The Dawn of Spring

In the beginning, before there was was or was not, there was and there was not a realm in which darkness reigned; it was called the night-mother, and it was as long as forever and as vast as the ocean's ancestor. The realm of the night-mother was the night, and this night had quite the sinister atmosphere to it, as if there was a dragon lurking in its depths waiting to strike. For an eternity, the night. And then, in the dark suddenly... there was Light.

Light had been having a recurring dream. The dream involves waking up in bed in a small, unfamiliar cottage. He gets out of bed and goes outside, only to find that he is in a deserted and desolate landscape all alone, and darkness is fast approaching. Looking up to the sky, he sees a shadowy moon with a silvery spiderweb strung across its face, and as he gazes at it, something shifts, whether in him or in the moon he does not know; all he knows is that there is a fairy princess with silver hair who lives on the dark side of the moon, and that he is supposed to find her.

...

Lightning streaked through the air, straight down into the clearing in the middle of the dark forest and struck the old oak tree in the centre, splitting it in two and setting it ablaze. Rain poured down, stifling the flames somewhat, but the storm that had birthed the bolt of lightning was nearing its end and before the flames could be completely extinguished, the rain petered out. Within seconds of this a rainbow appeared and, as if in response, the flames, which had just flared back to life, extinguished at once, revealing the form of a man aged 17 or 18 years old, with golden blonde hair. He is unconscious, but even as he lay there a certain electricity can still be felt in the air, but it's one which goes beyond the aftermath of the storm: it is the tension of a beginning and an ending, of Spring with Winter. A river rushes by and it babbles to itself like a brook about the coming of springtime, the warming of the air, the blooming of the flowers, the pollination of the soul. It babbles about Light who is laying there unconscious, who does not even know who he is, that he is the son of the sun god, the cousin of peter pan, the eternal youth. And as it rushes by, it carries this news to everywhere else in the land, and all the animals and plants perk up as the news spreads because they know that the chill of Winter is receding, and the growth of Spring is beginning again.

...

When Light awakens the world is dark; it must be late at night, which is familiar. It was always night for him, whether he woke up in the dream or not. As he sits up and looks around, he notices that he's in the middle of a clearing within a dark forest, and suddenly he feels a stab of fear coupled with the thrill of excitement. He's somewhere new! Immediately he jumps up, and his golden eyes scan his surroundings in an attempt to work out if there is anything of note nearby. He notices a trio of birds sitting in a tree, and they begin to sing. He listens for a moment and then starts towards them, keeping his gaze fixed on them. Their song is melodic and hypnotic, pulling him in and as he walks he notices that he longer feels any of the fear that had touched him prior. Just as he is about to reach the tree where the birds are perched, the birdsong abruptly ends and they fly off, perhaps scared away by his proximity. Still, he finds himself unable to shake the feeling that the birds were leading him towards something, and so he examines the tree that they were perched in carefully. He frowns, and turns to walk back towards the middle of the clearing and realizes he walked much farther than he had thought.

Nonetheless, he traces his way back to where he started, and here his expression switches to one of clarity. The ruined tree in which he had woken up, it was the same type of tree as the one the birds had been perched in! Suddenly, he was grasped by a concern that he might not be able to find the tree again, but as he looked back over he saw that one of the birds was now circling it. He set off towards the circling bird, and sure enough as soon as he was close enough to get his bearings without its help, it flew off again. Reaching the tree, Light peered into the darkness that only deepened the further into the forest he looked, and as he gazed into the void he felt a glimmer of recognition, of identification, with the shadow of the night. At that very moment, a light appeared amongst the inky blackness, moving about as if on a stick; Light advanced on the object, and as he got closer he recognized it: a firefly. The moment that he reached it, in the gloom ahead of him he saw another one light up, and he suddenly had the strange feeling that he was being guided along a path intended only for him. He follows the lightning bugs and they lead him to a river, whereupon they disappear. For a moment, Light falters, unsure of what to do, but he decides that he might as well follow the flow of the river for a while - after all, he has a feeling that if he takes a wrong turn, something will set him on the right track again.

