After a long search for truth to help the Narts survive, the god Tlepsch meets the goddess Lady Tree, who promises him all the answers and even gives him a baby sun, Milky Way, to help the Narts. However, he refuses to stay with her and ...

In the southernmost part of European Russia, near the former Soviet Union's border with Turkey and Iran, rise the highest mountains in Europe, the mighty massif of the Caucasus. In the complex topography of this region live many tribes and ethnic groups, most of whom speak languages unrelated to any others on earth. One of these groups is the Circassians, famed for the beauty of their women and the bravery of their men, not to speak of the bewildering complexity of their language. Since remotest antiquity their homeland has been the northwest region of the Caucasus (though today, many live outside the Soviet Union). In the Caucasus the Circassians have pursued a pastoralist way of life on the plains abutting the mountains, and an existence based on animal husbandry (especially horse-breeding), farming, hunting, and metalworking if living higher in the foothills. These foothills, with their dark gorges — many of which have never been penetrated by man — are covered by dense forests of hardwoods, conifers, and undergrowth such as rhododendron, well watered by rains carried from the west off the Black Sea.