The Rainbow of Iris (Το Ουράνιο Τόξο της Ίριδος)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the village of Kalessa, cradled between olive groves and salt-worn cliffs, Iris once laughed like spring. She carried water from the well with dancers’ steps, spoke to the wind as if it were kin, and braided her hair with petals that strangers found blooming in winter.

Then came the illness. The physicians could not name it, only observe: her breath grew shallow, her limbs heavy, and each sunrise left her more fatigued than the one before. No herb revived her vigour. No prayer altered its course. The villagers began to speak quietly, as if her fate could hear them.

At seventeen, Iris understood what silence meant. She no longer fetched water. She sat beneath the myrtle tree and stared at the hills she used to climb.

‘I am vanishing,’ she told her reflection in the basin one twilight. ‘But I do not know where I am going’.

On the third morning of spring, Iris woke before the birds. She dressed slowly, selecting the soft linen robe her mother had woven years before, when laughter was abundant and the loom sang nightly.

She carried no belongings. Only a thought. She had grown weary of the burdens of life.

She walked past the myrtle tree, past the temple of Asclepius, past the old goat track that curved like a forgotten question. Her feet, swollen and stiff, bore her without protest.

By mid-morning, she arrived at the cliffs. The Aegean stretched beneath her like a sleeping god. The waves murmured, indifferent. The wind teased her robe but offered no resistance.

She sat on the edge, legs dangling.

‘If I die here, perhaps I return to the sky. Or to nothing’, she whispered.

The wind answered with silence.

‘I did not think this cliff would gather two souls today’.

The voice was neither startled nor startling. It came from a man seated on a flat stone, shadowed by a cypress tree. He was wrapped in a simple chiton, his hair grey but eyes untouched by age. He held no scroll, nor staff—only stillness.

Iris turned without fear. ‘Who are you?’

He smiled gently. ‘A student of silence’.

She narrowed her gaze. ‘Do you live here?’

‘No. I visit when the sea feels too quiet. Today, it speaks again’, he replied.

She stared at him. ‘Are you a priest?’

‘No.’

‘A philosopher by the name of Sostratos?’

He inclined his head. ‘If names matter to you, then yes. But I do not preach’.

She looked away. ‘I have come to leave this world’.

He said nothing for a while. Only the wind moved. Then: ‘It is not yours to leave. It is yours to understand’.

They sat together without speech for some time. The cliff, like time itself, neither invited nor judged them.

Eventually, Iris spoke: ‘If life is to be understood, then why has it abandoned me?’

The philosopher responded, ‘Life has not abandoned you. It has turned inwards. What you call weakness, I call transformation’.

‘I cannot walk far. I cannot carry, nor dance, nor run. I am half of who I was before', she said.

He nodded slowly. ‘And yet you reached this cliff. Not with strength—but with meaning’.

She frowned. ‘Meaning is the illusion of poets’.

‘Meaning, is the thread of reality that only awareness can grasp. You are not vanishing. You are becoming aware’, he told her.

She closed her eyes. The wind whispered through her hair.

‘Then where is the beauty in my pain?’ She asked.

‘In how it reveals the luminous beneath the visible. You are not your decay. You are the mirror that watches it. That mirror does not tarnish', Sostrates expressed.

He spoke that day of Meleticism.

‘We do not beg gods to heal us. We observe To Ena—the One—from which all flows’, he explained.

‘So it’s a god?’

‘No. It is not divine. It is the essence beneath essence. The origin before form. From it comes Logos—the order—and Nous—the shape’.

‘Then why should I believe in it?’

‘We do not believe. We recognise them', Sostratos replied.

She shook her head. ‘The villagers speak of miracles. Of saints who restore what illness takes’.

‘Perhaps they are comforted by stories, but comfort is not clarity. You seek not escape—you seek truth. And truth lives here’, he answered.

He gestured to the cliff, the sea, the sky, and finally—her.

‘You are part of the One. Your illness does not remove you—it reveals you’.

Her lip quivered. ‘But I do not want pain any longer’, she whispered.

‘No one does, but it is not punishment. It is transformation in motion. If you observe it, it softens. Not the body, but the ousia’, he said.