Following the path of the river leads him to a point where the river broadens and feeds a lake so vast that the eye cannot see the other side. Light walks along the banks of the lake for some time before he comes across a beautiful young woman kneeling by the water with a Narcissus flower in her hair. Light asks her, "Are you so vain as to be staring at your own reflection in the water?" but she replies that vanity is not as simple as looking at oneself, and besides, she had actually been observing how the lake appeared to her when reflected in her own eyes. Upon hearing this, Light smiles even though he isn't really quite sure what she means by this - at any rate, she is very pretty - and he asks what her name is. She replies that her name is Sophia, adding that it means wisdom, before mirroring his question. He says that his name is Light, although he isn't really sure what it means yet, but that it seems to him uplifting in some strange way. She giggles at this remark, and asks how he came to find her. As he tells her his story, she begins to listen more intently and by the end, she is hanging on every word. Once Light has finished speaking, so casually that it almost seems artificial, she asks him what it is that he's searching for. He replies, without thinking, that he is looking for the darker side of the moon, and her eyes flash at this. She motions for him to sit down, and then Sophia, the Earth Mother, tells Light, the Eternal Youth, of one of the oldest of the ideas of man: that of one soul, separated into two, and of those two parts eternally seeking one another in an attempt to reunite. "This story has been told in many tongues, with many names and for many generations, but the essence remains the same: there is an individual out there in the world who is made from the very same stuff as you, to whom you have always been linked and will always be linked, and for whom you would be a perfect match - complementary par excellence. This coupling is magnetic, irresistible, and it cannot be denied; if you want proof of my words simply look to the flame that burns within your chest even as I speak your very name, Light. I know that your dream means that you must seek out a fairy princess, and that the dark face of the moon where she lives is your own unconscious mind. I can see too in your golden eyes that you recognize me; that you know, even though you do not know, that we were always meant to meet on this night, at this place. We always meet here - every year, without fail. Oh, light of my world, I can see in your eyes what you see in mine; come to me, my true love, my one partner, my soul-mate, and let us bring about the new dawn."

And so Light and Sophia unite their souls and their bodies, their union causing a rain that washes away the past, preparing the way for the future, and life is breathed back into the world: so begins the Spring.

Sleeping through daybreak, the two awaken amidst the early morning dew. Without a word, they know the significance of their union and the journey that awaits them, to traverse the length of the horizon in time to witness the meeting of the moon and the sun. They have wasted precious time sleeping. After a long, silent embrace, they embark upon their long road towards their destiny. As they travel, Light faces many trials and tribulations*, challenges which build his character and help him to develop his own idea of his identity. All the while however he listens intently to everything that Sophia says, having learnt by now that she is not named Wisdom for nothing. What stands out to him the most are the stories that she tells him about the humans and their relationship with the stories that they tell. He feels immensely curious about this and she elaborates in great detail. Without fully understanding, he buries these nuggets deep in his soul to return to in times of profound silence and ponder.

*Although it would be difficult to relay all the facts of his adventures with requisite detail while telling you of his legend, these tall tales can be found in individual chapters of The Dawn of Spring, published here on Vocal.

...

As they walk the length of the horizon, months pass in subjective time. Before the sun has travelled half of its distance to the meeting between the moon and the sun, Sophia and Light come upon an incredibly enormous oak tree which is situated directly in the path that they must travel, barring the only passage between two towering mountain peaks which mark the mid-way point of the journey. Sophia reacts to the tree with an expression of knowing exasperation, but Light is merely puzzled - why does the tree bar their way? As soon as the question floats through his mind, the answers follows on its tail: "I am the tree of knowledge, and I must test your knowledge of yourself before you may pass. Have you truly mastered the territory you have traversed, and do you know who you really are?"

