Excerpt from the book:

... About the same time, in the constellation of Aquila, there was an empress named Clay. She was unique of valor, and lived in a palace of crystal. Here she taught the many constellations in her school of directives to life each day, what is right and of virtue. She was a noblewoman, and took the form of an eagle. In this form, she circled in the sky over the north during the time of the clay empire. She was a predator, and gripped the salmon from the mighty rivers as her own for nourishment. She was solemn, unlike a statue, but brittle and fragile. Without rain, she would crumble into the dust of the earth.

It was in the moon of wintertime when Clay first sighted the First Nations People struggling to eat and live over the northern hemisphere. They were put on reservations of land, but without her help, could not survive the cruelty of humanity or the cold of snow and ice. For they were often poor, and had only their pithouse fires for warmth. Clay decided to send to them a messenger named Sea, with her child Rain. So Sea came forth from the ocean one day, toddled onto the sand and began her life. What she called forth, prospered, for she was a poet. Her child Rain watered the garden of the earth.

Emily Isaacson