Iris did not leap. She walked with Sostratos down the cliff path, slower than before, but with a gaze steadier than she had ever known. Villagers blinked when they saw her return—not healed, but unburdened.

She did not speak of gods, nor illness. She began to observe.

At the well, she described its circle not as a container, but as a symbol of return.

At the olive press, she spoke of effort not as labour, but as rhythm.

Children gathered to hear her speak. They did not understand every word—but they felt something ancient in her tone.

The weeks passed. Iris grew weaker still. She planted a garden near the myrtle tree. Its soil bore wild thyme, violet crocus, and sun-burst marigold. She called it a reflection bed—not for medicine, but for witnessing.

When Sostratos visited, she told him: ‘I do not ask what will become of me. I ask what I am becoming’.

He replied, ‘What do you see?’

She pointed to a marigold blooming beside a withered stalk.

‘This is my truth. Form and fading. Life and letting go’, she told him.

He smiled. ‘You understand what many do not in a lifetime’.

Iris died one morning as light crept slowly over the garden.

Her breath was shallow, her eyes open. She held a small pebble in her hand—smooth and speckled.

‘All things, reflect the One. Even stones’, she said to the air, as she took one last breath.

Then, silence. No thunder followed. No divine voices sang.

The villagers buried her beneath the myrtle tree, without ritual, but with respect. They placed her parchment reflections at her grave, untouched by doctrine, but filled with awareness.

They did not pray. They listened.

Three days after her passing, a young child shouted from the hilltop.

‘There’s colour in the sky!’ He cried as he pointed upwards.

A rainbow curved gently above the cliffs, not bold, but quiet. It hovered where Iris once sat.

It returned again—once a week, then sometimes twice. Always near that place. Never after rain. Never announced.

The villagers whispered, not of miracles, but of memory.

‘She has not left,’ said Sopatros, the baker. ‘She has become part of the sky.’

‘No,’ said a Meletic philosopher named Pitakkos. ‘She has become part of the One.’

Children called it The rainbow of Iris. They did not worship it—they observed it.

‘It is her ousia. Her essence, now woven back into the cosmic flow. She did not escape life. She became it', the philosopher explained one evening.

Years later, scrolls of Iris’s reflections were discovered beneath the myrtle roots. One passage read: 'The One does not speak. It shows. I am not dying—I am unveiling. The threads of pain shimmer when seen clearly. I am not broken—I am becoming'.

Another read: 'Let no one fear the cliff. It is not a place of endings, but of openings. And if the sky answers, it does so not with miracles—but with memory'.

The philosopher now old, read these words to students who came from distant lands. He never spoke of healing. He spoke of clarity.

‘Iris, was not a child of suffering. She was a teacher of form. She reminded us that To Ena does not rescue—it reveals. When the One whispers, it does so through the colours of all things’, he said to them.

The Aegean still murmurs beneath the cliff. Travellers pass, some seeking answers, others simply hoping to feel something beneath thought.

Few leap. Most sit.

The rainbow continues to appear—never regularly, never predictably, but often when someone speaks aloud the name Iris. They say her soul became sky.

So once wrote: 'To Ena carries all things—not because it needs them, but because they are already part of it. Iris did not ascend. She returned'.

In Kalessa, the myrtle tree still stands. Not in mourning, but in memory.

Years had passed since Iris’s luminous departure, yet the cliffs remained a quiet magnet for those unsatisfied by mere belief. Word of her reflections travelled—first on parchment, then in retellings whispered by travellers, and finally in dialogues held between strangers who met not in temples but in thresholds of silence.

Scholars from Miletus, Rhodes, and Delphi came not for miracles, but for observation. The cliff where she once sat grew known—not as sacred ground, but as the place of becoming. Some climbed the path simply to sit. Others brought scrolls and ink, writing thoughts shaped not by doctrine but by atmosphere.

Amongst them was a thinker named Onomakritos, a quiet man with a furrowed brow and deep affection for pattern. He had studied many philosophies—Pythagorean symmetry, Platonic form, Aristotelian logic—but they all left him wanting. When he arrived at Kalessa, he carried a single question written on folded linen: 'Can suffering reflect order?'

