So for a little while did they kneel together, inclining their figures one towards the other. Poor Kora, who was so truly mortal, gently blew his breath so that it would reach Kasawayo’s tresses. As the soft, jetty curls swayed gently to and fro to the zephyrs that crept from his impassioned lips and revealed the curves of the goddess’s dimpled shoulders, he said:
“O Kasawayo, ’tis sweet to breathe so, and know that at least my breathing caresses your loveliness.”
“Ah me!” softly responded Kasawayo, as she, too, breathed likewise, blowing the curls of Kora’s forehead to and fro with the warm breath of her passion. The very branches of the tall bamboos and palms seemed to bend in leafy sympathy over them as they knelt and gazed into each other’s eyes.
“May I not touch, with my finger outstretched so, the softest dimple of your throat, Kasawayo?”
Kasawayo trembled from head to feet and nearly fell forward at the pleading of the one whom she so much loved. And it is rumoured that all the maidens who slept at that moment in the native village of Nadranga, which is on the banks of the river a mile away, dreamed of the one youth who truly loved them, not only for their beauty, but for the light of shadowland that shone in their eyes.
It so happened that Kora, seeing the weakness of Kasawayo, as she nearly fell forward into his arms, quickly came to the rescue; for he at once ceased blowing his breath into the tangled mass of hair that fell on the goddess’s bosom. Then he swiftly placed his hand before his eyes, and hid from Kasawayo’s sight the light that he knew would prove their undoing if he persisted in gazing upon her.
Leaping to his feet he said:
“Come, O my loved one, let me go and vanquish this serpent-god. I never knew that I could hate a god so much as I now hate the god who has come between us.”
Kasawayo led the way down the slope. In a few moments they both stood, like statues of despair, outside the door of the serpent-god’s cavern.
“Come forth, O serpent!” said Kora, as he struck his war-club a mighty blow against the coral rocks that stood like pillars at the awful doorway.