3. Genesis Dragon

Lilith ran her hand along the sleek iridescent scales of the limp dragon, cool to the touch. This deity, for Lilith had revered this sacred creature, was dead. But she had more than revered it, she loved it - as her mother. Her vision blurred as tears pooled and slipped from her eyes.

The broken Tree of Life lay in a jumble of crisscrossing branches, its main branch fallen into a tangle with the bark of its trunk peeled off on one side exposing a gelatinous core dried sticky with flies swarming. This was death. Lilith had hardly noticed any trace of death in the garden until now. Here, a cataclysm of death lay at her feet. Mud, fruit, and branches lay tumbled in a snarl around the dead dragon’s body, and one of the dragon’s wings poked up at a strange angle.

It was Adam’s fault. He made such a mess of their lives. Adam had claimed he was defending Eve. Eve had accidentally broken a branch off the Tree of Life and the basilisk had swooped down to attack her. But if that was true, why were there so many rocks? Rocks were strewn everywhere and piled around Moma’s head where Adam had smashed her skull and lanced one eye with a sharpened stick. There were no rocks exposed in the lush jungle around the Tree. Adam must have brought them here before the fight.

Lilith knew Adam’s fixation with dying. He had destroyed everything for the hope of immortality; just for a branch of the Tree of Life thinking it would let him live forever. Now the center of their lives was in shambles, what good was immortality? Adam and Eve deserved to starve to death in the badlands. Lilith scanned the distant barren and rocky mountain tops. She doubted they could survive long.

Lilith’s hands curiously roamed over the long purple and fire-orange scales. She had never been able to fully touch the guardian, it had always been secretive and aloof, teaching them and commanding them but never intimate. She caressed its face, its long black whiskers, its elongated green ears that ended in a sharp tip. It’s one, unpierced, yellow eye was only half-closed, eerily holding no spirit of life. Its long jaw hung crooked, death distorted Moma’s beautiful face, making it hideous. Lilith reached up to its eye and closed the lid.

Tracing her fingers along the side of the basilisk, she noticed a bump of a larger blue scale. She found a line of them along the basilisk’s side. She poked at one and it moved. Lilith found a cracked seam to reveal a cavity and pried it with her fingers. It slid open, folding in on itself like a crustaceous tail. The inside was smooth and deep red, but the indent space was empty. Lilith went along the basilisk's body opening the hidden cavities, but they were all empty except one; there in the deep red pouch, was a pile of seeds.  

She leaned against the hulking mass covered in iridescent scales, thoughtfully handling the tiny seeds. What would these seeds turn into?  Danu called to her and strode over leaving the Greenman standing alone in the clearing.

“What are you doing? We should leave Moma alone.”

“I’m looking for truth.” Lilith examined the seeds then glanced up at the Greenman. He could know something. He stood apart, quiet like the tree he had emerged from. Greenman, tall with a green hue to his skin, held a wide eyes expression of open innocence. Lilith felt sorry for him. His mind seemed to be that of a plant trapped in a man’s body.

Danu went back to his side and held his arm. Annoyingly, Danu talked incessantly in monologue to him, for the tree-man never uttered a word.  This stranger had stepped out of the Tree and now Danu only paid attention to him. Lilith turned away and ignored them. Lilith heard Danu giggle and she cringed. She needed to find something else to live for, if it wouldn’t be her relationships then what would fulfill her? Lilith remembered Moma giving them a special fruit which, after they ate it, gave them the ability to speak and think.

Moma had drawn this fruit from a central bulging pouch in the center of her belly. Bending over to search along the dragon’s belly, Lilith sadly thought of how they had all lived and slept together happily before the eating of the dragon’s fruit. Eve and Lilith had been so close, but as soon as they began to understand language Eve turned cold towards Lilith. She didn’t like Lilith talking to Adam. That fruit gave abilities but was dangerous.

Not finding the blue bulge, she realized the dragon must be lying on it. She tried to push the stiff body over, but it was too heavy. Lilith turned around to ask for help. The Greenman sat with arms around his knees under a large fern as Danu pointed to plants and bugs. She said their names while Greenman repeated them. Danu clapped her hands and gave Greenman a kiss on the cheek. Lilith turned back to the dead body as she called to them to help.

