A Vitória-régia — a short story in easy Portuguese

The vitória-régia is the giant water lily of the Amazon, with round leaves strong enough to hold a child and a big flower that opens at night, white, and turns pink by morning. The legend of how it came to be is Tupi-Guarani and is told in every Brazilian school: the moon, Jaci, chooses the most beautiful girls and turns them into stars. Naiá longs to be one. She climbs trees and hills to touch the moon, and one night sees it in a lake, close and round, and goes into the water to reach it. Jaci, moved, makes her a star of the waters.

Couto de Magalhães, in O Selvagem (1876), records that for the Tupi Jaci, the moon, is the mother of everything that grows from the ground, the mother of the plants, which is what this legend turns into a story. This retelling keeps the longing, the three tries (the tree, the hill, the lake), the moon in the water, the gift and the night flower. At A1 the lake's depth is said gently, "Naiá não volta mais", and there is no word for death; Jaci is shown as the moon itself, and Naiá as an Indigenous girl drawn with dignity.

In the Portuguese, notice vira (becomes), estica o braço (stretches out her arm), the refrain está longe flipped to está perto, and se chama, the fixed chunk every learner knows from "Como você se chama?".