Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

After the great autumn storms, the beaches of Lithuania perform a small annual miracle: the surf throws up amber —the golden fossil resin of drowned forests, in pebbles and lumps and, rarely, in pieces the size of a fist—and the gatherers walk the tideline at dawn, as they have since the Baltic's amber fed the trade-roads of the Bronze Age. Ask the shore why the sea gives amber, and Lithuania answers with its most beloved legend. At the bottom of the Baltic, in the beginning, stood a palace of amber , and in it lived Jūratė : the goddess of the sea—her very name is built from jūra , the sea itself—most beautiful of the immortals, ruler of the waters and everything in them. On the shore, in the fishing village at the Šventoji's mouth, lived a young fisherman, Kastytis , who cast his nets—boldly, and against all right—into the goddess's own waters. Jūratė sent her mermaids to warn him off; he fished on; and the goddess rose in person to punish the trespasser—and, seeing him ...