Anastasia (Αναστασία)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the sun-drenched hills above Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, a child was born into the marble-columned halls of wealth and prestige. Her name was Anastasia, a name whispered with reverence by handmaidens and echoed in feasts held beneath vaulted ceilings. From infancy, she was wrapped in silks finer than sea-foam, her cradle carved from cypress wood and inlaid with ivory. Her father Ikaros, was a merchant of great influence; her mother, Lysandra, a woman of rare poise and wit. Together, they crafted an existence of luxury for their daughter, where want was unknown and beauty was everything.

Anastasia grew to embody the ideal her world admired. Her eyes, like polished amber, glimmered beneath long dark lashes. Her hair, the colour of ripened olives, cascaded in soft waves down her back. She walked with the grace of a swan and spoke with a melody that turned heads in the agora. Artists vied to capture her likeness. Poets scribbled verses about her before even meeting her. Every smile she offered was met with gasps; every word, a command.

With admiration came vanity. Anastasia, accustomed to praise, grew distant from humility. She dismissed the poor with a curled lip, scorned the old and viewed wisdom as the consolation of the unattractive. Her world became a mirror, and she adored the image it reflected.

Suitors gathered like bees to nectar. Rich young nobles, seasoned generals, even scholars blinded by desire—each sought her favour. She played them like lyres, testing their gifts and loyalty, yet offering none in return. Amongst them was Deukalion, a young aristocrat known for his passionate temper and sharp tongue. Handsome and bold, he captured Anastasia's interest, but not her heart. He became a frequent visitor to her family’s estate, always trying to impress, always falling short.

One evening, in the twilight shadow of a moonless night, the illusions of love shattered. Anastasia dismissed Deukalion for the last time, mocking his affections in front of others. Something in him, long frayed and finally tore. In a moment of rage, he struck out. A blade, hidden in his cloak, flashed across her delicate face. The act was swift, a moment of madness and then he fled into the veil of the night.

The scar ran from her temple down to her jaw—jagged, angry and unignorable. Blood mingled with tears, and the cries of her attendants filled the house. The city was aghast, but horror soon gave way to something colder—disinterest.

Anastasia, once the crown jewel of Lesbos, was no longer flawless. Her admirers vanished. The poets ceased their verses. The artists looked elsewhere. Whispers turned cruel. 'A rose, wilted'. 'Beauty punished by hubris'. 'A warning from the gods'.

Ashamed and abandoned, she withdrew quietly. The estate’s grand halls became a prison. She avoided mirrors, tore down portraits, screamed at those persons who dared show her pity. Even her parents, unsure how to comfort or correct her, faded into the background. Alone and bitter, Anastasia watched the world turn without her.

The months passed and the seasons changed. One morning, without ceremony, she left. No servants, no gold, no goodbyes. She walked eastwards, along the cliffs that overlooked the sea. She wandered until the columns of civilisation gave way to olive groves and salt-blown hills. There, by a crescent bay, she found a solitary house. A woman sat at its threshold, her hands weaving reeds into baskets.

'You look lost', the woman said, not unkindly.

Anastasia, worn and hollow, stared. 'I was once known everywhere. Now I am known only by the hideous scar on my face'.

The woman set down her weaving. Her eyes were grey like morning fog, her hair streaked with silver. 'What do you see when you look at your scar?'

'A horrible curse. A ruin that condemns me'.

The woman smiled faintly. 'Then you do not yet know yourself'.

Her name was Larissa, and she lived not as a recluse but as a contemplative woman. She had once travelled the world, seen the rise and fall of kings, and studied the teachings of Meleticism. Here, by the sea, she chose stillness.

Over time, Anastasia stayed. The days turned to weeks. Larissa did not speak much of the past, but she offered something different—a way of being unchained from appearance and expectation.

She spoke of To Ena, the One. Of the balance between the body, mind and soul. Of beauty that resided in stillness, not in the adornment of skin. 'Your scar, is not an end. It is a unique mark of passage. Like a river that has altered course—wilder, but wiser', she once said.

At first, Anastasia resisted. Her vanity had roots like the fig tree—deep and stubborn, but slowly, through silent walks along the shore, through meditations beside the olive trees, she began to change. Larissa taught her the eight states of meditation, not with ritual, but through quiet presence.

She learnt to sit without distraction. To feel the breath. To observe her thoughts without judging them. She began to perceive the difference between what she was told to be and what she truly was.

One morning, standing beside the tide pools, she caught her reflection in the still water. For the first time in years, she did not look away. The scar was there—unchanged, unmoved, but now it did not seem ugly. It seemed... honest. Like a chapter in a longer story. She had avoided seeing herself in a mirror.

'I see myself', she said aloud.

Larissa, standing behind her, nodded gently. She was wrapped in a simple linen shawl, her hair pinned back with the thorn of a fig branch—nothing about her declared authority, yet her presence settled the space like still water.

‘What do you see now?’ She asked, her voice quiet but steady.

Anastasia studied her reflection in the tide pool. The scar was still there, pale beneath the morning light, carved like a secret she could never forget. Her face was neither symmetrical nor smooth, and yet it bore something new. Something open.

