| Honoyeta
Kalauna (Goodenough Island, Melanesia)
Many women have found out too late that they'd married a reptile, but the two wives of the serpent deity Honoyeta thought they knew him for the snake he was before the ceremony. Little did they know that beneath that ophidian mask lurked a handsome young man who emerged each day after they left to hoe the yams. He was found out, however, by one of them: she liked what she saw and burned his snakeskin. This made Honoyeta angry and he punished the women and all their kin by introducing death, famine, and drought into the world. It appears that under the attractive visage, he was a snake after all.
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