Dragon/s Dream. A Postmodern Fable. C. Ioutsen

it was not singing, for another, it had no smell; and how could one understand the true quality of so incommunicative a thing!

      Then the Dragon thought that, perhaps, the snow was no more expecting to meet him than he expected to meet the snow; he tried a welcoming song but soon broke off, for he felt the snow was not listening. «So be it,» said the Dragon to himself. «It will stop going down and the horizon will be in sight again.» He went back to the cave.

      The snow was not stopping. It was falling all the next day, and the day after that, and the day after. The Dragon did not count the days – he never measured time in such short paces. He only sat and gazed at the snowflakes.

      «No thing can go on forever,» he thought. «Who knows that better than me?»

      So he gazed, entranced by slow and subtle dance of the white. The snow was sparkling and glittering in the air, swirling in circles in a light breeze, and was coming down on the Dragon’s wide-spread wings.

      «Maybe it is coming from the stars,» thought the Dragon. But with clouds extending from one horizon to another he could not see the stars. Many were good friends of his, and he missed their song, their shining, their whispering in his dreams. He decided to pay them a visit. He stretched his huge wings, hit the nearest snowdrift with his tail and breathed out a long golden flame, melting all the snow up to the edge of a precipice, the rest cascading lazily on the sides.

      The Dragon looked up once and jumped into the air, waving unhastily, and in several powerful strokes found himself high above his mountain, which was glazing silver instead of dark gray, with a newly cleared passage already disappearing.

      The Dragon rose up and up, until he virtually reached the clouds; the higher he ascended, the fiercer was becoming the snowfall, when finally it was going so dense that the Dragon lost his bearings, blinded and deafened by the white whirlpool. He struggled, strong as he was; the force of the snow was stronger. Fatigue was taking hold of his body, but for the time being he was loath to give up – there was a price to be paid for chance.

      Like all his kin the Dragon could see his future as plainly as his past, not as a design of events but as a flowing of his inner feeling. Like all the wise he knew that when the time came, his feeling would conduct him to the path of his true fate. Therefore, in following his cravings and fulfilling his will the Dragon lived his destiny, caring not for danger or destruction. He struggled more.

      Yet, excessive persistence was not by its own nature a way of success – this the Dragon knew only too well, especially from the days when he was the young Dragon. He was by no means troubled to succeed – that was a devotion for lesser creatures; he merely beat his wings against the storm.

      For all one knew, there might have been a reason behind, or possibly an aim ahead, or neither, or both at once. The wise did not seek answers where there were no questions. Believing was enough. The Dragon believed nothing and everything. And believing did not necessarily imply understanding – the Dragon was not that foolish as to believe in what he did not understand or to understand what he believed in.

      Was not the world itself a product entirely of his own imagination, after all? The stars existed because he could see them. The snow was cold because he could feel it.

      Nothing was true beyond doubt.

      And doubt killed faith.

      And without faith there was no truth, for they were one.

      The Dragon gave up. He returned to his cave and went back to sleep. In the morning, after singing a greeting to the burning dawn, the Dragon dimly recalled having had the most curious dream.

      Restless Winds

      In a season of falling leaves it was especially tranquil at the foot of the mountains. Northern winds had been rising steadily, getting more robust with each passing day, bringing with them damp coolness and sweet fragrance of decay. Bare branches stood out crisply off the sky, seen from below as an intricate labyrinthine pattern, framed by the flashes of the clinging foliage. Most birds had departed for warmer regions, and most ground-dwellers had been busy tending to their hideouts; the air was still but for the wails of wind and creaking of tree-trunks.

      These days the Dragon took a habit of having a walk in the woods, and a secluded pond there was his final destination. He appreciated its placid waters and overgrown shores, its sentinel trees and patches of the blue reflected on the surface – a world within a world, embracing itself before the oncoming cold. He inhaled deeply and held his breath.

      «How can wind bend a tree? It is just a wind,» a voice of a duck quacked to his left.

      «It bends a tree,» said the Dragon without looking. «Do not forget about that.»

      «Is it a riddle of some sort?»

      «A riddle arises as soon as one has said it; when one has solved it, it is gone.»

      «Sometimes it is not,» complained the duck. «For instance, I cannot enter the same wood twice. After I got out, it has changed and is not the same wood anymore.»

      «Too bad for you,» said the Dragon sympathetically.

      «It is not so bad,» intermitted another duck’s voice. «I cannot enter the same wood even once, for it is changing while I am entering it.»

      «You enter the wood,» said the Dragon. «Is it not what matters?»

      «Let me ask you something. When you come to this wood, is it the same wood for you and for us three?»

      «It is the same for me, I dare say.»

      The Dragon glanced at the ducks, which were circling lazily in the pond, their tiny legs working steadily in the shallows. Only two were present.

      «You mentioned there were three of you.»

      «There are three of us.»

      «Where is the third?»

      The duck pointed, and the Dragon could see a ginger shape lying in a heap on the ground, surrounded by a few feathers. It was furry, spread-eagled and in considerable dishevelment. Of all things it came closest to a dead fox.

      «It is a dead fox,» said the Dragon.

      «The fox ate the duck,» explained the duck.

      «Did the fox die after that or before?»

      «It was already dead when we all got here.»

      «It must be quite alive by now,» said the Dragon.

      In the meantime the fox indeed grew tired of being dead. It lifted an arm tentatively, then a leg, wiggled its ears and after a short hesitation bounced energetically. The ducks, scared, took off promptly, crying in alarm. The Dragon looked at the fox, and the fox looked back with some insolence; they both started strolling along the shore.

      «How do you like lilies?» said the Dragon. «They are splendid this time of year, especially those that sprout on the water.»

      «I see no lilies on the water,» objected the fox. «None.»

      They passed several water-lilies, and the Dragon indicated one:

      «See? That is what I was talking about.»

      «It is not a lily but a water-lily,» remarked the fox irritably.

      «I often mean water-lily when I say lily,» said the Dragon. «Any sign is arbitrary before it is applied. Only afterwards it gains meaning that it lacked previously, and that connects it to the thing it represents; they both almost become one.»

      «If a sign gets extra meaning, it becomes another sign altogether.»

      «Almost, I said.»

      The fox prickled its ears at a far-off sound and appeared to listen intently.

      «And my sign and your sign might not be the same.»

      «I know