... "But, mother, the goddesses were all beautiful, were they not?"
"Yes, son, but Pi-Ruh-Al was the most beautiful."
"Then why do the carvings always show Sa-Hala-Lee with a face, while Pi-Ruh-Al has none? I would think—"
"Hush child! The beauty of Pi-Ruh-Al was so dazzling that no mortal might look upon it. Even the gods could scarce endure its splendor, and no sculptor has dared presume to represent her features. Not so with Sa-Hala-Lee, who is the goddess of N'urthly beauty and constancy. A touching legend relates to the manner by which she was wooed by Mah-Gurru-Dah, Lord of the East, patron of the forge. He was forced to wound her sore unto death with a lightning bolt forged in his smithy before she yielded—but thereafter she remained loyal with a faithfulness beyond mortal understanding. Yea, though it is reputed that both Maha-Ra-Lin and Bar-Du-Chan sought her because of her siren-like allure, she repulsed them with scorn.
"Thus wrote the prophets of old: 'In the beginning was El-Leighi, dweller in the sun, who looked upon the sea of space and saw that it was a void, barren of all things. And El-Leighi hurled forth his thunderbolt and created a sphere of matter within that void. And he cast his thunderbolts again and yet again until he had created many spheres which circled slowly through the emptiness of space.
"'El-Leighi looked upon his work, yet was not satisfied. Four of his bolts had formed spheres revolving so close to the sun that its rays scorched them with heat unbearable. Others—the mightiest bolts of all—formed planets immeasurably far away, lost in frigid coldness.
"'So once again El-Leighi gathered his forces and hurled a thunderbolt into space. And on that thunderbolt rode great beings—gods inferior only to El-Leighi himself—whom he commanded to create a world on which life might exist.
"'When the thunderbolt shattered, in a temperate region of space beyond the fourth planet, these gods fulfilled their destiny by gathering its fragments and out of them creating a new world....'"