The poet sang:

This is how our land came into being.
In the Beginning: vast, empty silence.
Then within this void, a pulse. Faint, growing stronger. 
She Herself, dancing a heartbeat rhythm, humming as she danced, filling the silence. 
This is how She Herself created the world, the surface hard and smooth beneath her prancing feet. 

From the ecstasy of her dance, She Herself gave birth to Bindi, the liminal, middle-gendered divinity of rainbow-hued twilight and endless possibility. Then she birthed the heavenly twins: Sun Woman, burning bright and fierce, and Night Rider, tranquil in his black cloak of spangled stars. 

Through these three children, she established the spiraling cycles of time, the parade of night and day, and dusk-dawn-twilight.

She Herself wept joyful tears watching her children’s daily march, and her tears filled the oceans. Life emerged within these salty waters, infinitely diverse, and spread onto land. 

Wherever life journeyed, death was close behind.

There were many fertile places in the world She Herself danced into being, but life struggled to survive on the polished surface where her dance began. So she created Young Warrior to protect life in this unforgiving flatland. 

Protecting the flatland wasn’t enough for ambitious Young Warrior. He wanted to vanquish death. He tried to chase down death with his pointed spear, to cut death away with his sharp sword, to pierce death with his arrows — but death continued transforming the living. 

Life on the flatland grew stronger and more varied through death’s reaping, but Young Warrior only saw how death stole the living. He knew that life and death were born of She Herself — like all creation — and he resolved to conquer her and seize dominion over the world, thus gaining the power to banish death.

Young Warrior readied his pointed spear, sharpened his sword, and strung his bow, then swaggered into the firmament.

She Herself greeted her youngest child warmly, but Young Warrior was over-hungry for power. When she smiled, he saw the bared teeth of a snarl; when she spoke the words of greeting, he heard mockery; when she poured the welcome cup, he suspected poison. 

Young Warrior cast his pointed spear at She Herself, he sliced at her with his sharp sword, he shot his piercing arrows.

She Herself evaded her young son’s attacks and transformed into a red-and-gold winged serpent, the primordial dragon Tiamar. She extended her claws and spread her great wings and flew at Young Warrior. He changed into a silver-blue dragon, and the two met in the sky with a crash of thunder that shook the world. 

Tiamar and Young Warrior wrestled mid-air, fighting with talons and teeth. They rumbled and roared; their fervent blows sparked like lightning. 

Young Warrior and Tiamar spiraled down though the sky, down, down, grappling relentlessly, until — both mortally wounded — they crashed to earth on the flatland. 

Tiamar’s body dissolved into fertile fields, her blood became lush rivers, her great wings became the mountains cradling our fertile country. 

Young Warrior fell beside her and his smaller body became the arid eastern lands — which is why those tribes are contentious to this day.

Like a serpent shedding her skin, Tiamar surrendered her dragon body and returned to the firmament, where she continues to watch over our favored land. 

When you see clouds gather in the sky, that is Tiamar’s breath, bringing us sweet rain. 

When thunder bellows, that is All-Seeing Tiamar flaunting her protective strength to warn our enemies away. 

When lightning strikes, that is Tiamar filling our mountain streams with bright gold.

Young Warrior lacked Tiamar’s regenerative power — so Tiamar gathered his combative essence and confined Young Warrior in the moon. You can still see him flexing his silver-blue wings as the moon dances across the sky. 

[Lyri Ahnam channels poetry and prose from the ancestral homelands of the Illiniwek. Dragon Moon is part of a novel-in-progress inspired by ancient Near East myth. Learn more at LyriAhnam.com.]