A Mythic Tale
They say that before humans learned to speak, the world was already full of stories which moved through the land like wind through tall grass, unseen and unheard. Yet, the unspoken words were never lost. Some stories settled in stones. Some curled into the bellies of rivers. And one, the oldest story of them all, rooted itself in a tree that grew where the forest opened into a quiet bowl of the Earth.
No one knew when the tree appeared. It was simply there, as though it had stepped into the world fully formed. Its trunk rose in a slow spiral, as if remembering the motion of water. Its leaves shimmered with two shades, one that caught the sun, one that held the night. Together they formed a pattern that was not drawn but grown, a living reminder that light and shadow were siblings, not rivals.
The animals approached it with the same caution they used for thunderstorms and newborns. They sensed that the tree was aware of their presence. They stood before the tree as though hypnotized. As they stood there entranced, the tree began to tell a story from a distant past.
In the time before time had a name, two beings emerged out of the mist that gathered at the tree’s roots. They were not humans. They were older than that. They were shaped from the breath of the world when it was still soft, still struggling to become solid.
Their forms were human only in the way clouds sometimes resemble faces. They moved with the quiet certainty of those who have never been lost. One placed a hand on the bright side of my leaves. The other touched the dark underside of those leaves.
“You have kept the balance,” said the first. “You have kept the memory,” said the second.
I did not speak, but the ground beneath me warmed, as though acknowledging a long-awaited return.
The two beings leaned into the branches. Their forms loosened, unspooled, and drifted into the swirling pattern of the leaves. They did not disappear. They joined. Dark circling light, light circling dark. I accepted them the way the earth accepts rain, without question, without hesitation.
The tree went silent, pausing before finding more words, before gathering images that replaced language, predated language. From that moment, the clearing changed. Unspooling as though a film being projected, time unfolded.
Travelers who passed through the orbit of the tree felt something shift inside them, though they could never name it. Some said they heard a heartbeat that was not their own. Others said they felt watched, but gently, like a parent making sure a child did not wander too far.
A few claimed that if you stood beneath the tree at dawn, when the world was thin and the light was still deciding what shape to take, you could hear the first story. It was not a story of heroes or battles. It was a story of breath. Of balance. Of the long, patient work of becoming.
The tree still stands in that clearing, though it is easy to walk past it if you are in a hurry. It does not call out. It does not demand reverence. It simply waits, as old things do, for someone who knows how to listen.
And if you listen long enough, you may feel the two beings stirring in the leaves keeping watch.