Vida y Muerte

Hace mucho tiempo, there were two goddesses who couldn’t be more different from one another. Their nombres were Vida y Muerte.

Vida was a goddess who carried the essence of life in her every step. Las flores bloomed solely from her sheer presence, her brown body radiating with the power of el sol. All, mortals and immortals alike, yearned for her affection and attention, so that she might look upon them and rejuvenate their souls.

Muerte, on the other hand, was a goddess who ferried those same souls away to the afterlife when death came for them, one way or another. Those same flores wilted and died when her skeletal feet touched the earth. With her long cloak and scythe, she could claim the souls of an entire village if the occasion arose. The mortals felt pain and despair when she took those they loved away, so their eyes sprung tears like fountains, and they began to revile her at the very mention of her nombre. Even the gods avoided her — as if she would bring the stain of death upon them as well.

Everyone, in both the earth and the sky, feared her; all, except Vida.

Since the creation of el universo, Vida y Muerte have been lovers. With the dawning of the light, Vida leaped forth into being. And with the dark, so did Muerte. Vida set her eyes on her opposite, bones and all, and knew immediately what she felt was amor, unconditionally. When their gazes locked, Muerte longed for her just the same. In this moment, amor itself was breathed into existence.

Vida y Muerte spent almost all their time together. Their connection was undeniable. Being apart felt wrong, as if el universo explicitly forbade such a thing. As el sol traveled across the sky, Vida would take Muerte’s hand in her own and twine rosas inmortales with her bones so her cariño could look upon las flores without killing them. And when el sol set below the horizon, Vida y Muerte would lie together as Muerte swung her skeletal hand across the sky, bringing forth la luna and las estrellas for them to gaze at as one.

The other gods felt jealous at the sight of them both, walking and holding each other close. For how could Muerte capture so much of Vida’s attention, when she seemed so unworthy in their eyes? To them, it seemed unfair. A trick must have been pulled over Vida for her to choose this path. So, un día, long after the mortals were created, the gods sent them all a vision of Vida y Muerte together, side by side and obviously in amor. The mortals raged, displeased to see their relationship. They sent prayers up to the sky, for all the immortals to hear. They told of their fury, boasting their new belief that Vida y Muerte were cruel and had teamed up to deliver suffering onto them all. Vida ignored the slander and insults, but Muerte could not bear to see how the mortals now hated her cariño because of her. And so, she tore herself away from Vida and severed the connection between them as she did often between the mortals’ bodies and their souls. Vida tried to stop her, regain what had been lost, but Muerte ran and hid from her so she would not be tempted to return.

Vida searched tirelessly for her cariño, all día y noche, to fix her own aching corazón. And with this distracting pain, both goddesses failed to perform their usual duties in the mortal realm. El universo lost its balance, everything spun out of control, not only from their inaction, but also from their broken amor as well. El día y la noche did not arrive as expected. The sky lay trapped in the transition from dark into light. The mortals’ crops began to die, for barely anything could flourish without the strong rays of el sol. The weather halted in its tracks and created a permanent chill. The mortals despaired over the lack of change, saddened from never witnessing the stunning brightness of el sol or the boundless beauty of las estrellas.

And even worse came the mortals’ pain when Muerte never stopped by to carry their souls away. Suffering multiplied, bodies turned immortal without a means of release. Comida lacked, starvation grew rampant, but death never came. More living bodies in the same limited space. Agony with no esperanza of recovery in the afterlife. Meaning was taken from all life as it now existed without un fin.

As the mortals and the immortals saw all this come to pass, both groups finally recognized their error. They all once believed

Vida y Muerte to be complete opposites — unfit to be with each other for what they brought in their union. But truly, they were needed together because they only worked as one through their bond. To apologize, the mortals threw a grand celebración to honor Vida y Muerte. Fiestas blossomed in the streets, colorful and inviting of death. Treats, like sweet ones in the shape of calaveras, were crafted, as well as other goods. The mortals flocked to the cemeteries where their loved ones lay buried in graves, decorating the tombstones and leaving their treats to honor the lives the dead led before with purpose.

And the gods, reflecting on their mistakes, combined their powers to create a beam of holy light, pointing right to the location of Muerte. Vida rushed to her cariño’s side as soon as she saw the light, grasping the bones of Muerte’s fingers in the warm flesh of her hands. Vida took Muerte before she could protest to look upon the mortals and bear witness to how they changed, how they now saw their amor not as suffering but an integral fact of el universo.

Muerte looked on all the festivities and smiled, reassured that both her cariño and herself were accepted and revered once more. Lifting her scythe in one hand, she called forth the souls of the dead and allowed them to visit the living loved ones honoring their graves — her blessing of gracias for their celebración. And in the palm of her other, Vida y Muerte kept their grasp entangled as they healed their severed bond, light and darkness, skin against bone, limbs entwined forever as one in un laberinto de rosas inmortales.

WRITTEN BY SARAH GARCIA | ART BY MONICA JUAREZ