Arpia By Javier Morales

At first it was the world. And the world was an egg. The egg was nurtured by a magnificent animal with the face of a woman and the body of a prey bird that saw everything. A termagant from the time when the women were birds with keen grey eyes. A termagant that when it nursed the egg, nursed the world. We have been humans for a short time. At first it was the world, the world was the egg, and the termagant knew it. Sometimes the termagant became other and went into the world, that was the egg. Those who saw her share it in a whisper so their human voices did not attract her again. A woman remembers when the termagant took her by her spine with its claws late in the evening and she was much younger. The termagants come along in Natagaima, Coyaima, and Purificacion, where the elders and the sainos came from. The Saino’s sound is commonly mistaken with a witch’s murmur. We have been humans for a brief time. Inside the egg that also was the world, was a mandrake called Patricio Estrella Venus from Wilendorf, an anthropomorphous fetish who lives in warm soil houses and made with diverse tubercles thrown by the Pijaos from a hill and according how it landed they could foresee how the harvest would be. The Pijaos funeral ceremonies, the Amerindian people from Tolima, seek to keep a distance between the ground and the departed. The deceased was entombed in wall opening, in the mountain where the body fits and a was room so one by one, the mourners could get in and mutter something in the dull ear, then when everyone said their murmurs, the collective mourning initiated it lasted hours and then all took a bath in the Magdalena’s River on three in the morning. We were not humans for a long time. The resemblance between the termagants and the black vulture are that both of them can hover and eats the wasted. In human populated areas the black vultures rout the dumpsites and eats eggs. The black vultures lack of the fowl’s vocal organ so they just make a low frequency hissing, like whispers. The black vulture in contrast with the termagant, lay its eggs in the ground. The termagant egg is black. The egg, like the world is never for itself, is a container in accordance to other affairs. A holder that will be dismissed. The egg, as the world, is just an egg as being discarded. We summon things with the name of another one. Like the termagant we knew the lessons; here is the world, here is the world, here is the egg.