Shadow of the Dragon-Fish

Description

A shadow is not obliged to be an exact copy of what casts it. Sometimes it is the only thing remaining of a creature already gone — or perhaps one that never existed at all, except in the moment when light happened to fall at just the right angle.

On the left, form thickens into a knot — a tangle of sharp lines turned toward one another, as though several different creatures had decided, for a single second, to occupy the same place. On the right, it dissolves into one long stroke, thinning to almost nothing, to the border where wood ceases to be substance and becomes only direction.

I am not certain there is a fish here at all, or a dragon. It is more likely a memory of both at once, laid over one another so densely that their separate outlines have worn away, leaving only the shared sensation of movement — from dense to rarefied, from heavy to barely perceptible.

Light passes through the gaps between the lines and changes the shadow with every hour: sharper by day, closer to something recognizable, and by evening it blurs, loses its edges — as if the creature casting it were likewise unsure of its own form, and preferred to remain half-imagined.

The root became fish,
The fish — a dragon’s shadow…
A quiet turning.

Additional information