Once upon a time, there was a hunter, who left for the hills on one of his expeditions. With him he carried rations to suffice him for five days. It so happened that, unable to find a catch, on the sixth day, he found himself deep in the wilderness, exhausted, and without any provisions.
He tried to look for water and some wild berries but to no avail. He tried to fall asleep, to give his body a rest, but his heart and his mind were restless. Unable to sleep, he became flustered and extremely frustrated with the situation at hand. After failing to fall asleep a couple of hours after dark, he gave the thought up, and looked around.
To his joy, nearby, he saw a large blazing fire. Tired and cold as he was, the warmth and the glow seemed very inviting to him. He made his way towards it, hoping to find other huntsmen who would be kind enough to give him some food and water. As he approached the fire, to his horror, it was a gathering of giants!
Panicked, he tried to run back. However, he had caught the eye of one of the demons, with a squinted eye, who had gotten up to fetch water. As the giant passed the hunter, the demon invited him to the party!
“It is a wedding,” the demon told him.
Terrified, the hunter replied, “I am a child of man. You are a djinn and you shall destroy me.”
The spirit swore to not do so, “By the sun and the moon”. The djinn hid the man under a bush, and went back to his fellows.
While the djinn was on his way to return, a plant was ripped out from the ground, into which the giants, shapeshifting into thinner and thinner beings, disappeared one by one.
The friendly djinn took the hunter by the hand, who ended up sliding through the same crack.
To his astonishment, below the ground was a splendid, well-lit, beautiful house. He hid in a corner, out of sight, where the friendly spirit gave him food and water.
The huntsman witnessed a bride, weeping, with her head in her mother’s lap. Tears streamed down the face of the bride’s mother as she sang an old Shina wedding song, which was also sung in his village!
The huntsmen, amazed at what he saw, began to enjoy himself. However, the djinn told him it would be best if he leaves. Before he vanished from the scene, climbing back outside to his world from the aforementioned crack, he took one last look at all the giants.
One sported a shawl the huntsmen thought he had left at home. Another held a gun. A third was eating out of his own dishes. Another two were wearing multicoloured stockings and pyjamas which he was sure he had seen his fellow villagers wearing!
Before he left, the friendly djinn gave him three loaves of bread. As his village was quite far from the village, he ate two of them on his way back home. Upon reaching home, he met his father, who had become rather worried on his prolonged disappearance. He narrated the incident to his father, and gave him half of the loaf to eat. His mother, a wise woman, and a good housewife, saved the other half for winter in the granary.
Half loaves are believed to bring good luck. People who have them in their granary are never bothered by demons unless they feel offended by their actions. The granary of their house always remained full, and the villagers rejoiced with them.
The huntsmen looked for his dishes, shawl, and other things he had noticed in the possession of the djinns. To his surprise, he found them all there! And they were placed exactly as he had left them!
It was then when a fellow villager, an old woman known for her wisdom told him that djinns often borrowed things from humans, specially for certain occasions like weddings, and always returned them back.
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