‘Not a ruin. Not a rose, but a being’, she whispered.

Larissa’s expression did not change, but her eyes gleamed with a calm intensity. ‘Good. You are beginning to remember your soul', she replied.

Anastasia turned to her. ‘Remember my soul?’ She repeated softly, as though the idea itself was unfamiliar, even foreign. ‘How can you remember something you’ve never known?’

Larissa crouched beside the pool, her fingers trailing in the water. ‘Ah, but you have known it. All beings do. Even as children, before the world teaches us to look outwards. Before the mirrors and the masks. The soul is not a thing you invent, Anastasia. It is what remains when all the pretending stops’.

‘Why would I forget something so essential in life?’

‘Because the world does not speak the language of the soul. It speaks of beauty, of status and of conquest. It is loud, but the soul—’ she paused, letting a breeze pass—‘the soul speaks in silence. It waits. It endures. It does not ask to be praised. It asks only to be known’.

The words settled into Anastasia like warm rain. She had spent years seeking attention, validation and adoration from the outside. It had all vanished the moment her skin had been marked. What remained, after all the leaving, was what she had refused to know—the being beneath the apparent image.

She lowered herself beside Larissa. The water between them shimmered, as if moved by the pulse of the One. ‘I thought I had lost everything', Anastasia confessed.

‘And now?’

‘I see that I had never truly possessed anything. Not really. I only wore it’.

‘Yes’, Larissa said, nodding. ‘You wore beauty like a borrowed robe, but the soul is not something worn. It is something lived and must be guarded'.

They sat in silence for some time. The waves sighed in the distance. The scent of salt and sage carried on the wind.

Anastasia looked down again, but not to judge. She looked to see.

‘I feel… quieter inside. Not empty. Just... still’.

Larissa smiled. ‘Stillness is the beginning. When the waves cease, the depth can be seen then through awareness’.

Anastasia, for the first time in her life did not flinch from what she saw—not the scar, not the age, not the loss. She saw a presence, conscious and enduring. She saw her soul, not as a prize, but as a presence waiting patiently to be recognised. In that moment, she did. She remembered.

Anastasia remained seated by the water’s edge, the soft lapping of the tide a steady rhythm against the quiet of her thoughts. The sea’s endless motion reminded her of the flow of life itself—sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, always moving forth, always returning.

‘You see now that the soul is not something separate from your scar or your beauty. It is not something added or taken away. It simply is. Like the ocean beneath the waves', Larissa said, breaking the silence.

Anastasia’s gaze lifted to the horizon, where the sky and sea met in a silver-blue embrace. She thought of the wasteless years spent trapped in mirrors and whispers, the hollow admiration that had once fed her vanity. How empty it all seemed now.

‘What happens, when the world no longer recognises us? When our beauty fades, or is marked by pain? What remains?’ She asked.

Larissa’s eyes softened. ‘What remains is the self that does not depend on the world’s gaze. The self that knows its own light, even in shadow. This is the light of the soul—steady, unshakable and eternal’.

A tear traced down Anastasia’s cheek, mingling with the sea spray. It was not sorrow but release. A letting go.

‘I have been afraid that without my beauty, without the masks, I would disappear', she admitted.

Larissa reached out, taking Anastasia’s hand in hers. ‘The masks fall away so the true self may be seen. You have not disappeared, Anastasia. You have begun to appear—as you truly are as a woman’.

Anastasia’s breath deepened. For the first time, she felt a profound sense of peace, a quiet joy that did not depend on praise or approval. It was a joy born of acceptance and of self-knowledge.

‘Tell me, how do I walk this path? How do I keep this light alive?’ She urged.

Larissa smiled, her eyes reflecting the shimmer of the sea. ‘By living in awareness. By embracing each moment—the stillness and the movement, the light and the shadow. By honouring the soul’s voice above the clamour of the world with your consciousness'.

Anastasia nodded, feeling the truth of these words settle into her bones. The journey ahead would not be easy, but it was hers to walk, step by step, breath by breath.

As the sun climbed higher, warming the stones beneath them, Anastasia rose, her heart lighter than it had been in years.

She turned to Larissa, a new strength shining in her eyes. ‘Thank you—for helping me remember.’

Larissa’s smile was soft but sure. ‘You never truly forgot, Anastasia. You only needed to come home’.

Together, they watched the tide pull back, revealing the smooth stones beneath the surface—timeless, enduring, the hidden foundation of all that is seen.

In that moment, Anastasia understood at last: her scar was not a mark of ruin, but a symbol of rebirth—the beginning of a life lived in harmony with the soul.

The villa by the cliffs became a sanctuary. People came not in droves, but when they needed. Some stayed a day. Some stayed seasons. Anastasia offered no miracles, only her presence.

She taught them the ten levels of consciousness she had come to know: Awareness of the One. Of mind. Of soul. Of body. Of universe. Of nature. Of the natural flow of the cosmos. Of the spheres of being. Of tranquillity. Of enlightenment, and of To Ena.

She did not speak them like commandments. She lived them.

