The anaconda-woman belongs to the yube nawa, the anaconda people of the deep waters. In the myth of the origin of the vision vine she appears to a human man, wins his love, and leads him beneath the river to live among her kin, where he takes on the anaconda body and learns nixi pae. She is also bound to the origin of kene, the dense geometric designs painted and woven by Cashinahua women, which are held to be the pattern of the anaconda's skin and are received in vision from the snake. In her the seductive and the perilous are inseparable: intimacy with the water people is the source of design, song and vision, yet it also carries the risk of dissolving into their world and never returning to human form.