[Wonder-tale bridge — Schirò 1923 Arbëresh I Gemelli + Wheeler 1936 strand. Not a Malësia epic song. Render variant_box with this short_story — no silent composite.] A king who has lost his kingdom hoes a garden by the sea. He catches a red fish that speaks. Divide it: head to the wife, middle to himself, tail to mare and dog, bones in the earth. Twin boys are born — Zjermi with the Sun on his forehead, Handa with the Moon. Two foals, two pups, two silver swords rise with them. When the ora has joined their father, he gives each son a gold ring whose gem will blacken in the other’s danger. A year on, the twins gird the swords, take horse and dog, and their mother — spinning. At a flowering almond the road splits. They vow to meet there each year. Zjermi’s horse takes the right path; Handa’s the left. On Wheeler’s road Zjermi finds a wounded drangue — Zef — and they mingle blood. Ahead, a shuttered city: the kulshedra has sealed the river’s source and eats a maiden a day. Princess Bardhakuqja is tied at the abyss. Tear on the sleeper’s face; seven heads rise from boiling water; dog at the hind, horse on the armor, silver sword for the crowned center. In Wheeler, Zef and his kind come in thunder, left hands holding wooden cradles (Wheeler 1936 — against the beast’s foam), and weaken her before the last cut. Tongues and crowned head go in the saddlebag. Barkulku the Wolfbelly brings the empty necks and claims the bride; proof answers him. At the garland the ring goes black. Handa ignores the old man at the stream who says the path is worse than death. In Schirò he walks into the garden of the zanas — white laughter, songs, dances — and they name the cave at the mountain foot where e Bukura e Dheut keeps her court. At the bramble hedge the witch — Mamadreqja in Wheeler; unnamed shtriga-ordeal in Schirò — sets her tests. Handa fails; ointment or enchanted thorn turns boy, horse, and dog to stone among a hundred princes. Zjermi does not linger with the zanas. He binds the witch, learns the cure — lily dew on eyes and lips in Schirò; dragon-tongue against her magic in Wheeler — and wakes his brother. The Beauty under vine and cypress takes Handa. Later the twins reclaim a usurped crown; strength like a drangue is the tale’s own simile. When Zjermi lies too weak to ride home to Bardhakuqja, Handa goes in his place and lays the silver sword between them in the bed — chastity until the true bridegroom laughs at the blade and the fear breaks. That is the bridge: ora at the deathbed, zana garden, shtriga stone, kulshedra drought, drangue blood-oath, Earthly Beauty in the cave — märchen roads, not highland canon.