Fire is never taken by force; it crosses the forbidden gap concealed in a tiny carried container — a hollow stalk, a woven thimble-bowl — after strength has failed. The theft is a smuggling, and the container is humble on purpose. Bonus inversion: the Greek thief hides the ember FROM the thunder-god; the Cherokee ember was SENT by the Thunders — the same fire, the same thunder, opposite directions.
Prometheus 'stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk' — the ember smuggled across the god-mortal boundary inside the pith of a plant, 'so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it.'
After every strong animal fails, the small Water Spider spins thread from her own body, weaves 'a tusti bowl, which she fastened on her back,' crosses the water, and puts 'one little coal of fire into her bowl' — the whole of fire carried in the smallest possible vessel.
Both details verified in the public-domain texts: PG #348 ('hollow fennel-stalk, so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it') and PG #45634 ('wove it into a tusti bowl... put one little coal of fire into her bowl'). Cherokee fire origin: 'the Thunders... sent their lightning and put fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore.'
Our fact-checkers had nothing to correct on this one.
The fire raid permanently brands the body of the animal who dared it: black feathers, red eyes, a burned-short bill.
Both traditions name a single non-human intermediary who fetches fire DOWN from heaven for mortals, and both hide the fire inside a plant in transit: latent in the araṇi wood until rubbed out; smoldering in the fennel pith until delivered.
In both, water is fire's declared enemy and a hollow tree is fire's ark: fire survives the water-siege only because a tree holds it.
The sky power answers the fire-theft not with death but with a permanent alteration of the thief's body · and in both cases the wound is generative rather than terminal: the liver regrows nightly forever; the shattered limbs become the joints every human needs to work, kneel, and forge.