He found no priest at the cliff. Only wind, light, and a cypress whose leaves still whispered.

Sostratos now old and revered as the quiet steward of Meletic memory, found Onomakritos pacing beneath the myrtle one morning. His eyes scanned the horizon as if waiting for language to rise from the sea.

‘You seek what?’ he asked plainly.

He unfolded the linen. ‘Meaning. Through pain’.

He nodded once and walked. He followed.

When they reached the cliff, the rainbow shimmered faintly, a brushstroke in the sky without ceremony. Onomakritos stared, breath caught.

‘It appears often. Not because Iris was divine—but because her awareness touched a frequency most ignore’, Sostratos said.

‘Can you prove that?’ He asked.

‘Can you prove why a song moves the soul?’ He replied.

He smiled.

He sat where Iris once had. Sostratos sat beside him

‘To Ena, the Logos, the Nous. They do not rescue us from suffering. They teach us how to see through it', he whispered, more to the air than to him.

He asked, ‘But why Iris? Why not someone strong, or healed?’

Sostratos said, ‘Strength is visible. Awareness is quiet. Iris chose clarity over conquest. That is why she became wind rather than statue’.

After several days of silence, Onomakritos left behind a scroll titled Witnessing at the Cliff. It contained no philosophy, no argument, no conclusion—only brief observations. 'Today I saw the sea acknowledge the wind without resistance'. 'The crocus near Iris’s stone leans toward shadow, not sun. It seeks contrast'. 'A rainbow appeared, though no one noticed. Later, two children laughed beneath it. They were its shape'.

Sostratos placed the scroll beneath the myrtle roots.

‘This is Meletic thought. Not doctrine—presence', he said.

The villagers read it aloud during gatherings. Some wept—not from sadness, but recognition. That awareness was achievable without mastery.

With time, a circle began forming around the myrtle and cliff—not as disciples, but as students of silence. They were carpenters, shepherds, midwives, stonemasons—none with titles, but all with questions.

They called themselves the Chora Ousias—the Circle of Essence.

They met not on set days, but when meaning stirred. Their gatherings began with breath, not speech. Then one question would be asked: ‘What do you observe today?’

Responses came slowly, gently: ‘I saw my child mimic the wind with her hands’.

‘I noticed how silence follows kindness, not noise’.

‘I planted onions and wept—but not from labour’.

No one corrected. No one taught. All became mirrors.

One day, a young artisan named Pandion carved a series of twelve stones with Iris’s favourite phrases from her reflections. Each stone held a word:

Presence. Witness. Ousia. Rhythm. Pattern. Becoming. Silence. Flow. Grace. Light. Meaning. Clarity.

He placed them in a spiral formation near the cliff path, calling it The Circle of Threads. Visitors walked the spiral slowly, pausing at each stone to breathe.

It became known not as a shrine, but a tool.

One phrase often lingered in the minds of those who walked it: 'You are not dying—you are unveiling'.

A traveller from Thessaly wrote: ‘I arrived uncertain. I left transparent’.

The Circle did not cure. It revealed.

A stargazer named Melina began mapping constellations after feeling Iris’s presence at the cliff. She described one faint arc of stars as The Thread of Iris—a silent curve wrapping the heavens between Pegasus and Andromeda.

‘She lives here. Not as light—but as memory within light', Melina said sketching the sky.

Her scrolls spread across the Aegean, reaching philosophers who once rejected mysticism. They did not worship Iris, nor assign her divinity—but they began teaching her reflections alongside Platon’s Form and Herakleitos’ Flux.

One scholar wrote: 'Life gave us structure. Iris gave us soul'.

Eventually, the villagers established an annual gathering called Ekdysis—The Shedding.

Held each spring, it was not a celebration of Iris’s life, but of Meletic principles she embodied.

The practices were simple: Children sat quietly in the garden. Elders wrote one sentence of awareness on leaves and let the wind carry them. The community walked the cliff path and stood beneath the rainbow, if present. Stories were shared, not for education—but for witnessing.

It was a festival without offerings. A gathering without worship. Only reflection.

