"I will stand to the right!" said the younger, and stood there.
To the left stood the elder and when all was ready,
‘Hluáa they let fly at the firebolts, their arrows!
Deep bellowed the earth, heaving upward and downward.
"It is done," said the elder. "It is well," said the younger.
Dread was the din and stir. The heights staggered and the mountains reeled, the plains boomed and crackled under the floods and fires, and the high hollow-places, hugged of men and the creatures, were black and awful, so that these grew crazed with panic and strove alike to escape or to hide more deeply. But ere-while they grew deafened and deadened, forgetful and asleep! A tree lighted of lightning burns not long! Presently thick rain fell, quenching the fires; and waters washed the face of the world, cutting deep trails from the heights downward, and scattering abroad the wrecks and corpses of stricken things and beings, or burying them deeply. Lo! they are seen in the mountains to this day; and in the trails of those fierce waters cool rivers now run, and where monsters perished lime of their bones (áluwe—calcareous nodules in malpais or volcanic tuff) we find, and use in food stuff! Gigantic were they, for their forms little and great were often burned or shriveled and contorted into stone. Seen are these, also, along the depths of the world. Where they huddled together and were blasted thus, their blood gushed forth and flowed deeply, here in rivers, there in floods; but it was charred and blistered and blackened by the fires, into the black rocks of the lower mesas (ápkwina, lava or malpais). There were vast plains of dust, ashes and cinders, reddened as is the mud of a hearth-place. There were great banks of clay and soil burned to hardness—as clay is when baked in the kiln-mound,—blackened, bleached or stained yellow, gray, red, or white, streaked and banded, bended or twisted. Worn and broken by the heavings of the under-world and by the waters and breaths of the ages, they are the mountain-terraces of the Earth-mother, "dividing country from country!" Yet many were the places behind and between these—dark canyons, deep valleys, sunken plains—unharmed by the fires, where they swerved or rolled higher—as, close to the track of a forest-fire, green grow trees and grasses, and even flowers continue to bloom. Therein, and in the land sheltered by the shield, tarried the people, awakened, as from fearful dreams. Dry and more stable was the world now, less fearsome its lone places; since, changed to rock were so many monsters of prey (some shriveled to the size of insects; made precious as amulets for the hunter and warrior, as told in other talks of our ancient speech).
THE BEGINNING OF THE SEARCH FOR THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD, AND THE SECOND TARRYING OF MEN.
But ever and anon the earth trembled anew in that time, and the people troubled.
"Thus, being, it is not well," said the Two. "Let us again seek the Middle." So, they led their myriads far eastward and tarried them at Tésak‘ya Yäla (Place of nude mountains).