Longing

This is actually sort of a sketch for a sculptural piece.

When I was researching the background of the Chinese people and silk, I came across a couple of stories regarding the worm's supposed origin. The one about a cocoon falling into the Yellow Emperor's wife's teacup and gave her inspiration much like the apple for Newton almost seemed plausible, even reasonable. The other version, I prefer. It shows more facets of human emotions and illustrates human behavior.

So, once upon a time, there lived a magical horse. He was a magnificent horse and white in color. While he couldn't talk, he understood human speech, and he could fly. The horse had an owner, and the owner had a daughter. One day, the owner went away on business and never came back. The daughter was worried, and she was sad. In his way, the horse tried to console her; he too worried about his owner. Quite unexpectedly, the daughter made the horse a promise: if he were to find her father, she'd marry him. Upon hearing that, the horse flew off. He looked and looked and looked, through all four corners of the earth. Finally, he found the father; and he flew home carrying the man on his back. When the daughter saw her father safe and sound, she was happy and grateful, and she told her father the promise she made to the horse and her intention to follow through. The father was furious. He killed the horse and tanned his skin, and he arranged for the daughter to marry properly. On the day of the wedding, he gave the horse's hide to the daughter as a present. When suddenly, the hide flew and wrapped itself around the daughter and took her into a mulberry tree, where she became a silkworm, and she spent her days spinning silk, in longing, and as remembrance of the horse's sacrifice.

Yeah, okay, I took some creative liberties and added little bits, here and there. There's also another variation to this story, which I don't like at all... In this story, everything remained the same as the other one, except the daughter was only joking, she had no intention to wed the horse. In fact, she was using the horse's feelings for her; and when the father returned, she encouraged him to slaughter the horse. The horse's revenge was to turn her into a silkworm, where she spent her days spinning silk as punishment.