Quirky tales for noon and midnight. 10 new Scythian tales

Strixes are terrible: goat snout, paws with fingers and enormous bat wings. One thing is good: they are invisible to people because of the origin from another world. Otherwise, they can scare someone to death!

The mare gallops across the steppe. Tumbler has forgotten about his falling as if he has wings on his back. The invisible winged strix supports him, not leaving!

The boy is glad, but he isn’t hurrying to come back to the parents trying to learn even better. To let it really seem that it is not the horse that carries him, but he carries the horse with his wings.

4

Once, the Scythian father was grazing his herd. Suddenly, out of nowhere, wild steppe horses raced across his path. Their exuberant leader struck the Scythian’s horse with his powerful breast so that the rider tumbled over the head from the saddle.

“This is deadly,” the Scythian had only time to think. But suddenly another rider racing across the steppe as if having wings caught him.

“In the entire steppe, there are no winged riders,” the Scythian father tells him, “Such ones exist only in my family. But the Creators deprived me of the winged offspring.”

Tumbler did not answer. He looked into his eyes and smiled through tears. Only when the mother rushed to hug and kiss him, the Scythian father recognized his son, who became a real rider.

Why do the Scythians wear such hats?

1

Once upon a time, there were wise Evening and rosy Morning. They had two daughters: Midnight and Midday.

The daughters were special. They usually walked barefoot with their eyes closed. Because of their looks had extraordinary magical powers. This magic was not to be wasted.

Midnight was black-haired with violet-colored eyes. She looked very much like her father Evening, but quick and clever. One had only to call her – she instantly came, opened her eyes, and people fell deeply asleep.

If Midnight smiles – people enjoy good dreams about meeting good people in elegant clothes on beautiful horses. If Midnight is sad or bored, she sends sad dreams to people.

But Midnight was a good girl, she always tried not to scare people falling asleep. Especially, she cared of children. She always sent the most tender and fluffy dreams to them.

Father and mother were very proud of their clever daughter Midnight.

And her sister Midday felt like a loser.

She was blonde with bright black eyes, looking like her tender bright mother Morning.

Like her sister, she usually walked with her eyes closed too.

It was quite easy for her, because she saw everything perfectly with the inner vision, which people usually call understanding. And like a sister, she willingly opened her eyes for people at first.

However, the result was disappointing.

After it, people fell as if struck. Some even died. Because of this, the poor beauty Midday cried for a long time. And then she decided to live without opening her eyes.

What’s the problem? She has no harm from this. She can see everything. And there would be no harm for people as well. Nobody would argue and curse her.

2

So everything could be as usually.

But once the Scythian lands were attacked by enemies.

Hordes of cruel warriors swooped down from the north. The northerners liked fertile southern steppes full of wild horses; they liked the generous sea full of tasty fish; they liked warm gentle sun – everything absent in the north.

So, they decided to move the Scythians out of these fertile lands to settle themselves there.

The Scythians stiffly fought against them for their homeland. But the forces were unequal. Too many northerners flooded the warm Scythian region.

The Scythians started appealing to their gods begging to teach them how to defend the homeland, how to defeat the cruel enemies?

Many times Morning and Evening changed each other, and the Scythians still retreated and retreated, leaving their fields, meadows and coastline for enemies.

One day, when everyone was already in despair, the Scythians appealed to their last hope – Midnight and Midday.

The sisters conferred.

Midnight came to the Scythians with a prophetic dream, telling them to sew very strange deep hats with wide fields over shoulders.

The next morning all the Scythians woke up with a strange feeling, as if they took a lesson at night teaching them how to sew the hat. They could ignore the strange dream if there were one or several of them. But it was too strange that all the Scythians had the same dream about the strange hats: soldiers, their wives, even children.

What to do – if they asked a question to Midnight and got the answer, they could not ignore it. They were to sew the strange hats. But it turned out to be hard to sew so many of them fast! So, the Scythians simplified the style: they put two pieces of leather together joining them with one seam from the nose to the shoulder blades. Only this way they coped with it.

In the following dream before the decisive battle against the northerners, Midnight ordered all the Scythians to put those weird hats on and go out to fight the enemy without any fear. Only if there would be a dancer in white – not to look at her in any case, put the hat deeper and cover themselves with the fields.

3

The northerners inspired by a number of victories were eager to fight from the early morning. Their leaders had iron helmets on, and ordinary soldiers were bareheaded.

When they saw the Scythian army wearing the strange hats, they burst out laughing, jeering and mocking. Going to the decisive battle, they already considered themselves as winners.

…Meanwhile, a beautiful barefoot girl in white flying dress appeared in the clearing between the two armies. Her eyes were closed. But she danced so beautifully that it was impossible not to look at her. Skirts of light flowed around the slender legs, flexible hands splashed like flames above her head, the hair shining in the sun blinded everyone with unearthly beauty. The enemy soldiers admired her until feeling dizzy, forgetting about everything: attack, booties and the very time.

It was Midday.

Sharply at noon, she opened her black eyes. Everyone admiring her was struck.

The Scythian army was only to expel the enemies who had completely lost their ability to fight.

The northerners’ leaders, groaning, took their red-hot iron helmets off, ordinary soldiers fell like sheaves clipped by sickles.

This way, the Scythian lands were liberated from the invaders. Since then, the Scythians have been used to crest hats with wide fields over shoulders.

And Midday stopped considering herself a loser.

Why Midday’s eyes are sewn up

1

This was back in the days when Midday was big-eyed like all pretty girls.