Tezcatlipoca dangled his foot into the primordial waters as bait, and when Cipactli bit it off, Quetzalcoatl seized the thrashing monster so the two gods could tear her apart and fashion the world from her body.
⚠ Some sources identify the slain earth monster as Tlaltecuhtli rather than Cipactli; the two may represent the same cosmogonic event with different traditional names for the victim.
Cipactli's torn body became the living earth — her hair the trees, her skin the grasses, her eyes the wells and springs — and it is this monstrous flesh that Tlaltecuhtli embodies, the earth forever hungry for blood because it remembers being alive.
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