The fire-theft story ends, in both traditions, with fire deliberately deposited INSIDE named species of wood (and stone), where it still waits — the myth is a filing system: it records which materials hold latent fire, and the fire-drill or strike-a-light is the act of withdrawing the deposit. Two unconnected coastlines of the Pacific preserve the same closing formula: fire was not given to people, it was hidden where people could always find it.
As her fire is quenched by the rain, Mahuika 'saved a few sparks which she threw, to protect them, into the Kaikomako, and a few other trees, where they are still cherished; hence, men yet use portions of the wood of these trees for fire when they require a light.'
After the theft, Raven 'took some red cedar, and some white stones called neq!... and he put fire into them so that it could be found ever afterward all over the world.'
Both passages verified verbatim in the public-domain scans. Grey names the kaikōmako specifically as fire-drill wood (which it genuinely is in Māori practice); Swanton names red cedar and beach stones (tinder and strike-stones in Tlingit practice). Both aetiologies are practical fire-technology encoded as the myth's last line.
Our fact-checkers corrected the first draft:
The fire raid permanently brands the body of the animal who dared it: black feathers, red eyes, a burned-short bill.
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.
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 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.