A Dragon's Tear - Modern Day

A modern woman in a modern world sits on a beach in Bali, where magic and dragons exist only in stories. She traces patterns in the sand, patterns that look strangely like the ancient symbols that have haunted her dreams. Her husband's latest betrayal burns fresh in her mind, but it's the pattern she finally sees that breaks her open - every single person she has ever loved in this lifetime has betrayed her. Family, friends, husbands, lovers alike - all following the same script as if written in her bones.

These patterns she draws in the sand seem to shimmer in the fading light - circles within circles, like ripples in still water. She doesn't understand why her fingers know these movements, why they feel as familiar as her own heartbeat. Sometimes, in the space between sleeping and waking, she dreams of vast pools arranged in similar patterns, their waters singing songs she almost remembers.

Something in her snaps - or perhaps awakens. The kind of awakening that feels like falling apart but is really falling into place. She decides in that moment. ‘Never again’, she promises herself with the entirety of her being. She will do whatever it takes to heal this betrayal wound. She sells everything, her comfortable life reduced to what fits in a backpack. Her journey begins without a map, led only by a calling from a space deep in her heart and the echo of water in her dreams.

That night, in her last hours in the beachside villa she'd once shared with her husband, she dreams of mountains. Not the gentle slopes of Bali's Mount Agung, but something higher, harsher, closer to the stars. In the dream, she's walking an ancient path, each step taking her closer to something she lost lifetimes ago. She wakes with the taste of thin air in her mouth and the certainty of where she needs to go first.

The journey to Nepal feels less like traveling and more like being pulled by an invisible thread. In Kathmandu's narrow streets, where prayer flags snap in the wind and temple bells echo through ancient alleys, she feels the first real stirring of recognition. Something about the altitude, about being closer to the stars, awakens memories she didn't know she carried. She finds herself drawn to the oldest temples, especially those with sacred pools or fountains. Her fingers trail through every basin of holy water she passes, each touch an echo of something just beyond remembrance.

In a tiny teahouse in Thamel, she meets an old woman with eyes like deep wells who takes one look at her and says, "Ah, you're finally ready to remember." The woman doesn't explain what she means, but she presses a worn mala of crystal beads into her hands. "For when you walk the Circuit," she says. "The mountains will speak to you in the language of stars. You'll need something to ground you."

The crystal beads feel warm against her skin, humming with a familiar energy that reminds her of the patterns she drew in the Bali sand. That night, she dreams of vast pools reflecting starlight, of crystal spires reaching toward heaven, of a white dragon's tears falling like rain. She wakes knowing the Annapurna Circuit isn't just another trek - it's a pathway to remembering.

The Annapurna Circuit teaches her about endurance, twenty-one days of walking at altitude where the thin air strips away her defenses. Each step feels like remembering, though she doesn't know what she's trying to recall. The mountains speak to her in voices that remind her of something vast and ancient - of flight, perhaps, though she's never flown except in dreams where her body gleams white against the stars.

Annapurna opens something in her. The altitude cracks her open like an egg, spilling out old memories she can't quite grasp. Each step on the Circuit feels like a key turning in a lock she didn't know existed. By the time she descends, she understands that stillness is no longer possible - movement has become her meditation, wandering her way of worship.

Her feet, once soft from years of government carpets, grow calloused and strong. They carry her down from the Himalayas into India's embrace, where the chaos and color overwhelm her senses in ways that feel strangely familiar. She finds herself drawn to the oldest places, temples where the stones have been worn smooth by centuries of devotion. In Varanasi, she sits for hours by the Ganges, watching funeral pyres burn and feeling the endless cycle of death and rebirth in her bones. The sacred river calls to her like all waters do now, but its voice holds memories of other sacred pools, other ceremonies, other lifetimes.

The path leads her to unexpected places, each one holding a piece of the puzzle she's slowly assembling. In Japan, she learns tea ceremony from an elderly master who takes one look at her mismatched eyes and begins teaching her about the memory of water. "Water remembers," the master tells her, demonstrating how the same leaves can produce different flavors depending on the water's journey to the cup. At night, she dreams of pools that held the memory of stars.

