The Clover of Tayava
Once upon a time there was a large, rolling promontory projecting itself into the open ocean. This wide landscape was home to a small tribe whose mythology revolved around the concept of Nature, for which there were four gods, representing the four elements of Nature: the god of earth, the god of wind, the god of fire and the god of water. One day, the inhabitants of the tribe were searching for food and, stepping foot on clovers with three and, in rare circumstances, four leaves, a heavily skilled hunter and fisher, Tayava ( ȴʚȷʚ̃ȵʚ , also spelled in Portuguese as Taiava ), found a clover with five leaves — she regarded it as a sign of good luck, as nobody had ever found one such rarity. Because the tribe also depended on leaves to eat —besides the animals they hunted for fish and meat— , the folks who were with her were indifferent to the five-leaf clover she found in the middle of the hill. As Tayava saw the newly-found five-leaf clover as sacred and the others saw it as food, ...