Vilis was an owl of myths who, according to legends, once sought to regain his youth with disastrous results.
History[]
A Guide Book to the Great Tree[]
Vilis lived during a time where it was said that the night was lit by three moons, which together produced a light as bright as day. The greatest flyer in all the owl lands, Vilis would eventually take the beautiful Ilona as a mate and together, they lived many happy years. As the withdraws of age began to set it, however, Vilis found himself unable to find the strength to fly the heights or achieve the speed that those younger than him were capable of, which Vilis's pride could not allow.
Swearing an oath to himself that he would find a way to divert his fate, Vilis sought out the spider Zuzanna, a powerful mage famed throughout the Shadow Forest. Begging the eight-legged sorceress to return to him the strength of youth, Vilis vowed to do anything in exchange. Taking the offer, Zuzanna promised to provide the answer to Vilis's pleads if he were to remove two of the three moons from the sky, adjusting the moonlight to her liking, to which Vilis complained that he had been given an impossible task. Zuzanna, however, revealed that she held within her possession an elixir that would grant Vilis the strength of a thousand owls and, once his task was fulfilled, would grant him and only him the youth he desired. On the directions of Zuzanna, Vilis, taking ten drops of the arcane liquid, was able to fly through the vacuum of space and grasp onw of the moon in a claw, tearing it from the sky and tossing it into the sea, then repeating the process. Satisfied, Zuzanna entrusted a larger supply of the elixir of youth to Vilis, telling him to take a single drop to replenish his strength every year, returning Vilis to being the strongest flyer of all. Joyful, Vilis returned to Ilona, but found aged and withered in the time of his absence, which left Ilona miserable for the gap in ages between the two lovers.
One night, after returning from a hunting expedition, Vilis found Ilona absent and after months of waiting, again found Zuzanna, from whom he discovered Ilona, desperate to join her husband in his regained young age, had discovered his store of the elixir, but taken so much that a flap of her wings had sent her to the moon, where she was stranded, never to return. Devastated and grief stricken, Vilis's tears inspired pity in Zuzanna, who offered Vilis the chance to visit his beloved Ilona once every year.
It was from this work of fiction that the Moon Festival came into existence. On the night of the Festival, owl families gather to admire the moon together, sing moon songs, and eat round moon cakes made with nuts and berries. As the full moon begins to dwenk, young owls light lanterns to show Vilis the way back to Earth from the moon where he flies to see Ilona.