High in the mountains of Peru, she studies with a medicine woman who teaches her about plants that open doorways in the mind. "Your spirit has walked between worlds before," the woman says, reading coca leaves scattered like stars across her blanket. "The plants remember you." She learns to listen to the voice of each herb, each root, each flower. Some speak in whispers of healing, others in songs of transformation. But it's the water used to prepare them that calls to her most strongly, as if trying to tell her something just beyond her understanding.

The Greek islands call to her with voices that echo in her bones. She spends months island-hopping, drawn to ancient temple sites where sacred springs once flowed. On Delos, she finds herself tracing patterns in old marble that match the ones she drew in Bali's sand. In Cyprus, she meets a priestess of Aphrodite who teaches her about the sacred geometry of tears. "Some tears can change the world," the priestess tells her. "Some tears already have."

The path takes her to Tibet's secret valleys, where she studies with monks who teach her about the nature of time. They show her mandalas that look like the patterns she's been drawing since Bali, explain how time spirals rather than flows linear. In their highest temple, she finds a mural of a white dragon crying tears that become sacred pools. The monks won't explain its meaning, but they watch her carefully as she stands before it, trembling with recognition.

Each place adds another layer to her understanding, though understanding of what remains just out of reach. She learns to read ancient scripts without being taught, recognizes symbols she's never seen before, knows words in languages she's never studied. The betrayal pattern follows her - small betrayals from fellow travelers, larger ones from those who get too close. But each betrayal feels different now, less personal, more like signposts pointing her toward something she needs to remember.

She takes lovers when the loneliness becomes too much - a photographer in Santorini whose camera captures light in ways that make her think of captured starfire, a musician in Marrakech whose songs remind her of water flowing over crystal. Each relationship follows the same pattern of betrayal, but she begins to see them as necessary steps in her journey, each one breaking away another layer of forgetting.

Her healing becomes less about mending current wounds and more about recovering something lost. She studies with shamans, priests, medicine women, and mystics, each one teaching her something she somehow already knows. They all see something in her - in her mismatched eyes, in the way water behaves around her, in the patterns she unconsciously draws everywhere she goes. None can tell her exactly what she's looking for, but all agree she's on the right path.

Finally, the path leads her to the Amazon, where the jungle pulses with a life force that feels like memory. Three days into an ayahuasca journey, when the boundaries between past and present have dissolved like salt in sacred water, a golden dragon appears. Unlike the white dragon that haunts her dreams, this one seems to have been waiting for her, watching her journey, guiding her steps all along. It asks if she's ready to remember everything, to heal not just the wounds of this life but the original wound, the first betrayal that set all other betrayals in motion.

The dragon's question resonates through every cell of her being, like ripples spreading across the surface of an ancient pool. She realizes that her entire journey - every step since that beach in Bali - has been leading her to this moment, this choice, this chance to finally understand who she is and what she lost so long ago. The dragon can guide her, it says, but there are energetic anchors tying her to the past that must be faced. She must be willing to see everything, feel everything, to be truly free.

She accepts the golden dragon's offer, not knowing this agreement will alter not just her life but the fabric of time itself. In the following months, her search for healing takes on a different quality. She finds herself drawn to teachers who recognize something ancient in her mismatched eyes - one blue as sacred waters, one flecked with dragon's gold.

A Shipibo grandmother deep in the Amazon teaches her to read the patterns of reality woven into everything. In the high desert of Mexico, a Huichol marakame shows her how to walk between worlds using nothing but heartbeat and breath. A Tibetan lama recognizes her immediately, teaching her practices for transforming poison into medicine that feel like remembering rather than learning. In Morocco, a Sufi mystic initiates her into the science of alchemical transformation, showing her how to turn betrayal's lead into wisdom's gold.