Danu came and they both pushed, but they could only rock the long snake-like body. Lilith glanced back at the Greenman. He stood apart unknowing or unwilling to do anything. She motioned for him to come near. He obediently stepped closer but only stared at the basilisk. He needed to be shown how to do everything. Lilith placed his hands on the cold scales. With all of them pushing, the stiffening body flopped over with a thud. Lilith found the blue pouch in the center of the basilisk’s belly. She tried to pry it open, but it was stuck. She clawed at it breaking the skin. Greenman came and placed his hands on Lilith to stop her from ripping at the corpse. She stood back and he gently pressed the bottom of the bulge. It popped open. Clear jelly oozed out with hundreds of translucent purplish-blue eggs.  

Danu grimaced with disgust. Greenman reached in through the clear jelly to pull out a soft orb and he handed to Lilith. She took it but eyed Greenman suspicious that he was not as innocent as he seemed. He knew how to open the pouch so he must know about the fruit. Lilith sniffed it. It smelled like the basilisk, a metallic musk with a slightly sweet order. Lilith held it up to Greenman, for an answer. He innocently gazed at it, and Lilith caught the sadness in his eyes. She dropped her hand. It felt wrong – the way she was handling the sacred and beloved, Moma, pulling and prying at it. This whole mess was wrong, but what could she do?

Suddenly he broke his silence, “Eat it.” Lilith flinched. He had just spoken to her for the first time. In his eyes she saw through the blank innocence a spark of intelligence. He knew more than he led on.

She remembered how powerful a piece of this fruit, or egg, had been the first time Moma had offered it, giving them language. Lilith turned the translucent ball over in her hands. She noticed a small seed in the center and wondered if this was, indeed, a dragon spawn. Revoltingly, she remembered eating it.

She asked Greenman, “Is this a baby dragon?”

He nodded. Lilith sadly considered what to do. “Will this help me?”

He nodded again but there was a slight curve of the corner of his mouth that made Lilith wonder if he was to be trusted. She examined the black dot in the center of the clear egg. The basilisk was no more, this egg would never become a baby, and she needed answers. But she hesitated, her mind might break like Adams’ and she could become crazy and might kill. She lowered her arm and was about to drop it, but the Greenman cupped the bottom of her hand. Lilith let him raise her hand to bring it to her lips. She looked into his calm green eyes as her lips parted. She nibbled. Its gelatinous skin broke, a thick blue jelly dripped out down her chin. She sucked in the jelly around the black seed, it tasted salty and fruity but with a dry aftertaste that made her mouth feel sticky. She swallowed.

Greenman took her by the hand and led her to the sunny side of the broken Tree and sat her down. She felt lightheaded. The setting sunlight played like water through the bare limbs. She could almost hear the liquid light as she closed her eyes. Lilith couldn’t feel her body as she floated away into darkness. A vision formed of millions of stars glittering in the backdrop of deep space. A ball of scales sped through the vacuum between the stars. Hibernating in a stasis near death, it survived only on the tiny amount of energy gathered from the suffusion of starlight. It had been propelled into space towards distant stars to find another planet with water. It was a Genesis Dragon, sent out to colonize any inhabitable planet and inoculate it with the seeds, organic material, and a Genesis Tree it carried in sealed pouches.

The galaxy was vast and littered with stars as the curled, living ball tumbled through vast reaches of emptiness. A gravitational field of a star caught it like a wind-born seed and swept it around into a solar system. As it circled around closer and closer, the raw heat of the star awoke it from its slumber. Unrolling out its fanned tail and spreading its wings wide it rode the solar winds of the star.

Spotting a blue planet that looked promising, it swooped near the atmosphere, but the basilisk tasted ammonia and it veered away to keep searching. Sailing past a stormy giant planet too volatile to inhabit, it flew closer to the star. Like a wall, a cloud of asteroids blocked its path towards more planets, the basilisk swerved like a snake in a thicket as it navigated through asteroids. The star was getting hot as it skimmed past a red baren planet. Its wings tightened with dread at the thought of again leaving a star system to venture back into the cold depths of space. Many a basilisk perish in deep space without finding a suitable planet. It had flown away from three other solar systems before this one without finding a suitable planet, but time was running out. It could not survive much longer.

