Part One
Eons ago, when time first spun out of nothing like the whorled shell of a nautilus, there lived a boy who loved to swim. The blood of all nagas runs brackish, of course, yet this boy’s affinity for the aquatic surpassed that of even the rest of his kind: at the moment of his hatching, he wiggled free of his gold-speckled egg, his tiny tail uncoiling behind him, and slithered unerringly toward the nearest of Bhogavati’s many beaches. His astonished parents, who had been reaching out to embrace their infant son, were instead forced to pursue him into the layers of lacework foam cast off by the waves that crashed on the lavender shore.
“I want to swim everywhere!” he cried, squirming in his mother’s grasp. No matter how keenly his parents attempted to dissuade him, he would not yield.
When it was clear their pleas would bear no fruit, his mother sighed and relinquished his arm. “As you will, my hatchling. If it is that important to you, then swim.”
“But,” his father said, less willing to surrender his fresh-born child so easily, “only until you have run out of new waters to try. After that, you must return home and make a life among us.”
With all the worlds yet to wander through, the boy gamely agreed, then disappeared into the sea.
As millennia passed and the small boy grew into a young man, he spent his days undulating among a multitude of ever-changing companions. From sunrise to sunset, through storm and shine, he frolicked with sand dollars and starfish, crooned lullabies to guppies and goblin sharks, and idled with tortoises and tube sponges. In between, he collected conch shells and multicolored pearls, which he left on land for treasure hunters to find. Their iridescent sheen matched the meghdhanush he occasionally glimpsed in the sky, Lord Indra’s mighty seven-hued bow.
From stream to swamp to lake to ocean the young man splashed, from realm to realm, wading through the bluest of hot springs and the brownest of mudflats. From pond to river to lagoon he slipped, through salt water and through sweet. He swam, and he swam, and he swam, the current sometimes calm, other times enraged, but always swaddling him as soundly as his absent mother’s arms.
Yet all things must come to their natural end, and in due course, the young man found he had exhausted the cosmic supply of water in which to play. But despite his promise, he was not yet ready to return home.
He desired one last great plunge, but that would require finding a new medium in which to move.
First he tried sand. Then he tried soil. He readily dismissed both, for they offered neither water’s buoyancy nor its flow.
If the earth was of no use, then he would try elsewhere. Above him swelled the sky, its fleecy clouds so like the froth of his beloved whitecapped sea.
The young man’s questing heart kindled with joy. For what else was the firmament but a boundless ocean of air?
He would, he determined, swim through the sky.
Lacking the wings of the glorious Mansa Devi, he searched for ways to ascend. He tried to scale the sky, to catch hold of a cloud, to barter for passage with a bat in flight. For centuries, he only fell back down.
At last, weary and feeling the pull of his age-old promise, the young man nearly gave up. Thunderheads blustered above him, darkening the heavens from brightest day to a semblance of deepest night. Their needles of rain stabbed down as Lord Indra seethed upon his throne in the clouds.
Then a single ray of Lord Surya’s golden light burst through the gloom. Where it grazed the walls of rain, Lord Indra’s meghdhanush appeared. In its arc of seven bold colors, the young man found his answer.
But Lord Indra never brought out his bow for long. The young man scampered up its vast curve.
He climbed and climbed, often backsliding, for the meghdhanush was far more slippery than it looked, until finally he arrived at its peak. Aglow with triumph, he prepared to dive into the ether.
Suddenly Lord Indra shook the massive bow, and bolts of thunder shot through the air. “Who dares lay a hand on my meghdhanush?” he bellowed.
In his fury, he slammed the bow down, down, down until it smashed into the kingdom of Nagalok far below. Down, down, down, too, tumbled the young man.
And so, he swam through the sky.
Where the bow struck the soil, it shattered, all seven colors fragmenting into crystals: rubies, carnelians, topazes, emeralds, sapphires, lapis lazuli, and amethysts, and many others besides. Lord Indra retrieved his bow and resumed his business, heedless of the jewels sparkling behind him. They in turn sank deep within the crust of our world, where they multiplied into the limitless riches that bless us today.
Some claim the boy sprouted cloud-wings and swam on into eternity, for he was never seen again, but his gift of the gems will scarce be forgotten.
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