The legend was:
A man was wandering the desert, a man from the still-young earth. He had gone out in search of food to feed his family, and had lost his way among the deceitful sand and stones and prickly cacti. He wandered for four days and four nights, and his water ended on the fifth morning. The story goes, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat down and gazed about at the arid land that rippled in the heat like the water he so badly needed.
As the sun rose higher, he began to grow parched, and knew that he could not last long. He stumbled downwards, into the shade, in hopes of cooling down and finding a stream, when suddenly a voice spoke to him.
“Follow me, and I will lead you to the wells of the desert,” it spoke.
The man turned, and saw what at first he took to be a brook but realized was a snake, stretched long and translucent and shimmering. It raised its head and gazed at him, and he saw that it was as clear and pure as the sky, and knew that it spoke the truth. It flowed by his feet, and he began to follow it. As he went, it warned him, “You will be challenged three times, and three times you must refuse. If you do not follow me, you will die of thirst.” The buzzards that circled above the man's head called down to him, “You will die! Die! Die!”, but he paid them no heed,
 

that is -

for all the boys in his village had been taught since they were small children that buzzards preyed on fear,
 

preyed on fear? Or -

  not men.
The snake led him through a winding valley, where the sand was red and stained with the blood of the gods, between towering saguaros and dried-up riverbeds. It led him through fearful places, but the man trusted the snake. It led him beneath a sudden ridge of towering black cliffs, whose shadows were cold and dark. The day began to grow old, and the man began to think about how thirsty he was and how far he was from the village, when a chasm opened up before them, its mouth sunk deep in the cliffs. The snake paused there, and for a minute seemed to not know what to do.
 

It did not know what to do, for it had never been there before,
it does not know all, for otherwise, it

From the chasm, a scorpion crept, unlike any the man had seen before. It was the King of Scorpions, equal to the length of three grown men and the height of one, pincers enormous, carapace dark as a moonless night in the chasm whence it came.
 

So dramatic – but then
the dark is often misunderstood
 

Its stinger hung like a plaything above its head, sharp enough to slice air, and a drop of sickly-yellow poison hung on the tip. When it spoke, it sounded as though rocks within its throat scraped against each other. “Whom are you following, man-creature? This snake here?” It gestured, and when the man turned, it seemed to him as though the snake wavered and as though he could not make it out very clearly anymore. The scorpion laughed, and it was the sound of a cold night wind blowing through a stand of palm-trees among which lost souls wandered. It blew through his skin and chilled his soul, and his heart quickened with fear. “Ha! You have indeed wandered far; you must have been tricked, man-creature. Come with me instead, for I can show you truer water.”
 

  Misunderstood, we think, because we've all seen scorpions
and they do not lie
they may play at being fearsome but really they're
 

The drop of poison dripped down and pooled on the King's carapace, and it was like a yellow gemstone, winking and blinking at the man.

Just as frightened as us that's it
 

  A sudden dizziness overtook him, and the man looked at the cliffs, and thought about how cold any water beneath them must be, and how it would quench his thirst. But all of a sudden he recalled a dream he'd had the night before, a dream he had forgotten until now and wouldn't have been able to understand anyway: the words, Beware the jeweled armor, echoing through the very same cliffs he was standing in now.
“No,” he
 

The first mistake, the first mistake,
nothing but hallucinations
What had really happened was, what had really happened was, he was frightened of the scorpion but you see they need to drink water,

said. And he turned to the snake, and the snake was shining in the setting sun like crystal, and its eyes burned. They burned so bright that the scorpion's eyes were blinded and it skittered back into the deeps, seeming no more fearsome or powerful at that moment than the scorpions back home – small enough to be crushed beneath a well-aimed stone.
 

They need to drink water too and that scorpion saved him. It was the one to lead him to the river, and he survived, but he was too ashamed -

Twilight gathered, and now he and the snake were traveling through silent shadows that parted before them, leaving the dreary cliffs far behind. The cooling air made it easier for him to see the snake, and to keep his mind off of thoughts of water. And instead he thought of the debt he owed to the snake, for savi
 

eyes widen in reproach
debt, what debt? The debt paid by
unwitting children, too little to know
they're alive
too little to realize they're dead, that's the debt. Paid to bloodthirsty mother-snakes, no, what really happened was...

ng him. The moon rose, but the man did not feel sleepy or tired at first. Then the flowers of the saguaros opened up, and he began to grow intoxicated, for the scent of them was strong and ripe. Bats flitted from one flower to the other and spun in dizzying circles around his head. He paused to look at a flower, white and shining in the light,
 

oh now they blame the flowers too
for their plight

and as he looked at it, his eyes began to close. He leaned in closer, the better to smell it. But then
 

what really happened was that the gentle saguaros rescued him. They reached out their arms, and their flowers offered their nectar to him, and like the bats that used to frighten us so he drank from them... who knows

the whiteness of the petal reminded him of the flowers his wife had worn in her hair on their marriage day, and he suddenly recalled her. It seemed to him that she was standing there, next to the saguaro, and an overwhelming love for her and loneliness at being so far from her overcame the man. He stepped back, reached out his arms to touch her, but the specter vanished. It was enough, though, to turn the scent of the saguaros sickeningly sweet and overripe, and when he turned around
 

enough

when he turned around, the snake was

enough

the snake was there
 

enough.
We say enough. Let us tell the story instead.
We say, what really happened was that the snake
was false, venom
The snake was false, and all else was true: the loved one with flowers in her hair
Listen.
The loved one with flowers in her hair; the buzzards tracing circles in the sky
The scorpions crawling beneath his feet, were all true. And, later, the bats that shadowed him
we will not let you lie
later, the last challenge was true, too, truer, the lake that lay beneath the last mountain
was the truest.
The lake that was blue, in the sands, beneath the mountain and the sky, it was truest
But we were lied to
The snake – lied
and he thought the lake was false.

The snake was there, watching him, and its scales rippled in the moonlight. “Dreaming saved you once, and so did love. But one last challenge
 

We will not be lied to any longer, by the snakes, within or without. We know where the true lake is, in our desert. For it is our desert, not the snakes', and we will not let it be otherwise. It is our desert, and we will accept as the truth all that lives there – us humans, and the scorpions, and saguaros, and bats and buzzards and the star-spangled night sky.
But we had been lied to
by the snakes

awaits you,” it said.
 

No, we will not fail the last challenge. The desert is ours.
We will accept the darkness brought with it, we will accept the drought
famine and death and plague
but also:
love and the blooming flowers and the blue blue lake beneath the mountain
but
we will not accept the snakes, nor the legends that grow
No snakes ever lived here, except for inside us
The desert is ours.

Far away, over empty, rolling, dunes, the wind sweeps sand over the rippling path of a side-winder. When the moon sets, the stars shine that much brighter, and the echoes of words are carried off on the breeze.
Or so the legend goes.