When Sostratos grew old, he sat daily beneath the myrtle tree with a small circle of students. He rarely spoke of Iris directly—preferring to let silence do the teaching, but one twilight, with the sun melting behind the olive hills, she told a story.

‘Iris once said that her pain revealed colours only the soul could see. I never understood until I watched my mother die. She smiled more in her final days than in her first. That is what Iris meant. Awareness is the light within fading’, he murmured.

He passed shortly after, buried beside Iris with no inscription—only a smooth stone engraved with the word: Clarity.

Iris’s legacy continued—but never loudly. Her story was not made into legend.

Her name was not carved on altars, but wherever someone stood on the edge of despair and paused... Where someone chose to observe rather than flee... Where pain was seen not as punishment, but as passage...

The Rainbow of Iris appeared—not always in sky, but often in thought.

It became the unseen arc that guided many.

Not toward gods, but towards the One.

When the wind moved through the cypress, the myrtle, and the reflections etched in stone...

It spoke—as Iris once did.

Not in voice, but in presence.

The decades passed, and the tale of Iris flowed not as legend but as quiet philosophy. In Kalessa, no shrine stood to honour her name, yet her memory lingered in the gestures of villagers who paused at twilight and gazed into the wind without need for words.

Children were told not that Iris had become divine, but that she had ‘listened so deeply, the One spoke through her stillness’. They learnt to ask questions not for answers, but to observe the shape each question formed in their mind.

One such child, Alekos, wandered the cliffs at age seven, barefoot and curious. He watched the sea, sketched rainbows in the sand, and once asked his grandmother:

‘If To Ena is everything, why do we say Iris became it? Wasn’t she already?’

His grandmother blinked, then smiled.

‘She became aware of what she had always been.’

That evening, Alekos wrote on a leaf: “Awareness is the remembering of being.”

It was placed under the myrtle tree, joining hundreds of other reflections in the soil’s quiet archive.

The rainbow still appears, not predictably, not theatrically—but always meaningfully.

Somewhere in that known shimmer, the ousia of Iris continues—woven not into myth, but into the structure of thought.

The One does not forget, because the One never leaves.

The villagers learnt, over time, that the rainbow was not a message, not a miracle, not a visitation—but a sheer reflection. It did not answer questions; it echoed them. It rose quietly, curved across the horizon, and fell back into sky like a breath exhaled.

Children ran beneath it without shouting, only pointing and smiling. Elders looked up and whispered nothing, preferring to let the moment move through them. Visitors from distant cities spoke of it later—not in lectures, but in letters to loved ones that said simply: 'I saw something, and I became still'.

Each appearance was a punctuation mark in the long sentence of presence.

One spring, a blind sculptor named Pandaros arrived, guided by his niece. He had heard stories not of the rainbow’s colour, but of Iris’s voice. He sat near the cliff for days, carving shapes from memory—not her face, but her thought. His sculpture was smooth and abstract: a spiral within a half-circle, encased in a stone shell like a question answering itself.

When asked what it meant, he said: ‘It means that truth is not seen. It’s held in silence until someone walks through it’.

He left the sculpture near the myrtle tree. It gathered moss, but never dust. People touched it gently before walking the cliff path—as if to remember that awareness has weight.

The rainbow continued. Sometimes it was pale. Sometimes it was full. Sometimes it was barely visible—yet more powerful than ever.

The villagers came to call it the quiet arc. Not Iris’s arc. Not the One’s arc. Just the quiet arc—an alignment of light, air, and the observer’s own readiness. It did not appear to be worshipped. It appeared to witness who was watching.

Even as the village changed, the rainbow stayed—not stuck to tradition, but flowing with presence.

A new generation grew with no memory of Iris as a person, yet felt her as a principle. They did not ask who she was. They asked what she saw.

Alekos, now grown, taught his own children near the garden. He said, whilst pulling weeds: ‘Iris once saw her illness not as an end, but as a mirror. That’s why she became light. Not for what she suffered—but for what she understood’.

The children wrote one word each into the soil beside the crocuses: 'Witness'.

It bloomed in silence. Just like she had in her life.

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