The Embrace of Neuquén and Limay

When Paradise seemed to flourish on the land of the pehuén, there lived two young friends, almost children, called Neuquén and Limay.
They liked to share the hours of hunting and to dream of the mysteries sensed beyond the mountains and valleys of the land they knew.
One day, while walking through the myrtle forest, they observed a young Mapuche girl through vines, trunks and flowers. The girl murmured songs, combing long black braids.
Since then an attempt to get closer and get to know each other began, made of songs, of silences in the middle of sunsets and mountains, of talks on the trails. And little by little the two young friends felt that a different force, hitherto unknown, invaded their friendship and began to separate them, without their wanting it. Each began to isolate themselves from the other, to look alone at the mirrors and circles of the lakes and the sunsets.

-What happens between Neuquén and Limay? - It was the obligatory question in the wheel of the adults, squatting around the stove.
It was the Machi, with her wisdom of life and years, who advised the test of destiny as a remedy for estrangement between friends.
"I want a conch that brings the sound of the sea that I don't know," asked Rahiué, who was the name of the young Mapuche girl with long braids.
La Machi considered that fate had spoken and entrusted the task to the two young men. The two of them left early one morning, still damp with dew, with a blush in the treetops and the omen of good news from the morning birds.

Whoever brought the conch first would receive the girl's love as a reward.
To help them in their search, Nguenechen, the father of the children of the earth, turned the young people into rivers. One, the Neuquén, would run torrential from the height where it was born, to the north. Another, the Limay, would seek from the South to reach the sea for shells.
-Neuquén and Limay will not return! Neuquén and Limay have already forgotten you! –The wind cried out, in love and jealous, in Rahiué's ear.
The young girl was silent and listened. The distant look. The coppery body swaying like reed, getting thinner and thinner. Until one day, when the waters did not reflect her but as a shadow of the beautiful girl that Neuquén and Limay had known, Rahiué murmured an offering to the Father:
-Father Nguenechen, I offer you my life in exchange for my Neuquén friends to live. and Limay. Father, I offer it to you, accept it.
The circular mirrors of the lake destroyed the small figure. Rays of warm sunlight cradled her plea. Rahiué's brown body was sinking into mother earth little by little, until a new plant, with very fresh leaves and with a different red flower, was timidly making a place in the constant green of the forest.
Father Nguenechen had listened.
In the wind, witness to all the change, the jealousy he felt for Neuquén and Limay was stronger than his love for Rahiué.
He did not mourn the return of Rahiué to mother earth. It swept through the place with fury. He quickly dried up the desert and the fences even more for days and nights, to bring the news to Neuquén and Limay. He wanted to see the pain she would cause them.
The young people - who until then had sought to reach the sea each by their own side - did not resist the emptiness that Raihué left them. They embraced. They melted their pain and their bodies. The two rivers, brothers in love and pain, converged to form the Negro River. Together, they advance towards the sea in the eternal search for beauty and friendship.