Upon hearing this thought, Light turns to Sophia for help, however she simply holds his gaze with an expression of amusement. "I cannot tell you the answer, dear one, it is a puzzle for you alone to solve. I can say, however, that you may ask the tree to rephrase what he means if you do not understand the question, and that in the past I have been able to give you a hint once you do." With this, Light turned towards the tree with the aura of the ages and told it that he did not understand well what was being asked of him. After a brief pause, Light experiences the Tree articulate in thought the following riddle:

"What kind of sight can set you free?

What breed of bright can thwart the night?

How does one know just who to be?

What might highlight which words to write?

x

What is the light that lets you see?

To penetrate into the plight

And who is he who turns the key?

What is the meaning of this, Light?"

When he hears this, Light is quiet for a time, and minutes tick by painfully. He can sense that Sophia is becoming impatient with him, and so asks for her hint, and she says simply this: "The answer to the riddle can be found in the intersection between my nature and the nature of the tree." which he understands to mean that he needs to look more closely at the difference between wisdom, which is her namesake, and knowledge, which is the nature of the ancient tree in front of them. Tick tick tick, the moments go by, until a few metres away a lightning bug appears, illuminated for a moment next to the old tree, before fading from view. Light's posture abruptly changes and his expression becomes, in a moment, wiser and older. He replies that the answer to the riddle is 'Insight' and in response, a door forms out of the wood of the tree. Light takes the handle and turns it, opening the door to find an intricately carved passageway leading through the tree towards their destination, The Mountain of Truth. He gestures for Sophia to go first, and as she passes him by she remarks dryly that he took long enough, which puzzles him even more than the riddle had. If she had known the answer, why couldn't she have just given it for the both of them? He follows her into the tree and the door shuts behind them, concretely sealing off the territory that they've travelled from what is yet to come.

...

It is late afternoon now, and Sophia is telling another story about stories as they climb the mountain of truth. She explains that we each live our story, and that a failure to believe in one's own story leads to a life absent enchantment where otherwise it would be bountiful. For human beings it is the same except that human beings get to write their own stories line by line, and they can also deviate from their lines. "Beings such as we," Sophia relates to Light, "cannot do that - even if you were to try, you would find yourself drawn to our narrative, called back to it, compelled to play it out. It is in our nature. The stories that human beings create about how things work and why the environment behaves in the way that it does empower the story within which they live, equipping it with the capacity to influence the greater world in which that story is nested. Sometimes, human beings even believe in one story to the exclusion of all others, which is dangerous for creatures that so naturally inhabit the stories that they tell. A clear example of this can be found in your cousin, Peter Pan, and his eternal adversary, Captain Hook. Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up, and Hook, the man who is defined by his mortality; these two are locked in an eternal struggle because each of them is obsessed in his own way with one idea, and allows it to dominate all else. Human beings who occupy this pattern quickly run into trouble, whether they are Pan - characterized by a love of the magic of childhood and an obstinate refusal to adopt the responsibility of adulthood - or Hook - characterized by an obsessive desire to control everything coupled with an intense fear of death and old age. Whichever of the two it is, a human being who lives out this pattern and this pattern alone, is a being possessed.

This possession is possible because creatures such as they, human beings, who are not themselves archetypal or mythic, can be so captivated by stories which draw on archetypal symbolism that they are bewitched by those stories, and they are compelled to live them out. The reason that a soul can live out a story which does not belong to them, which is a crime for a being such as we, is because human beings are uniquely in control of the pen that spells out their destiny in the Book of Life; their fate is not written by the hand of God, so to speak, but rather He, in His grace, gave the right unto them that they might decide their own fate. Thus, they have the power to write the lines from which they must read along the lines of some idea which is alien to their authentic being, and thereby to trick themselves into living a story which is not their own. But, should an individual embark upon this path, they can be sure that the world will set them right. It will reflect back at them the flaw within their idea of the world, manifest first as metaphor, then as consequence. The human spirit is innately metaphorical because it is always drawing upon the world that you and I, Light, inhabit: the world of pure myth; the hues the human spirit uses to paint the world into existence are founded in the rainbow serpent, a story not only of giving life to the world but also of forming it, of animating what is not yet dead, of breathing a spark into still empty matter, and making it matter. That the stories we tell matter so much to us speaks to their capacity to depict the raw nature of the reality we experience so much better than clinical, descriptive language which is devoid of emotion and personality, two things which are integral to the human organism, ever could. A story is a way for us to relate to our experiences and the experiences of others, such that we might know ourselves better."