She learns things that shouldn't exist in the modern world - shamanic techniques, soul retrieval, traveling on sound waves, opening and closing portals. But it's in water that she finds her strongest magic. The golden dragon appears to her again, this time in the steam rising from her bath in her cabin in the woods. The simple clawfoot tub becomes her primary portal, the place where she learns to travel through time to heal ancient wounds.

"Are you ready?" the golden dragon asks one night, as steam rises like memories around her. "To heal these wounds, you must return to where they began. You must face each betrayal, each death, each sacrifice - not to change them, but to transform them. She understands now that her journey isn't about escaping the pattern of betrayal - it's about healing it at its source.

Her first journey through the bathtub portal takes her to Atlantis. Through the steam rising from her bath, she sees a woman poisoning the sacred pools. "The water is in you. I am in you. I am preserved in you, the water bearer," the Mother's voice echoes through time speaking to her. Her heart stops as she recognizes her past self, understanding that by dying in those pools, she had ended a sacred lineage that was meant to continue.

"It cannot end like this," she whispers, and reaches through time. She pulls her past self from the poisoned Mother Pool, arranging her arms in a cross to honor the sacrifice while preserving the life. Standing over her own past body, she whispers blessings into her crown. Instead of focusing on loss while watching the Mother Pool fade, she teaches her past self to look with gratitude into the dying light. The shift is profound - her past self gasps awake, confused but alive. She guides her to the secret tunnel few knew existed, watching as her past self takes one last look at the sacred pools before disappearing into safety, carrying the water's essence forward instead of ending its lineage in death.

Weeks later the golden dragon appears again, leading her to her next healing. In the Persian tower, she finds her past self on the cold floor, eyes torn out in a final act of defiance against those who would steal her power. With hands that now know the medicine of many traditions, she restores the eyes to their sockets. Her prayer combines all she has learned - Shipibo healing songs, Huichol soul retrieval, Tibetan energy practices, and Sufi prayers of transformation. When her past self gasps awake, blinking in shock, she helps her escape with the aid of the golden dragon, breaking the cycle of power and sacrifice.

Her journey to heal the heart sacrifice requires her physical presence. Following an inner calling, she travels to Machu Picchu with her crystal singing bowls. The same golden dragon who guides her through time whispers where to find the exact spot where her heart had once been cut out. As she arranges her altar - pomegranate for rebirth, hummingbird feather for transformation, crystals for healing - she understands she is healing not just her own heart, but the heart of an entire civilization caught in blood sacrifice.

The bowls' harmonics ripple through time itself, their tones carrying the violet flame of forgiveness into the past. Each note dissolves another layer of ancient pain. When the hummingbird feather vanishes from her singing bowl, she knows her offering has been accepted. The heart that had been sacrificed is restored, not through another death but through the power of transmutation.

Finally, she faces what she has been preparing for through all these healings - the confrontation with the black dragon who had stolen her original flame. In her bathtub portal, the water turns to starlight around her, and she finds herself in that vast cosmic space where it all began.

The black dragon stands before her, his scales rippling with depths of black that hold hints of purple and blue. She walks slowly around him, searching her heart for any feelings. A whisper of love stirs in her chest, but it's not the same love she once held. This is something deeper, tempered by wisdom and time.

She studies him - this being who had once been a great leader before greed and envy ruined his heart. His golden eyes are still magnificent, but now she can see the emptiness behind them, the hunger that was never satisfied even after stealing her flame.

Without warning, she kisses him. But this kiss is not of love or forgiveness - it is reclamation. She draws back what is hers, feeling her original flame return to her heart space. Then, driven by a power she doesn't fully understand, she begins to take what is his. She takes him to the point of inflection, the moment just before there's no return. His physical body shrivels to a husk, his golden eyes sinking back into his skull.

But she stops at the brink. "Now you know what it feels like to have everything taken from you," she says, her voice carrying across the star-field. "Now you can understand what it means to lose everything against your own will."