Each scar, each silence, each wind-carved stone became a lesson, and when she died, many years later, there was no actual monument built in her honour.

Only a stone by the sea, engraved by one of her students.

It read: ‘Here rests the one who learnt to see beyond her scar'.

Some people say her soul still lingers, not in form, but in awareness—in the hush before the waves break, in the pause between thoughts, in the soul of those who have been broken and choose to become whole again.

Because beauty, she had once said, is not the absence of flaw. It is the presence of truth, and truth begins where illusion ends.

Some years later, a young traveller named Nereus, worn by sorrow and weary from the voices of philosophers who argued but never listened, came upon the coastal path. The stories he’d heard of a woman once broken, now venerated by those who followed the path of Meleticism, had drawn him here—even though he did not know what he sought.

He found the stone. Its simplicity struck him more deeply than the grand tombs of statesmen and kings he had seen on his travels. Just a line, carved without ornament: ‘Here rests the one who learnt to see beyond her scar’.

He sat beside it for a long time. The sea rustled below. The olive trees bent gently, whispering in the wind. He closed his eyes.

He thought of his mother, who had died without peace. Of his own bitterness, and of the shame he felt for things done and left undone. In the quietude, something softened.

There was no sermon. No miracle, but there was something. A presence, perhaps, or the suggestion of one.

The house still stood, half-overgrown, open to the wind. Nereus stepped inside. Dust clung to the rafters. The scent of rosemary and lavender lingered faintly in the air. On a low shelf, he found a bundle of parchment—her writings.

He read for hours. Her reflections were not grand declarations but quiet recognitions—of change, of humility, of the soul’s journey towards the One.

‘When I first looked into the water, I searched for my former self. I hoped she might return, but the tide does not return to the exact shape it left. It arrives anew, although from the same sea', she had written.

Another page: ‘Pain humbles us. Not to break us, but to open us—to dissolve the false self that we mistook for truth. In the quietude, we begin again’.

And elsewhere: ‘To Ena is not far. It is closer than breath, older than name. It does not demand perfection. It invites our awareness’.

Nereus stayed for weeks. He cleaned the old dwelling, restored its hearth, and walked the same paths Anastasia once had. He came not to preserve her legacy, but to live what she had come to understand. He began each day with silence, then tended to the garden she had once planted. He read the sea, watched the birds and listened—not just with his ears, but with something deeper.

Others found their way there as well. Some broken, some merely curious. They did not speak of her as a saint. They spoke of her as a mirror—someone who had once fallen and had chosen, through awareness, to rise—not by denying her wound, but by welcoming it.

The villa became known quietly as the house of stillness. There were no formal rituals, only a shared understanding: to live consciously, to observe life without rushing to possess it and to remember the deeper self beneath the roles one played.

One evening, a girl named Deianira asked Nereus: ‘Did she regret what happened to her?’

He thought for a long moment. ‘I believe she once did, but in time, she came to see the scar not as the mark of her downfall, but of her awakening. Without it, she might never have discovered who she truly was,' he said.

The girl nodded, then looked towards the sea. ‘I want to learn to see’.

‘Then you already have begun’, he replied.

So her tale did not end in death. It lived in the ones who followed—not to be worshipped, but walked.

Through her, they came to know that transformation is not a lightning-strike but a slow unfolding, like the ripening of a fig or the carving of stone by water. That the soul does not bloom by remaining untouched, but by being weathered—and still choosing to open.

In this, Anastasia lived on—not in her name, but in their becoming.

In every scar accepted. In every silence embraced. In every breath drawn with awareness. She lived on in Meletic tradition, not as a sign of resurrection, but as a sign of rebirth. The rebirth of the self.

She would stay amongst the sea reflecting fragments of the sun across the water’s skin, as if light itself bowed to her realisation. No crowd witnessed her revelation. No herald sang, but something within her had shifted into harmony—a quiet symphony between the wound and the wisdom it birthed.

Deianira turned to Larissa once more. ‘This path… it is not simple.’

‘No. It is not simple, but it is honest. And that makes it important', Larissa agreed.

They began walking back, feet pressing into the softened earth. The wind moved around them like a gentle spirit, neither leading nor resisting. Larissa spoke no more, and Deianira didn’t ask questions. Stillness walked with them.

When they reached the threshold of the home of Anastasia, Larissa paused and said to Deianira, ‘She was born once, into beauty and noise, but this… this was her true birth.’

'I can feel her influence', Deianira said.

Larissa placed a hand over her heart. ‘Then walk from this moment as one who sees. Not with the eyes alone, but with the whole of your being.’

And so she did.

From that day forth, Deianira no longer searched for her reflection.

She became it—for others, and for herself. Not a ruin. Not a rose, but a being, fully known. She learnt to be reborn through the self and enlightened through the soul. In time, she became a woman who walked the path of Meleticism.

When others came, drawn not by her name but by something they could not quite name, she welcomed them not with answers, but with presence. She taught them to listen to silence, to trust the scar, to honour the soul.

Beneath the olive trees, stillness bloomed with awareness—and Anastasia, at last, was whole.

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