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There was once a field of flowers that grew tall on strong stalks, their bright yellow petals surrounding a whorl of seeds. As the wind blew, the flowers swayed with the wind, and so they were called "windflowers," because they followed the wind.
But there was one flower who was unhappy because she had to sway whichever way the wind was blowing. She watched the bumblebees and butterflies and birds in the sky, and she saw that they went their own way. Instead of petals, they had wings, and the flower wished that she had wings too.
"O Goddess," she prayed, "I do not want to be a flower anymore. I want to be the bumblebee who goes her own way."
Hearing her prayer, the Goddess turned the flower into a bumblebee.
The bumblebee's wings buzzed as she zoomed up and down, left and right, racing back and forth over the field of flowers. Then she visited other fields with other flowers, drinking nectar and gathering pollen to take back to the hive.
The next day was much the same, and the day after that, and the day after that, as the bee flew back and forth from the hive to the different fields of flowers, loaded down with pollen in her pollen baskets.
And so the bee grew tired. She grew very tired. She had never known what it was to be tired when she was a flower, standing tall on her stalk. The bee no longer felt the joy of freedom as she zoomed up and down, buzzing high and low, endlessly looking for pollen to take back to the hive.
Then one day, as the bumblebee zoomed through a farmyard on her way from one field of flowers to another, she looked down and saw a cat sleeping in the sun. When she zoomed through the farmyard again later, she saw that cat still lying there, fast asleep.
The next day as she buzzed through the farmyard, she saw the cat drinking from a bowl of milk. The bee zoomed in closer to watch the cat lapping up the milk, and she saw the cat lie down to sleep again.
"O Goddess," prayed the bumblebee, "I do not want to be a bumblebee anymore. I want to be the cat who eats and sleeps and does not have to work!"
Hearing her prayer, the Goddess turned the bumblebee into a cat.
The cat spent her days happily sleeping and eating. Occasionally she chased a mouse in the barn, and sometimes she taunted the chickens. Mostly, though, she slept. And ate. And slept.
At night, though, the cat roamed, making her way through the darkness by the light of the moon. At first the moonlight was very faint, but as each night passed, the moon grew larger and larger, and its light grew brighter and brighter. The cat was in awe of this change in the moon. "I stay the same size all the time," she thought. "But the moon gets bigger and bigger."
Thus, staring longingly up at the full moon in the sky, the cat prayed, "O Goddess, I do not want to be a cat anymore who must stay the same size. I want to be the moon!"
Hearing her prayer, the Goddess turned the cat into the moon.
The moon then stared with her great eye over half the world, and she felt the eyes of all the night creatures staring back at her. "I am the great light of the night," thought the moon. "What grandeur! What power!"
But then the moon realized that she was very cold. Very cold indeed. "How can this be?" she wondered. "I am the light of the night, but there is no fire in me at all."
Shivering in the cold of space, the moon sadly realized the truth of things: the moonlight was not her light at all. It was the light of the sun, made weak and pale as it bounced off her surface on its way down to the earth.
As the moon gazed at the sun off in the distance, burning bright with its own inner fire, she realized she had made a great mistake. "O Goddess," cried the moon, "I do not want to be the moon anymore, with no light or fire of my own. I want to be the sun!"
Hearing her prayer, the Goddess turned the moon into the sun.
And now she had her own light and fire, flames rising up through her entire being, twisting and exploding in bursts of heat, radiating waves of explosive energy, never stopping.
It was all too much. She screamed, "Help me, Goddess, please! I do not want to be the sun!"
Hearing her prayer, the Goddess took pity on the sun, and turned her back into a flower, a flower in a field of flowers that grew tall on strong stalks, their bright yellow petals surrounding a whorl of seeds.
But this flower no longer blew with the wind as before. Instead, as the sun moved across the sky each day, this flower turned her face to gaze upon the light. And so we call her "sunflower," because she follows the sun in the sky.
Author's Note. The original story from Laos is about a blacksmith who becomes a stone, then a stonecutter, then the sun and finally the moon, "the man in the moon." There is a similar story in Andrew Lang's Crimson Fairy Book, "The Stonecutter," in which there is a stonecutter who becomes a rich man, then a prince, then the sun, then a cloud, then a rock, and then a stonecutter once again. The story can be classified as ATU 2031. Stronger and Strongest, and the sun-cloud-rock sequence in the Lang version suggests a connection to the ancient Panchatantra story from India, "The Rat's Swayamwara" (and that story is the basis for my story about "The Mouse-Bride").
To come up with my own story, I kept the same theme of dissatisfaction and transformation, but I wanted to not have any human characters in the chain, and I wanted it to be a circle-chain that goes all the way back to where it starts.
I also wanted it to be an origin story, so I made it the origin of the sunflower: at first the flower is a "windflower" (which I made up, but then I learned at Wikipedia there really are flowers called windflowers!), and then at the end it is a sunflower.
In terms of the language, I used some repetition in the story in the formulaic prayers and the Goddess's actions to give it something like a "folktale" style.
I was also thinking of including a cow (the bee wants to be a cow, and then the cow wants to be a cat), but I could tell the story was becoming too long already. That's the thing about chain tales: they can expand to be longer and longer and longer, but I was at my word limit already. So: no cow.
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Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your comments: Comment Wall.
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Bibliography. "The Man in the Moon" from Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Web source.
Image sources: Bee and sunflower at Pexels. Cat and moon at Pixabay. Solar flares at Pixabay. Sunflower at Pxhere.
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