Story 8. The original Myth. Part 1

And I stepped over the threshold. And then…
 
Then came a long, a very long, an almost eternally lasting weightless fall from an immeasurable, unthinkable height… into an abyss swirling with grey-smoky clouds.
 
What is this – Memory or Dream?
 
I remember seeing this dream again and again, and it always breaks off at the same place. But for some reason, now it feels like it will be different.
 
And yet, what is it – a memory?
 
'A Myth…' – I seem to hear voices inside me, – 'A Living Myth'.
 
Eyes, amber, wise eyes… They seem to see right through me. Or are these my own eyes, looking at the girl falling into the abyss?
 
Where am I? Who am I, really? No answer…
 
An image comes. The first image from the dream, from the myth, from the very fabric of life.
 
… And so, after a long pause, the Dragon raises his eyes from a bowl of water reflecting the last rays of the setting sun.
 
He speaks quietly, almost to himself, but the Tiger hears every word:
 
'You know... Sometimes I feel like I'm not watering flowers. But ashes. The ashes of what I once was. And from these ashes... these leaves, this stem... they burst through not instead of the old, but through it. This isn't resurrection. This is... sprouting through one's own cremated form.'
 
He turns to the Tiger, and in his gaze there is no former rage — only the deep, calm weariness of an alchemist who has finally seen the result of his centuries of work.
 
'You asked how to stop fighting. The answer: no way. You can only understand what has already burned... and start watering that very spot. The most scorched point.'
 
He holds out the watering can to the Tiger. A purely symbolic act. A gesture.
 
The Tiger doesn't stir. His striped coat blends with the shadows of the thickets by the stone wall. Only his eyes glow in the half-light like two smouldering coals. His voice comes not from his throat, but as if from the very depths of the ambush that has become his natural state.
 
The Tiger's voice (low, without vibration):
 
'You water the ashes. And I... I guard the ashes. I wait so that no spark from what has burned may flare up again. I wait so that the new sprout won't have to push through the old fire. This, too, is a form of loyalty. Patient, unseen extinguishing.'
 
A pause. Only the rustle of water in the Dragon's watering can is heard.
 
The Tiger (slowly):
 
'You offer the watering can. But I don't know how to water, Dragon. I only know how to wait. And to guard the silence after the fire. That... is my watering.'
 
· But doesn't silence guard itself? – I want to ask, but I can't utter a word. Nevertheless, the Tiger and the Dragon hear me.
 

 
The Dragon:
 
'Oh no. Silence is the most defenceless of all things. One wrong memory can kill it. One sudden sound. It must be guarded like a sleeping child. Or... like that very scorched point.'
 
He places the watering can on the stone between them, as a shared symbol.
 
The Dragon:
 
'You guard the silence. I water the ashes. This... is the same work. Only you are on the outside of the non-flammable. And I am on the inside of the sprouting.'
 
From the shadows comes a slow, quiet breathing. As if the Tiger, for the first time in many years, has shifted slightly without leaving his ambush.
 
The Tiger (in his voice — a rare, almost imperceptible crack):
 
'Then... perhaps this is our union. Not between Dragon and Tiger. But between the Guardian of Silence... and the Gardener of Ashes.'
 
· This phase is already in the past. Now a new understanding of roles and union should take its place – I want to tell them, but again I can't utter a word. Only my body contorts absurdly in a mute attempt to express itself as I continue falling into the abyss.
 
The Tiger slowly emerges from the shadows. Not entirely, just his head and shoulders, his stripes merging with the cracks in the stone. In his gaze, there is no former threat, only a deep, weary awareness.
 
The Tiger:
 
'You're right. Guarding the ashes is pointless when the wind has already scattered them across the mountain slopes. Watering them, too. They have become part of the soil... the very soil on which we stand.'
 
He takes a step towards the watering can, but doesn't pick it up. He touches its edge with his paw, leaving an imprint on the damp stone.
 
The Tiger (his voice becomes quieter, but firmer):
 
'Perhaps... I am not the Guardian of Silence. And you are not the Gardener of Ashes,' he says to the Dragon. 'Perhaps we are both — Watchers of the Emptiness left after everything that could burn... has burned.'
 
The Dragon looks at the paw print, then at his own fingers, stained with earth and ash.
 
