The komala's eyes were fluttering in the daylight. She headed along the shore, the shedding-skin woman following.
"The hunter kept traveling along the shore until he heard his wives. They were laughing and playing in the ocean's waters and had not heard him approach. He bellowed and his wives fled in terror along the beach. He followed at their heels. Now," said Sundown, pointing into the water, "in those days this was a peninsula. (17) The wives fled onto it. And he shouted to the ocean to rise up and return them to him so they could be punished, and the ocean swelled and rose in a great tide that swept them back. They swam against it until they could swim no further, and they sank beneath the waves."
The shedding-skin woman looked over the choppy waters, the sharp fins.
"And they became the anchorage," Sundown finished. "Who eat what fish they like and more besides, but will never return to land."
The shedding-skin woman stared out at the ocean and then stepped into the surf. Sundown followed, the water lapping at her feet. The woman pulled off the layers around her, revealing skin light as the sand (18), and she dropped them to join the foam of the waves. She held out her arms and Sundown handed her the waking komala. And she walked into the ocean.
In the night, there were no stars.
17) The peninsula disappeared due to rising sea levels around ten thousand years ago. These and other stories referencing submerged land are currently considered to be the longest known preservation of historical information by oral tradition.
18) The idea of the Romans as "white" is rather like the idea of Jesus as white, a convenient way of cleaning up history into a single line of civilization that a single race can be credited with. It also serves to erase their actual descendants.