The Rooster 1.3

Part 1 - Andreas

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The Rooster

That night I dreamed of something I couldn’t tell if I had already lived or was about to live. I don’t remember how old I was. I only remember my naked body: small, skin stuck to the heat.

Grandfather handed me a small cup filled with black liquid. Bitter. The taste hit my tongue like chewing old roots. I felt the earth itself in my mouth. I didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t explain. He poured water over me. It was warm, almost sweet, and in the hard light it looked tinged with pink. I don’t know if it was real or if memory gave it that color later.

He swept a sword over me. It flashed in the sun, sharp as a warning. It looked heavy, but it was the edge, not the weight, that demanded respect. When it cut the air close to my skin, my body bristled. My feet trembled. I did not slip.

Then a dry rod. Smooth. Light. He seemed to be saying many things, and I understood none. Then the stones. So many. Some shone, with fire sealed inside them. In my ignorance, I imagined gold. Or something older. Something only we knew how to name.

Others shifted under my feet. Cold. Smooth. Treacherous. I don’t know how I kept standing. The ground rejected me, and still I did not fall. My grandfather watched me. Not with pride. Not with tenderness. With his face carved in stone, an old, relentless patience.

“The rooster will crow three times,” he said. “That’s when you’ll be free.”

I stayed there. Waiting. The cup empty in one hand. The other keeping my balance. The stones trembling under my feet.

The first crow came. Harsh. Far. Something cracked in the air.

The second crow. Closer. The wind moved again. It carried something I had already forgotten.

Before the third, I heard a voice. Not my grandfather’s. Younger. Softer. It went through me, as if arriving from a place without time. Not a command. Not even a voice. Only the sense that someone, somewhere, was waiting for me.

The third crow. I don’t know if I heard it outside or inside. I only knew that something in me loosened, a rope letting go of its pull. Then he came close. He took my hand and pried it open. He put something inside. The green stone. Cold. Alive.

“It is yours now,” he said. His voice was not a promise. It was a verdict.

The stone weighed little, yet I felt it sink me into the earth. I stood still. Naked. Pressed to the wind, the heat, the tremor of stones that no longer slipped.

They were mine. Like the wound. Like this story.

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