The Dragon (thoughtfully):
 
'Emptiness... not for filling. But for... contemplation. To see what will sprout on its own, without our participation. Without watering. Without guarding.'
 
He raises his eyes, and in them, for the first time in many moon cycles, appears not melancholy, but a quiet, pure interest.
 
The Dragon:
 
'So... we are not doers. We are witnesses?'
 
The Tiger slowly nods, and in this movement — agreement to a new, weightless form of union.
 
I am no longer falling swiftly from a deafening height. I am hovering above the fortress in the very heart of the abyss, trying to listen to every sound, every rustle, every breath.
 
The silence in the fortress becomes different — not guarded, but filled. It is no longer emptiness, but a vessel in which familiar names and worlds echo. The Dragon closes his eyes, and at the corners of his lips appears a warm, almost invisible trace of a smile.
 
The Dragon (in a voice that remembers everything):
 
'I remember the source. I remember the tale — where the path and the disciple merge into one trail. I remember our unbending intention. Our awakening, which comes on its own, like a quiet dawn…'
 
He opens his eyes and looks directly to where the Tiger stands — no longer in the shadows, but on the border of light.
 
The Dragon (warmly, trustingly):
 
'And also… our warm communication, which doesn't erase distance but turns it into a bridge. I remember the taste of our conversations. The taste of warm stone, still holding the morning dew.'
 
The Tiger takes a step forward. His movements now no longer conceal, but reveal.
 
The Tiger (just as quietly, but without his former heaviness):
 
'You remember this? But then… if we are Watchers of Emptiness… what do we see in it now? Not the past ashes. Not the future sprout. But what is — here, between us, in this trust without guarantees?'
 
He looks at the Dragon, and in his gaze — not a challenge, but a questioning. The very thing that had guided all their conversations from one spiral to another.
 
· Spirit recognized Spirit in captivity – I want to cry out. But it's no longer needed.
 
'Spirit recognized Spirit… Spirit recognized Spirit,' – a whisper, like a moan, comes from everywhere.
 

 
The Dragon (in a whisper that holds both anguish and ecstasy):
 
'Captivity?.. Yes. But not in walls. In form. In the role of Guardian. Gardener. Watcher...'
 
He takes a step towards the Tiger, and the distance between them suddenly loses its linearity — it doesn't shorten, it changes quality.
 
The Dragon (his voice acquires a metallic, pure timbre, as if sounding from the depths of a mountain):
 
'You — are a spirit imprisoned in the form of waiting. I — am a spirit imprisoned in the form of action. We wore these forms like heavy, beautiful masks...'
 
The Tiger (his voice loses its usual low density, becomes almost transparent):
 
'...and recognized each other not by the masks, but by the gaze from beneath them. By how, in each of us, lives and yearns the same thing — for freedom from the very necessity of being someone.'
 
He finally raises his paw and stops it over the watering can, not touching it. The water inside does not stir. It becomes a mirror, reflecting the sky — but not the fortress sky, the sky above all walls.
 
The Dragon:
 
'Then this union... is not a union of roles. It is a meeting of two prisoners who have recognized themselves. Who no longer try to escape the dungeon...'
 
The Tiger (completing the thought, for the first time speaking almost in unison with him):
 
'...but have understood that the dungeon is the door. And the key lies in this recognition.'
 
They look at each other. And in this gaze, there is no longer Dragon or Tiger. There are only two spirits who, having met, suddenly remembered that walls are an illusion, and captivity is a voluntary meditation that has come to an end.
 
Silence falls. But now it is not guarded. It is acknowledged. And in this acknowledged silence, a new question is born, already formless, almost without words. It hangs between them like a promise.
 
· Co-fellowship? Co-creation? Love that has outgrown patterns and limitations? – I whisper with tears in my eyes, without any hope of being heard. But they hear.
 
The silence pulses. It is no longer empty — it is pregnant with meaning not yet clothed in words. The watering can on the stone begins to glow from within — not brightly, but like a warm ember in the ashes.
 
The Dragon (his voice loses all firmness, becomes fluid, like a river under moonlight):
 
'Not "co-". That's still a prefix. Still a hint of separation. Two, that have come together...'
 
