“I feel like I gave birth to one,” groaned Coyote.
“That’s the fire water,” said the crow. “It promised you wings. It gave you stones.”
“I’m enlightened ,” slurred Coyote, and promptly fell into the cooking fire. Coyote-s Tale. Fire Water
“You look like you swallowed a porcupine,” said the crow.
But Coyote, clever and crooked as a juniper branch, had other plans. “I feel like I gave birth to one,” groaned Coyote
In the old days—before the rivers learned to bend, and when the stars still whispered secrets to the wind—Coyote was hungry.
That’s a lie.
But he never refused it if it was offered.
“That,” he said to no one, “is fire water .” The People of the Sweet Springs kept the fire water in clay jars sealed with pine pitch. They said it was not for drinking—not really. It was for visions. For ceremonies. For speaking to the Grandfathers who lived beyond the Milky Way. It gave you stones
Because Coyote is a trickster, and tricksters don’t do never . They just get better at pretending they’ve learned. In Indigenous oral traditions, “fire water” is an old metaphor for alcohol—something that gives a false warmth, then takes more than it gives. The Coyote tales aren’t warnings in the strict sense; they’re mirrors . Coyote is the part of us that knows better and does it anyway.
He waited until the Moon ducked behind a cloud. Then he crept into the village, stole a gourd, and lapped up the fire water until his belly swelled like a toad’s throat.