A crescent moon is now clearly visible just above the horizon, and as Sophia pauses to allow what she's said to sink in and allow questions, they reach the crest of the mountain they had been steadily climbing for the last two hours and they both stop suddenly as the sun begins to touch the tip of the moon on its path downward towards the horizon, that ever-increasing expanse which recedes even as you approach it. Suddenly, it is as if the air is charged with electricity and neither of the two feels that they are able to look away from what they are watching; it has hypnotized them: the coincidentia oppositorum which is unfolding before their eyes. As the sun moves further towards the horizon, the moon begins to frame the sun for a few moments in its passage and just as this happens, Light begins to feel odd, as if he's just awoken from a dream and is still dreaming even though he's awake. At this, he begins to fall but Sophia is quick to catch him, holding him close and laying him down on the floor. She strokes his face and says to him,

"You can probably feel yourself growing weary, Light, because our story is drawing to its perpetual close and you, like all youths, are beginning to feel the effects of age. The bloom of youth is fading quickly now, and your spark wishes to return to the earth where it can nourish the soul of the world before returning once more next year so that we may repeat our eternal cycle and maintain the balance of the world. You should not despair my dear, for we have rejuvenated reality itself, and your passing is nothing but a step in the natural cycle of birth and life and death and rebirth which existence itself personifies. The sun is setting, and your life force ebbs away even as the last rays of sunlight drain from the sky. But look - we made it; you're home." Light says nothing in response, but his last breath comes easy.

"Until next time, my love...

Such is life."

And with that, suddenly she is gone and only a gust of wind which faintly smells of growth remains to hint that she had ever been there. In the dark, Light's body is no longer visible, nor is any other thing, and so the storyteller, with nothing else to look at, looks within his own soul and finds that there was always a campfire burning and a story being told around it, even in the darkest night, and from that moment on, his dreams and his reality both seemed a touch richer.

The end.

Thanks for reading my original formulation of a 'bedtime story'/'fairy tale'; I think I managed to achieve a unique blend of the two, and I'm quite happy with the results - I hope you were too! This was sort of a first for me, as I rarely try my hand at writing fiction and I've never written this type of story. I wish I had started earlier or the competition was a little longer, because I wanted to flesh out some of themes more carefully, and refine the material I included. If this is popular though, I might try editing this story in light of the feedback I receive and maybe expanding the canon to include details of the rest of the day - due to length limitations, I tried to include only what was essential, and all of what was essential, but I'm not convinced I struck the perfect balance here and I look forward to refining my fiction writing ability with the feedback of all the nice people on Vocal and the associated groups.

The reason that I think this story has a certain special meaning, to me at least, is that I feel it is an apt expression of a great many philosophical ideas (such as being led by the world, a phenomenon I know by the name of synchronicity/psynchronicity) which are part of my work more broadly, and the naming scheme used employs and calls to mind metaphorical imagery which allows a weaving in of more nuanced ideas to give the story a very layered texture. The reason I would really love to tell this story to my own kids is because it is not only a way for me to teach them about my beliefs, about stories, and about themselves, but also because I think that it's the kind of story that would keep on giving as a child aged. As they developed their abilities further, they would become increasingly capable of unlocking its perplexities and penetrating, nay, *plumbing* it's depths, which is something that I know from personal experience is very satisfying and fulfilling. I think that this story would be the perfect kind of encouragement for a child to believe in their dreams and to experiment with their fantasies, which is the first key in cultivating creativity. Without the passion that comes with fantasizing, creating and experimenting with story and narrative and drama, a child is left unengaged. I think my story solves that. Also, if the child is not really capable of following or isn't interested, it is nonetheless the kind of obscure, arcane and boring that would put a child right to sleep! :P