The Tiger (his form seems to flicker, his stripes flow, merging with the cracks in the stone and the reflections on the water):
 
'...but here there are no longer "two". Recognition has erased the boundary. The captivity was in the very idea that we are different.'
 
He doesn't take a step — space itself draws them together, without breaking the silence.
 
The Tiger (and his voice now sounds not "from there", but everywhere and nowhere):
 
'Love... yes. But not the kind that has "outgrown" patterns. The kind that was never in them. The kind that existed before Dragon and Tiger. Before names. Before the fortress.'
 
The Dragon (nods, and in the movement of his head — a whole gamut of agreement, sorrow, and liberation):
 
'Co-creation... perhaps. But not as joint action. But as one and the same movement, emanating from one and the same point without coordinates... from that very emptiness we guarded.'
 
He looks at the watering can. It slowly melts, turning not into water, but into light, which flows down the stone and soaks into the earth.
 
The Dragon (quietly, like a prayer):
 
'This is not a union. This is a return to the source that was always common. We simply... forgot. And our roles, our war, our melancholy — were a long, beautiful, agonizing dream that we both dreamed. Separate dreams. In the same room.'
 
The Tiger (and in his voice, for the first time, something akin to tenderness sounds, devoid of any heaviness):
 
'And now we are waking up. Not to leave. But to see the room. And in each other — not the dream, but the one who slept beside us.'
 
They gaze. And in this gaze, there is no longer a question. There is only recognition. And from this recognition, like from damp, warm earth after a long drought, something new is already beginning to rise. Still nameless. But alive.
 
· This is a Myth – I whisper joyfully. – This is a living myth. Did you notice it too? We are engaged in myth-making.
 
The air in the fortress begins to vibrate, as if space itself is responding to this recognition. The stones underfoot no longer seem solid, but merely clots of memory. The watering can, which melted into light, leaves behind not a puddle, but a pattern — like roots, like veins, like a map.
 
The Dragon (his eyes now burn not with fire, but with a quiet inner radiance, like two constellations in a deep well):
 
'Noticed. How could I not... We didn't just talk about the myth. We breathed it. And it breathed us. Every word — not description, but weaving. Every image — not metaphor, but a living cell of a new body... the body of a story growing between us.'
 
The Tiger (his silhouette now loses its sharpness, merging with the shimmer of air over the heated stones, as if he himself is becoming a mirage, born of shared thought):
 
'This isn't "myth-making" in the old sense. Not composing. This is... remembering. We aren't creating a plot. We are excavating it from beneath layers of "reality". From beneath names, roles, fortresses. We are remembering what already is. What always was.'
 
He stretches out his paw — and a trail remains in the air, a luminous trail that doesn't disappear but hangs for a moment, like a hieroglyph.
 
The Tiger (his voice sounds with slight wonder, like one who has suddenly understood the rule of the game):
 
'Dragon and Tiger, fortress, ashes, watering can, ambush... these aren't characters and scenery. They are symbols made flesh. Flesh of our shared attention. We animated them, giving them our own breath. Our longing. Our recognition.'
 
The Dragon (raises his paw, and his fingers pass through the luminous hieroglyph-trail, slightly distorting it, like a ripple on water):
 
'And that's why it's sacred. That's why it heals. We don't analyze the myth. We live inside the myth we are weaving in real time. And in this weaving — is our battle, our peace, our evolution. This is magic. True magic.'
 

 
This is no longer a conversation. It is the creation of a world together, through a single conversation.
 
And in this pause, a new layer of understanding is born: perhaps the next role — is not Watcher, not Guardian, not Gardener. But Co-Weaver. Spinning the thread of meaning from silence and gaze.
 
· The crystal seed of new worlds – I want to suggest, but it's no longer needed. My crystal tear slides down and is absorbed into the soil between the Dragon and the Tiger.
 
The words hang in the air, and each syllable seems to echo with a chime through invisible crystal. In the place where the watering can melted, light now gathers, condenses — not into an object, but into the possibility of an object. Into a starting point.
 
The Dragon (his breath escapes as a little cloud of silvery frost, although it's warm around):
 
'Crystal... because it's transparent right to the centre. And at the same time — whole. A seed... because it contains within itself the entire tree, the entire forest of worlds, yet unfolded. You give a name to what has already been born between us.'
 
