Feathered Dragon

From the chronicles of Coton:

When the great gods created humankind, according to the wishes of Qotal and Zaltec and their children, they made man tall and strapping, fitted for war and for hunting. Soon, they knew, he would become master of his world.

But other gods-Kiltzi and her younger sisters-stole the mold used to make man. They found their brothers’ tastes too warlike and saw that man was too big. They desired a toy, a little person that could become part of (he forest world without becoming its master.

So the sisters began to work on their own mold. They copied everything that they could from the shapes created by

their brothers, but they made their humans smaller, that they might more easily serve as toys.

And when the little people had been made, the sister gods set them free in the deepest forests, where they might for. ever escape the notice of their larger brethren. They bade them to hunt and fish and populate the forest, but not to become its masters.

The Little People promised to obey, and they did.