Neya, the Goddess of the night, had a beautiful
bird, the most beautiful in the world. It’s feathers had all
the colors of the rainbow, and when it took flight her wings
flashed and shimmered in the sunlight.
Ostara, Goddess of spring also had a bird, an
owl. Ostara's owl was a fine bird, but really quite plain. When
Ostara saw Neya's bird, she wanted it very, very much.
Now Neya, since she is the Goddess of the night,
slept during the day and only traveled through the dark hours.
One day, while Neya was sleeping, Ostara crept up and took the
beautiful bird.
As you can imagine, Neya was very angry when she
woke up. She immediately went to search for her bird.
Ostara knew that Neya would look for the beautiful
bird, so to hide it she would shape-change the bird and turned
it into another animal every night. For example, if night was
coming and Ostara was in a meadow full of horses, she would
shape-change the bird into a horse.
Unfortunately for Ostara, because of the bird's
beauty, whenever she shape-changed it into another animal it
would still be the most beautiful. So when Ostara changed the
bird into a horse, it became the most beautiful horse you have
ever seen, with a glimmering silver coat and a mane that sparkled
like diamonds.
When Neya awoke and began looking for her bird,
she could always find the animal by looking for the most beautiful
animal she saw. Because of this Ostara spent most of the night
fleeing Neya with the bird, to hide it again.
As you probably guessed, after a while Ostara
became very tired. One morning she lay down in a field to rest.
To her horror when she woke up, she discovered she had slept
the whole day away and dusk was coming. All the animals of the
forest were out in the field filling their bellies before nightfall,
the field was full of deer and rabbits.
Ostara knew that Neya would be there soon, and
she had to do something fast, but she did not want Neya to be
able to recognize her bird again, because of the beauty of the
animal. So this time Ostara shape-changed the bird into a rabbit,
but she put all of her strength into the spell so that the rabbit
would not be the most beautiful, but look just like all the
rest of the bunnies in the field.
The spell worked, the beautiful bird changed into
a plain rabbit, and when Neya passed over she did not recognize
her bird in disguise. This is how Ostara's bunny, or as a lot
of people today call her Easter's bunny came to be.
Because the bunny is really a shape-changed bird...
she can lay eggs, and because she is the most beautiful bird
in the world she lays the most beautiful eggs.
Rabbit courtesy of Family
Internet
