The Dragon
When I was young, I felt aloof from the world of my home; for a time in my younger adulthood I assumed that this was the folly of youth and I was merely a misfit child who would grow into some greater sense of comfort with my surroundings—alongside myself—with age, but as I grew older still, I found that I could never settle myself to the life that I had been given. Something was always off, something never quite made sense, and though I went through the motions of a successful life by the judgment of society, I never found myself wholly reconciled to it. An Ivy League degree, a high paying job, these meant nothing; I had studied the liberal arts, I had studied the humanities, history, philosophy, I had studied science, mathematics, even engineering, but these brought me no closer to a sense of understanding, let alone belonging to this world and its people. I was forever a stranger, no matter how much I wished otherwise or did as I was told to do by the arbiters of society's norms. Even the great progress of technology and the wonders of the modern world left me cold, neither progress nor wonder to my eye. So I resolved to get away.
I wandered in the desert for years. Traveling amongst the nomads, I lived in the wilds as they lived. All those passing years spent in a tent or upon camelback, and when I had my fill of the stinging sands and those vast empty stretches we had crossed so many times to and fro, I moved on. Along the great rivers of the region and in their lush floodplains, too, I traveled, living, as best I could, the life of the people of the rivers, a life blissfully much removed from the one I had left behind. We paddled and punted the long wooden boats through the flowing currents and the marshes they fed, slept in straw huts upon the floating islands they had created, and for a time, I felt grounded and part of a whole. For a time this was enough, but that old sense of unease crept upon me, and the dread and detachment from this world took hold yet again. I had heard somewhere, from someone—I forget where or who exactly—about a temple in the mountains to the north of the great desert.
The temple was small and simply built of roughly hewn stone, no great wonder which would inspire travel writers today nor archeologists of the future; its only real decoration was a carving of a dragon or serpent figure on the large stone lintel over its quite paltry doorway. It was kept by a single priest, treasure keeper he was called; he was an elderly man, how old I couldn't say, but evidently in rude health, habitually dressed after the manner of his station in robes and a turban of sun-bleached pure white linen and sporting a long grey-white beard. He spoke only to those to whom he wished to speak; he did not wish to speak to me. So I set up camp there in the flat ground near to the temple entrance until, I hoped, something about me would spark his interest. For seven days I was there, from dawn til dusk, through the night, and from dawn til dusk again and again, until at last, he came and silently bade me enter.
We sat upon the floor in the cramped chamber of the temple; a simple rectangular space under a low ceiling, a small hearth to one side, there was nothing else but the dark grey almost black basalt walls. His melodic dialect was strange and unlike that of the others of the land which I had learned so fluently in my time amongst them, but I could still make sense enough of him to understand. He said he would tell me of the Dragon but that when he was done, I must ask no questions, say nothing at all, and leave.
"But I will tell you how the Dragon came to be.
Once in the time before time when all was Light and Dark, and the emanations of the One into the Worthies of the Light stood apart from Chaos, there remained Nothing until Sophia spied upon the Chaos of the Darkness. Chaos called to Her, appealed to Her divine nature, appealed to Her to bring about the Great Working, to make Her the First Mother, and in Her desire to bring about creation She was both deceived and deceiving.
In Her eagerness, Sophia knew nothing of the nature of the Darkness, she had been ignorant and knew only of the Light, and flattered Herself to think of Herself that way, saying, "I shall bring about Life."
So she entered into the Chaos, accepted its invitation, and thereupon found herself trapped in the Darkness. With all its powers Chaos seduced Her, and under its sinister enchantments She began to forget Her place amongst the Light, to forget the Light, until at last She could remember no more, not even who She was. Forgetting Her divine nature, She accepted Herself into the Darkness. Chaos entered into Her, mixed with Her, mated with Her, until It had exhausted Itself and She was swollen with child. Having so exhausted Itself, Chaos became as a corpse, yet still It lived.
There, in the Darkness, of the Darkness, Sophia gave birth to the Dragon who is both King and Realm. The many headed serpent, Its eyes like fiery flashes of lightning. Chaos which had mixed with Sophia became as the Dragon and the Dragon devoured the corpse-like body of Chaos Its Father and became as Its Father and in the Darkness, It became the Darkness, and there was no separation between them. And Sophia became afraid of this Her son. In Her fear, She began to remember, to remember Her place amongst the Light, to remember the Worthies, to remember the One, and She called out to Them for rescue."
He finished his tale and I did as commanded before it began—I asked no questions, I said nothing, not even a farewell, and left the temple never to return. I returned to the river that cut through the desert, to the boat I had taken up the waters to these sacred mountains a week before, and I returned to life. For some months I lived again along river-ways and marshlands, amongst the semi-nomadic peoples I had dwelt with for the preceding years. For some months I did, but after the passing of the season, I decided to return "home", such as it were, to the life I had left behind all those years ago.
The emptiness I had with me always before, I felt still. There was no escape for me; there can be no escape for me. Though I might again flee to the far corners of the world, the hollowness would find me, and the best I could hope for is to delude myself for a few weeks or months that I had evaded it, that I had defied fate. So I remained here in this world of which I felt no part, amongst this society with which I felt no kinship, amongst all of this to which I was forever to be a stranger. Here I lived and here I will die. Even should I leave, here I will die.