Origin
ORIGIN
Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival... a survival of a hugely remote period when... consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity... forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds...
~ Algernon Blackwood
1
Tadashi and the Dragon
At the core of every country are its myths and legends, and Japan certainly has its share. One story tells of an elderly samurai named Tadashi who was said to have slain a Ryûjin (dragon god of the sea). As a reward, numerous precious jewels fell from the dragon’s belly when he slit it open. Thrilled with his newfound wealth, he gathered up the jewels and hid them in a cave. One day, while trading gems for food, a younger samurai named Yatoshi, who wanted to know where he got such gems, challenged him. Tadashi responded by drawing his sword.
It was a quick duel, with the older, feebler Tadashi succumbing to the quicker, dexterous Yatoshi. But Tadashi took his secret into death, forcing Yatoshi to spend the rest of his 30-year lifespan trying to locate the old man’s stash.
He never did.
As with many myths and legends, there were some facts to the story. Tadashi had indeed existed, was a samurai (actually, a rõnin—samurai without a lord or master) and fought with another samurai named Yatoshi over a bag of gems that Tadashi had upon himself. Likewise, the rest of the gemstone wealth was hidden in a cave somewhere.
It was generally assumed by those who knew the legend that Tadashi told Yatoshi the gems were in a cave, just not what cave. But this was not true. Tadashi never told Yatoshi anything. He simply drew his sword and fought to an honorable death. So how did Yatoshi know about the cave? Tadashi’s widow told him. But she didn’t know its location. For this reason, Yatoshi slew her as well. However, she was not known as the source of this information, and Yatoshi was never known as her killer; so, she did not become part of the legend.
Also true, but not of the legend, was that after Yatoshi’s death, others followed in seeking the treasure cave. Among them were members of the notorious Japanese gang, the Yakuza. It was even rumored among the Yakuza that someone found the cave, but, he and his family were also killed because they would not give up the location. This, sadly, was not a rumor.
Whatever happened to the jewels after that was anyone’s guess.
But ‘legend’ had it that the jewels were never found.
And then there was the ‘myth,’ which told how Tadashi obtained the jewels in the first place. He did discover them in a very unusual manner.
But it was not from a dragon god.
§§§
It was during the early part of Earth’s 6th century when the intergalactic race known as the Japhorians started secretly mining seelat from the mountains and seas, while symbolically keeping their fingers crossed. They took a little at a time—to attempt taking too much would undoubtedly have brought undesired attention to them. Yet it was during an unfortunate act of removing seelat from the Sea of Japan—at the exact time Tadashi was walking along the shore—that a Japhorian ore ship lost power as it broke surface. The surprised Tadashi watched in fascination and then horror as the ship struggled to remain airborne and finally fall back to Earth and crash upon the rocky banks near him.
Tadashi ran to and cautiously examined the odd craft. The ship was small. (Comparable in size to a modern SUV—so small that they were hardly ever noticed by humans while traversing throughout the atmosphere. And when they were, no one knew what they were, anyway.) Indeed, Tadashi had never seen anything like it in his life. He built up enough courage to touch it and found that it was hot, yet not enough to burn him.
He continued fingering and examining the thing until, to his surprise, he touched a spot that caused a noise unlike any he’d ever heard, and then some kind of door slowly opened. When it did, to his amazement, out poured many pounds of mud, imbued with gems of various sizes, shapes and multiple colors, which glistened in the newfound light of the morning sun.
The gems were the seelat. Crystallized.
On Earth, powdered seelat—aluminum oxide—is called corundum. In crystallized form, it is known as sapphire.
Red sapphire is called Ruby. Pinkish-orange sapphire has the name Padparadscha.
But it is all sapphire.
Tadashi peered inside to make sure no one was in there. There wasn’t. The nearest Japhorians were at the mothership, the destination the ore ship was headed to unload. The ore ships were self-controlled, nothing more than smart robots. But something had become defective with this one.
Tadashi anxiously looked about. Had anyone else seen what happened? Praying and hoping not, he dropped to his knees and began scooping and picking the loose sapphires from the mud. When his kimono was filled, he ran to a place among the shore rocks to make a cache. After doing so, he ran back for more. But there was so much! Plus, he needed a better place to hide them.
A place came to mind.
What he needed was a cart. And a horse to pull it. But he was afraid to leave, for what if someone else came by and discovered such a good find? But he could see no other way around it if he wanted the entire treasure. So, he did as quick a trip he could to town and borrowed a horse and cart from a farmer. (He later paid the farmer back with a gem.) When he returned to the site, Tadashi was thrilled to see his treasure still there, untouched.
After working the whole day to collect the sapphires and haul the horde more than twenty miles away to the cave, to say Tadashi was tired was an understatement. He had extracted all the seelat the ship had held. And the cave was one he was sure would not be found without explicit directions. He remembered stumbling upon it as a boy, and in going back, it took him an hour to relocate it. It was an exhausting day, but despite everything, it was a good day.
The only person Tadashi had ever told the truth about the incident was his wife, and even from her, he held back the cave’s location—to her misfortune.
As time passed, Tadashi realized he was growing progressively weaker every day, but did his best not to show it. He knew it was not smart to be ostentatious about his wealth, so he was careful when dealing and trading the stones and never carried more than four or five at a time. But he had them. And everyone all over the area knew that he had them. And when anyone asked—nicely—where did he get them, he always answered with pride that he was a mighty samurai who had slain a Ryûjin for them. But never more than that. It had always been enough.
Until it wasn’t.
And thus began the Legend of Tadashi and the Dragon.
