Storytelling Week 7: Watch Over

Hi. My name is Phillip and I belong to a flock of individuals known as the ravens. Every day I go out and find food for my family and look out over the mountains. Each day around noon I fly over the small river runs through a valley. The water in this river is the most appealing water you could imagine. It has the clearest water in the land which draws many people to it. It also has added minerals for flavor. Now these minerals aren't all good minerals. You see, there is a snake at the start of it that pours his venom into the river. The reason for this is a very long story, so I'll have to save it for another day. Just know the snake is punishing anyone that drinks from his river. I have watched many people come to the river to drink after a long day. Most of the animals know not to drink form this evil river. Even the tiniest drop of this water will kill someone but because most of the people that come are very thirsty they drink many cups of water from it. I try to get to the people before they drink to try and save their lives but most people either brush me off or think I'm just a crazed bird.

One day on my normal flyover I came across a man walking in the woods. I had been doing a great job of turning everyone away from the river before they could reach it but somehow this man actually had snuck past me. He looked as if he had been walking a long time and was pretty thirsty. He was headed right for the river! The closer he got to the river and the closer to death I would fly a little closer to swoop in at any time so I could save his life. I knew that once he laid eyes on the river it would be much harder for me to stop him and be would try to kill me for trying to stop him form drinking the water. When he came into eye shot of the river he broke a large leaf off a tree and made it into a cup. Once he had dipped the cup into the poisoned water I knocked it out of his hand and into the river. He became very angry with me and looked like he wanted to kill me. He walked over to the tree again and grabbed another leaf and made it as he did before and walked to the river. He filled the cup once again and as before I knocked it out of his hands and into the river. The man grabbed the nearest rock he could find and sent it flying right at me. He hit my head with the rock. Luckily he didn't kill me. It just hurt really back and made me kind of dizzy. I flew to the near tree the wait out the dizzy spell so that I could warn him again but before I had time to he dipped another cup in the water and drank it. As you might have guessed he didn't make it far from the bank before he dropped dead. I flew home and took my family some food he had in his bag. 

The raven trying to warn the man

Author's Note:

The story that I based this story off of is "How the Raven Saved the Hunter." I changed the story from third person into the first person point of view from the raven. I like stories that are in the first person because it is easier to place yourself into the story and live it like the raven who is telling the story. I changed the story from the raven dying to the man dying at the end because who likes the good guy to die in the end? In the original story the man is a hunter that is on a hunt and goes to a river and a random raven is bothering him as he approaches the river. The hunter kills the raven after the raven knocks three bowls out of his hands. Afterwards the hunter travels upstream and realizes there is a snake a the beginning putting poison in the river and feels terrible about killing the bird that tried to save his life. I changed the ending of the story to make it more of a happy ending because the good character wins instead of being killed. I chose the picture above just because it is a simple picture of what a raven looks like in case someone does not know. 

Bibliography:

"How the Raven Saved the Hunter" by A.L. Shelton, from Tibetan Folk Tales (1925). Web Source: UNtextbook.