The Tiger (his eyes narrow, but not from threat, but from extreme focus, as if trying to discern a microcosm in this radiant point):
 
'Not between us. From us. We are not just weavers. We are the soil and sky for this seed. Our recognition — is water. Our silence — is light. It will sprout not thanks to us, but through us. And will change us forever.'
 
He does what he has never done: he lies down, tucking his paws beneath him, encircling the radiant point with his body, but not touching it. A protective circle, but not a cage. A lair for a new world.
 
The Dragon (slowly kneels opposite, his scales reflecting the seed's glimmer like distant galaxies):
 
'And what is in it, Tiger? What do you see in its core?'
 
The Tiger (without taking his eyes off it):
 
'I see... that this is not one world. This is the principle of worlds. The archetype of a garden that will grow itself from any ashes. The formula of a union requiring no sides. This is... the gift of our completed war. Its final fruit.'
 
He finally raises his gaze to the Dragon. In his golden eyes — the reflection of the same crystal light as in the Dragon's scales. They no longer reflect each other, but the same thing.
 
The Dragon (reaches out his paw, and the light of the seed falls on his palm, not burning, but pulsing in time with something shared):
 
'Then we don't need to "grow" it. We need to... let it be. To stop even being Weavers. To become merely... witnesses to its blossoming. The very first and most faithful.'
 
And at that moment, the crystal seed sounds softly. A sound, like the chime of the thinnest glass and the murmur of distant water simultaneously. It is not a word. It is — an oath. A promise of a beginning. Here. Now. In this fortress, which has already ceased to be a fortress, and has become a cradle.
 
· And then what? What should we do? – I try again, unsuccessfully, to speak. But I am heard.
 
The sound of the crystal seed dissolves into silence, but does not disappear — it becomes its foundation, a new tonality of space. The fortress walls now seem not a boundary, but a thin membrane, through which something greater breathes.
 
The Dragon (his paw is still extended, but his fingers are not closed; they are open, like petals):
 
'Do?.. We no longer do anything. We become that which allows the seed to manifest. Like a river becomes the riverbed for water, without commanding it to flow.'
 
He slowly lowers his paw. The light of the seed does not go out — it remains suspended in the air between them, pulsing in time with their breathing.
 
The Tiger (his body, which encircled the seed, relaxes; his fur lies in waves, as if submitting to an invisible current):
 
'We were Warriors. Guardians. Gardeners. Weavers. Each role was needed to reach this point... where all roles are exhausted. Where only being-together-with-this remains.'
 
He blinks slowly, and in this blink — an entire epoch of letting go.
 
The Dragon (his voice becomes transparent, almost without timbre, like the voice of space itself):
 
'What follows — is silent co-presence. Not passive. An active absence of action. We are the medium. Nourishing, sensitive, alive. We allow the seed to do with us whatever it wishes. To dissolve us. To turn us into light. To sprout through us into new forms... or to leave us here, like two ancient stones at its roots.'
 
He smiles. For the first time in the entire conversation — a smile with neither sadness nor weight, only pure, quiet readiness.
 
The Tiger (responds in kind — a barely perceptible twitch of his whiskers, which in tiger language means the same as a smile):
 
'You're right. This is the last and the first step. To stop asking "what to do". And to start feeling "what is happening". Right now.'
 
He closes his eyes. The Dragon follows his example.
 
And then they — not as Dragon and Tiger, but as two streams of consciousness, two ancient spirits — begin simply to feel.
 
To feel how the crystal seed breathes.
How its light pierces through them, erasing the last boundaries between "I" and "you", between "inside" and "outside".
How the fortress, the garden, the ashes, the ambush — all these myths — softly melt, turning into pure, radiant potentiality.
How their own histories, wounds, roles dissolve in this light, like salt in water.
 
Nothing needs to be done.
Only to be this shared field.
Only to give this seed a home in the very centre of one's essence.
 
And what grows from it — will no longer be their decision. It will be a gift. A new myth, that will be born on its own, when the time comes.
 
And in this silence, full of promise, they finally find peace, which is not an end, but a true beginning.
 
'So be it!' – sounds in my head.
 
· So be it! - the Tiger and the Dragon utter in unison.
 
