There was a young man of the hungeli tribe who lived out on his lonesome in a house he had built with his wife in the forest. His wife had deceased some time ago and he was still shattered by the occurrance. Relentlessly all the acquaintances that he had back in the village they had left to be together had tried to shake him out of his loss and depression, but he could not leave it. In his voice all could hear the tone of a man defeated by life. So he lived alone, wandering the woods without seeing the beauty of life, waiting to one day die. He did not take his own life for he knew that his beloved could never accept such an act and although she was dead he was still faithful to her every wish.

Without his knowing it because his eyes were closed to the signs, his loved one was around. After death she had found herself wandering in the forest through the dead night. She was looking for the place of her ancestors which she had heard lay somewhere behind the mountains that carried in its arms the valley where their kind had lived since time had begun.

In the dark hid many spirits of all forms and sizes, some good, some bad. The bad ones waited to intercept her in her path and coax her into becoming their slave by need. They all wanted such a beautiful maiden to do their bidding. As she walked and walked many she encountered and every time she fought off their offerings and advances with her will to join her ancestors in the land of light. Every time one would approach her she would answer with these words:
' I could never stay in such a dark and gloomy place. When I was alive at least there was day and night, but since I became sick and died it has been so dim and dark that I can barely see the beauty of creation. This is not the place for me. I wish to go home, to the land of light, back to the creative potential.'

These words were always embedded with a meaning and spirit that could break any chains of trickery. Yet when she reached the lake at the foot of the mountains the greatest of the netherworld spirits arose before her from the waters.
He had the ultimate offering she could not refuse, and with these words he summoned images of her beloved to be mirrored upon the water as a temptation for her:
' The one you love is dying because he loves you too much. His life has become as dark as this place is and without you he will be an easy target for the spirits who prey on the soul of humans. They will begin by convincing him that they are his own voice within his head and slowly eat away at his life force. When he dies he shall be empty of the power of will needed to walk through the darkness towards the land of your ancestors. He will become a captive to these parts and you will never meet him again. You will be incomplete without your loved one.
If you stay with me beneath this lake and live here tending to the cleanliness of the lake bed, I will allow you to visit his house sometimes when he is not there and leave him signs of your presence.
If you accept I will help you to reach the mountains with him when he passes on to the netherworld from the world of the living.'

And this is how she became a beautiful fish that fed on the decomposed matter which fell into the lake and so cleaned it. Sometimes, when she was allowed, she would dissipate and return to her human form as a ghost and visit the cabin where they had lived.

The young man was like a living dead. Night after night he would sit on the bed where they had shared so many moments of deep love and reminisce, touching all the little things that she had done with his desperate thoughts. He was decomposing like the things the wind blew into the lake.
Where his heart had been was an open shell with a tiny flickering flame dancing weakly about to the cold winter winds of his sterility.
He had become so careless about his appearance that his beard and his hair had grown long down his chest and back. That is how he counted the time that had passed since his love had been forced to leave him, by the size of his hair and beard. He would often mumble to himself:
' One day so long will have passed that I will step on my hair and my beard and fall to the ground hitting my head on a rock. I will then follow the tracks that my beloved has left and follow them until I meet her again.'

For a long time he could not notice that whenever he went out to hunt something would happen in his cabin. For some reason, and not due to his carelessness, there was never any build up of dust and cobwebs in the cabin. The cabin was as spotless as it had been in her lifetime. This was because of her of course. And this was not the only sign that she could leave him. Every time he returned, without his noticing it, every glass in the house would be filled up with water and the house smelt like the lake at the foot of the mountains. When she would finish these chores she would lay on his bed and kiss his pillow tenderly as if she were kissing him. She would lay there remembering their happiness together until the great voice of the spirit of the lake would be heard calling her to return. She would then exit by an invisible portal placed on the wall of the cabin which would transport her back to the lake and the other fish immediately.

Years passed, and slowly, and not due to his mental activity, but due to the messages told in the songs of the birds that perched around the cabin which made their way into his subconscious, he began to take notice of a few of the changes. The first thing he noticed were the wrinkles on the bed that were there every time he returned from outside. They were the wrinkles made by a person and they were made on the side of the bed where she had made usual to sleep. This he found strange but not unusual for it happened every time he returned. The next thing he noticed was the water and the smell of the lake. He thought this was a sign, so he decided that he would go fishing there.

The next afternoon, many years after they had been separated by death, he went fishing on the lake where she lived. When he arrived at the lake he noticed a mysterious boat just sitting there on the shore. After moments of pondering upon if he should or not borrow it he chose to do so and he took out the boat. When he reached the middle of the lake he cast his line into the water. Almost immediately he felt a tug. He pulled the line up and hanging from it was one of the most exquisite fishes he had ever caught. It was his beloved.
The fish didn't fight and squirm like all other fish in the same predicament would and this he found truly strange. So he pulled the line towards him and held the fish in his hands. At that moment the fish spoke in her voice and said:
' my love, you are so beautiful even in your ragged appearance.'
He was so shocked and surprised that his first reaction was to throw the fish back into the water and lean back, with which he fell into the water. His clothes were heavy when they were soaked and his boots weighed him down, so he could not reach the small boat he had been on. Had he looked up he would have noticed that the boat was no longer there.

So he drowned. As he drowned he felt happy to be on his way to his beloved and the last thing that he saw was the fish that was his beloved swimming around him. He died and the spirit of the lake did as he had promised taking him and his beloved to the land of light, to their ancestors ground beyond the mountain.

The couple from the hungeli tribe were welcomed amidst a great feast to celebrate their love. The good spirits had all been watching and had declared this to be a most beautiful tale to be remembered.

On two different days few years later a boy and a girl were born with two halves of this story. They were the couple of hungeli. Inevitably they met and fell in love so completing it, and from that moment onwards the story was remembered by word of mouth for it was told and retold for ages to come by all in their lineage. A fruit of their all-enduring and ever-lasting love.