price. It would make him even eat me or you if we were not careful. When we die, we give him our bodies, for we need them no more, but in life his changes are painful and too much for us.
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