It flew around the burning sun to be sure there was no other planet. Cresting from behind the volatile, fiery star the basilisk caught sight of another planet and it was blue. Blue could mean a toxic atmosphere or water. Genesis could only take root on a planet with water.

Water and an atmosphere were as precious as life itself. With the entry into the planet’s upper atmosphere, the basilisk’s flapped its wings in the thin air and its dry forked tongue flicked out to taste water vapor. Its heart throbbed with anticipation for a breath of carbon and a drink of water. The basilisk joyfully coasted down through the atmosphere of the newfound planet covered almost entirely in a blue ocean of water. Near the smoking volcanic shore, the basilisk dove into the briny sea with relief, gulping down water and nutrients to begin its metamorphosis. It sloughed its hard-shelled space-skin, elongated its tail, and shed its eye and nose coverings. Its wings were saturated, so it swam, rippling its body with fanned tail, for land.

 Crawling onto a rocky shore, it dried its wings till it could take flight again. Flapping hard, it had to get used to gravity and its wings cut through the thick, humid air, as it flew over smoking volcanos, steaming lakes, and rugged lava fields. After days and nights of flight, it found a spot – an alluvial fan of silt at the base of two mountains bordering the waters of a lake. The basilisk landed and sniffed at the water burbling down a stream into the lake. It was clear and was not mixed with ammonia. The basilisk slithered around the golden-red dirt. The soil was soft and pliable as the basilisk coiled around to push up a mound of sediment. With a groaning, gut-wrenching push, the scale that covered its inner, most protected pouch, opened. Out fell one large, round, pearly-white seed. The basilisk placed it into the dust, defecated upon it and then curled up to wait for the Genesis Tree.

             *****************

Lilith rubbed her eyes. Returning from a journey that she could hardly describe, she sat under the tree for a while listening to the crickets in the night. She thought about how they were all brought here from other planets by a basilisk and wondered what the other planets were like. What was the planet her people came from?

In time, she focused on the shadowed body of the dragon. Now, she didn’t feel as much love for Moma. It had given her life, but it was not a life of love. Though Lilith hadn’t known, it was a life of servitude.

Lilith blinked as the lush green world around her danced in her vision; the colors of the plants were more vivid, and she could understand the mating songs of the birds. Lilith smelled hidden water, felt the pulse of the gravity field, and sensed the feelings of the plants and animals around her. Greenman and Danu came to her and crouched by her.

Danu spoke “What happened to your ears? They are so long, like the basilisks.” Turning to Greenman she asked, “Is she turning into a basilisk?”

Lilith felt Danu’s hand touch her ears but couldn’t focus on what she said. But she could feel what was in Danu’s mind. Oddly, she sensed Danu as a simple being only focused on her own needs, but next to her Greenman shimmered with complexity. Greenman had a network of glowing fibers that connected him to all the other plants and creatures as if he were the center of a living web.  He smiled at her and Lilith felt him speaking to her not with his mouth but with his mind. Hearing within her chest, a raw meaning – Welcome, my ally.

Lilith didn’t want to be alone. She reached for Danu’s hand and put the rest of the egg into it. “Eat the egg of wisdom and join me.”

Danu withdrew her hand and shook her head. Lilith stared penetratingly into Danu. Lilith caught the expression of revulsion. Lilith chuckled to herself that she, herself, must look very bad for Danu to look at her that way. But Lilith could sense a deeper layer in Danu, just as she could sense the feelings of the plants and animals, that Danu was comfortable; she knew where she stood in the world, and she did not want to upset her balance especially now that she had a lover.

Lilith slumped back to rest against the trunk of Tree. She was more alone than ever and within that loneliness, arose insight into the life of the basilisk. The dragon had been alone with its intelligence also, this may be why it had sacrificed its own egg to raise the minds of Lilith and the others. Lilith understood now that an expanded mind means isolation. She wished she had the basilisk as a companion. With this thought, she considered Greenman. His gaze was steady, unmoving, and clear, his face expressionless. Yet with her new-found psychic abilities, Lilith caught a sharp pinpoint of thought within his mind; he was not without desire; he had a plan.

As his green eyes probed into Lilith’s, she heard him say within her mind, “You are free from the basilisk, but now, the burden of genesis is upon you. We have inherited the destiny of this planet.”