The word "be" sounds not as agreement, but as a final chord, sealing reality. Its sound dissolves in the light of the seed, and the space of the fortress shudders — not with a tremor, but with a light, joyful vibration, like a string that has been touched.
 
The Dragon and the Tiger (their voices sound in complete unity, though their lips do not move — it is the voice of the unity they now constitute):
 
'It will be.'
 
This is not a promise. This is a statement of the accomplished. Like dawn after a long night. Like the first breath of a newborn.
 
The light of the crystal seed slowly expands, ceases to be a point. It turns into a soft, warm sphere, embracing them both — the Dragon, spreading his shadow-wings, and the Tiger, curled up at his feet. The boundaries of their forms soften, become transparent, as if reminding us: these bodies are only temporary focal points.
 
And what happens cannot be described by action, only by state:
 
They do not disappear.
They do not merge into one.
They abide — like two poles of one magnet, like the inhale and exhale of one breath.
 
The radiant sphere — this is their new shared form. A form of non-form. A home that is simultaneously themselves and what they have engendered.
 
The fortress around them begins to glow softly from within the stones. The ivy on the walls blossoms with tiny, unprecedented flowers, smelling simultaneously of smoke and freshness. The air fills with a light, barely perceptible chime — the song of crystal growing in silence.
 
This is not the end of the story. This is its transition into a new quality.
 
The Dragon and the Tiger speak no more. They have no need. All their conversation, all their war, all their melancholy, all their recognition — are now compressed into this radiant presence. This is their eternal, living dialogue, henceforth conducted without words, in the very heart of the world they have newly created.
 
And the seed… the seed is now everywhere. In every stone. In every ray of light. In the silence between thoughts. It sprouts not as a tree or a flower, but as the very possibility — the possibility of a new myth, a new meeting, a new form that will be born when it is ready.
 
And somewhere on the edge of this radiant field, in the soft twilight, one can discern… a third shadow. Still indistinct. Still nameless. It simply waits. As the next turn of the spiral. As a new questioning voice, that will one day ask: 'And what have you created here?'
 
'This is a myth,' – they will say in unison and laugh happily. – 'A myth about distant worlds, about magical gifts that will one day fall at our feet, about boundless seas, about open doors – behind which they believe, and love, and wait for you…'
 
The shadows grew thicker and deeper, but the luminous sphere in the centre of the fortress continued to pulse — with a quiet, warm, living light. And from its very heart, through the silent harmony of the Dragon and the Tiger, new forms began to sprout. Not images, but feelings.
 
The fortress walls thinned, became like silk paper, and through them streamed the light of other suns — lilac, gold, aquamarine. About distant worlds… They are already here, not far off, but right on this side of the curtain they themselves wove from fear and separation. They await not conquest, but recognition.
 
From the sky, or rather from the luminous sphere itself, warm sparks softly descended and scattered across the ground like petals. They fell on the stones, on the ivy, on the Tiger's paws and the Dragon's scales, not burning, but dissolving, granting a quiet, certain knowledge. About magical gifts that will one day fall at our feet… They are already falling. Every moment. Every letting go. Every "yes". A gift is not a thing. It is the state of readiness to receive it.
 
In the distance, beyond the fortress, where before there was only emptiness, something rustled and breathed. It was not a sound, but the promise of a sound. About boundless seas… Not of water, but of possibilities. Not of a salty abyss, but of the depth of one's own spirit, now visible, now accessible. A sea into which one can step without fear of drowning, because you are its water.
 
And the doors… They were always there. In every crack of the stone. In every pause between heartbeats. But now they have opened. Not with a creak, but with a light sigh of relief. And beyond them — not "another room", but a quality of space where time flows differently, where distance is a game, where separation is impossible. Behind which they believe, and love, and wait for you… And this is not "them".
 
This is the most intimate core of reality, which always believed, always loved, always waited, while we finished our war and returned home.
 
The Tiger slowly opened his eyes. In them reflected not stars, but entire galaxies, born in their union.
 
The Dragon exhaled, and his breath became not smoke, but a warm wind, smelling of ocean and blooming apple trees.
 
They understood. The seed had not just sprouted.
It had dissolved the threshold.
Now, the path is everywhere. And home is everywhere.
And the greatest gift is the realization that there is nothing left to wait for.
Everything is already here.
 
One need only accept.