It was a simple tree, ordinary looking
tree. No botanist would stop and think
an invisible dragon guarded it. The
locals called the dragon Simorg and they would ask him for permission before
cutting down a tree, as they feared they might cut the Tree of Life by
accident.
The fruits it bore were full of
wisdom. The Elder of the village would
come to ask the Tree of Life and its dragon to share some fruit and seed for
well-needed knowledge, or to find answers of hidden secrets. Every now and then the Elder came to sit down
next to the tree, cradled between its knotty wooden fingers of tree roots
that were clutching the earth deep down.
The juices of the roots were bringing up the tales and rumours from the
world below. The tree was buzzing with
the stories from the Kingdom below and the wise man can tell that he can hear
the tree talking.
One day the old man took along a strange
young man, a botanist, who was visiting the village looking for the giant
seedpods of the blackbean chestnut. The
tree was generous and dropped on the ground quite few seedpods for them to
pick. The elder cautioned the eager
young man to take his time and listen and thank the tree. “The nature is talking to you. Harvest its wisdom,” explained the old
man. Than he sat down amongst the wooden
fingers of the tree roots and let the young botanist wonder around the tree,
collect and draw sketches of seedpods, branches, leaves and acorns.
When at late morning a squeezing
feeling of hunger started to twist their stomachs, the elder offer him a modest
snack with tinned sardines, dried olives, red onion and brown bread. It all had so different taste and one would
wonder if the fresh air, the hunger pangs or something about the place and the
tree they were next to made the simple humble food taste so, so nice…
As they were sitting on the ground and
enjoying the food, something whooshed and airstream twisted around them. The young man jumped on his feet looking all
around, trying to catch the invisible.
The old man chuckled in his white beard.
He knew the dragon was in good mood and having little amusement with the
unenlightened botanist. Then he looked
up between the tree branches and whispered, “I know Simorg, we have some
rectifying work ahead of us”.
Till we sit under the wise
tree again,
Sophia
©
2015 – sophia terra~ziva. all rights reserved
