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Rite of Spring
It was just an average morning in the plains. The animals were just waking up as the red sun rose like cookies baking in an oven. The sky turned into a tangerine pool invading an ocean. The birds chirped. The geese screamed. Fish splattered in a nearby pond. The animals went on and on, raging with noise for hours. Then all of a sudden, they stopped.
Men with skin as a copper coin and hair like unlit charcoal marched into the plain, their hand-sewn moccasins pounding into the barren earth. They spoke in unusual languages, pointing their feathered and sharpened weapons at the earth and sky. Groups of the strange people danced and danced around the princess to the pounding of drums. With no luck of the clouds listening to their dance, they shifted into a different dance accompanied with a reed flute. But it did not seem Spring was going to come for the crops to grow. The natives mourned for the end of winter and the beginning of Spring. They danced to every ritual dance to bring spring to the plains.
They had decided that it was time for a change. With no other choice left, they selected a maiden to be sacrificed to the gods. The frightened girl stood in a circle of dancing natives. Her tribe danced to the beating drum. She was commanded to dance until spring had come. The girl’s feet seemed to have been commanded on their own. The chosen one danced and danced from night to day until the young girl had danced to her death. But thanks to her sacrifice, she had brought Spring to the plains and food to her fellow natives.