It is only when she looks up into the void, she sees them - thousands of dragons, all born without fire, all carrying the wound of that ancient fall. They have gathered to witness this moment of reckoning. Her voice grows stronger as she addresses them all.

"We lost our fire eons ago because we fell," she proclaims. "We fell from our own greed and malice towards humanity. We abused what we were supposed to help, and we fell as a result." As she speaks, she understands that her journey - through water, through sacrifice, through death and rebirth - has given her the knowledge needed to heal not just herself but all dragon kind.

From her essence emerges a golden spiral, a portal formed from her pure white flame tempered by the wisdom of sacred waters, fortified by the strength of sacrifice transformed, and illuminated by the vision gained through darkness. The spiral swirls with more than just fire - it holds the promise of purification, the possibility of redemption, the power of transformation freely given rather than taken. This golden force exists for one profound purpose: redemption. It is a key forged through lifetimes of loss and remembering, shaped by tears and betrayal, tempered by wisdom and sacrifice. Its power lies not in preservation or destruction, but in restoration - specifically, the restoration of what was lost when dragon-fire was first corrupted.

The spiral serves as both map and bridge, capable of reaching across time to the moment when dragons first lost their connection to pure flame. But unlike her previous powers, which required sacrifice to preserve purity, this new force works through transformation and integration. It doesn't fight corruption - it transforms it from within, helping darkness remember it was once light.

"I was born with fire," she tells the gathered dragons, "to show you the time has come to regain what was lost. Not through theft or force, but through purification and purpose. Any dragon who enters this spiral will begin a quest of purification, finding their way back to their own heart flame.

Dragons begin entering the spiral, each one embracing their own journey of transformation. Some emerge quickly, their flames small but pure. Others remain longer, undergoing deeper transmutation. The air fills with fire of all colors - red, blue, green, silver - each dragon's flame unique to their true nature.

She turns to the black dragon, still held at the precipice of extinction, and lifts him with unexpected tenderness. "Your betrayal taught me that true power cannot be taken," she whispers in his ear. "Let your redemption teach others that it can be regained through transformation." With that, she casts him into the spiral.

She looks out unbelievingly at all the dragons with their heart fire ablaze and a single tear forms, falling back out into the cosmos. Except this time, it is not a tear of sorrow but a tear of pure joy.

Back in her bathtub, the water cooling around her, she understands at last. The pattern of betrayal wasn't a curse - it was a breadcrumb trail leading her back to her true purpose. Each betrayal had pushed her further along the path of remembering, until she could finally heal not just herself but offer healing to all of dragon kind.

She trails her fingers through the bathwater, watching it shimmer with a faint golden light that would have terrified her just months ago. Now she understands why water has always called to her, why her tears sometimes seemed to glow, why she could never quite fit into the life she thought she was supposed to live. The modern world with its daily grind and conventional marriages had been like trying to squeeze an ocean into a teacup. And in the steamy reflection of the water, she watches her golden flecked brown eye turn as blue as the ancient waters from her memories. A gift and a sign, an ending of the betrayal pattern played out for so long.

The betrayals that drove her from Bali to Annapurna, from sacred rivers to desert temples, weren't random cruel twists of fate. They were keys, unlocking ancient memories, each one necessary to crack open her heart until she could remember not just who she was, but what she was meant to become. Every wrong turn, every heartbreak, every moment of despair had been another step on the spiral path leading her home.

Rising from the cooling water, she wraps herself in a towel that feels strangely coarse against skin that remembers scales. Tomorrow she'll begin the real work - finding others like her, souls carrying dragon essence twisted by ancient corruption. But tonight, she simply stands at her window, looking up at stars that seem to pulse in familiar patterns, and finally feels at peace with both who she was and who she has become. Finally resting in the knowing her tear contained within it the pattern of joy and the pattern of betrayal broken. Joy would now become the sum total of her life experience.

In her chest, the golden spiral turns, ready to light the way home for others as it did for her.

Full story is availble in Kindle