This collection made for the social media challenge Folktale Week 2020, is inspired on the Venezuelan folktale of "Las Cinco Águilas". Bellow you'll find all 7 drawings (each with their own prompt), as well as the description of the full folktale.
"Birth"
"Harvest"
"Courtship"
"Solstice"
"Ritual"
"Death"
Inspired in the Venezuelan folktale of "Las Cinco Águilas" (The Five Eagles), which tells the story of Caribay, daughter of Zuhé (the sun) and Chía (the moon), and protector of the forest. She was the first woman of the Mirripuyes indigenous tribe in the Cordillera de Los Andes.
One day, Caribay saw five eagles soaring through the sky, and she marveled at the splendid and majestic feathers. Obsessed, Caribay ran and followed the eagles' shadows through the valleys and up the mountains, but they started to fly upwards until their shadows vanished.
Crying, Caribay called upon Zuhé, but the wind carried away her words as the sun King was setting on the horizon. Cold and desperate, she turned to the East and now called upon Chía, the pale moon, and as the wind stopped and there was complete silence, the stars and the silhouette of a half circle appeared.
Caribay was filled with joy as she spotted the eagles once again, flying in a circle around the moon. She started singing with a wild chanting, and the beautiful creatures started descending on the ridges of the mountain range; and there they sat, unmoved but with their wings ready as if they were to fly away at any second.
Eager to adorn her head with those rare and magnificent feathers, Caribay ran towards them. But as she reached them, she was terrified by the cold that ran through her fingers as she touched them: the eagles were frozen, turned to complete ice. Caribay screamed, horrified, and turned to run away, afraid of such an unknown mystery.
The moon darkened and the eagles started to move again. Furious, they started to break away from their petrified state, and as they shook, the mountains were covered with the white feathers, like deep snow.
Fram then on, whenever the eagles awoke angry from their sleep, there would be stormy snowfalls; while Caribay's sorrowful singing could be heard through the whistling wind of the paramo.
