The Tale of Hira

Hira was not from Norway, but that’s where her fate found her. She had come to those frozen lands as a stranger, and by chance crossed paths with the prince. He promised her a future, a life among fjords and palaces. And for a while she believed that fate had chosen her.

Then the sea rose. A wave without measure struck the coast. A tsunami carried away boats, coins, memories — leaving only mud and silence. Stone streets disappeared. Houses fell into ruins. The kingdom was reduced to wreckage.

The prince came to her in that silence. He still wore his royal emblems. He still stood tall. But his words were empty.“We should leave,” he told her. “There’s nothing here.”To him, the throne only mattered if it glittered. Without people, without stability, there was no reason to stay.

Hira looked around. She saw the unseen eyes of the survivors. She saw the mud, which held not only destruction but also life. She felt the weight of choice. Leaving would have been easy, but it wasn’t right. You don’t abandon people when the ground collapses. You don’t abandon land when it still calls to be rebuilt.

They called her sense of duty naïve. In her memories, her mother mocked her compassion. Her father appeared only in dreams of convenience, smiling when she stood beside the prince. But the moment she thought of resisting, these figures dissolved like swamp mist.

In the ruins, among the cries, she understood. Her crown would not be gold. It would be clay. In the mud she would build an invisible bridge — made of courage, made of words — for others to cross.

The prince grew tired and left. Hira stayed. And in the silence of a devastated Norway, she discovered her true royalty. Not the kind that runs from the storm, but the kind that remains, even covered in mud, so that one day, when the waters recede, there will be solid ground again.

Hira and the Marina of Mud

After the wave, the world was buried in mud. The tsunami had taken palaces, houses, bridges. Those with gold and urgency fled, hiding in stone castles in Italy. Even the prince, sworn to guard his kingdom, abandoned it all and ran. Her father never returned. Her mother also disappeared. Each cared only for themselves.

Hira stayed. Not for blood, not for titles. But because she knew: under the mud, life still moved. Many were buried, crushed by the weight of the soaked earth. A few floated in the thick mire, not because of wealth, but because their hearts were light enough not to sink.

She tried to help them, though she felt weak herself. She drifted, unsure how to rise or lift anyone else. And in that moment, while the mud was still settling and the sun seemed dim, she saw it.

Ahead there was a marina. Not a person — just a cove, a secret harbor for tired boats. A refuge in the middle of nowhere. She knew she had to reach it.

So she swam. But swimming in mud is not like swimming in clear water. Every stroke was a struggle. Every breath almost broke her. Still she pushed on, because the marina called her.

When she reached the cove, it happened as if from an old tale: the harbor rose into the form of a woman. Marina.

Her long red hair burned like fire against the dark waves. Her eyes were eyes of mud — not dead mud, but alive, like the rivers of the Pantanal mingling with earth: sometimes green, sometimes gray, sometimes hazel. Eyes that knew the depths, and still always came back to the surface.

She walked on the murky waters as if crossing dimensions. And the fact that she stood there, steady above the mire, gave hope to those buried below. The ones still breathing thought: If she can stand, then maybe we can swim a little longer.

Astonished, Hira asked her:

“Are you the daughter of kings? Do you carry royal blood?”

Marina smiled, soft as a calm tide.

“My father never ran. He lived by the shore, casting nets, selling what the sea would give, until the tide took him. He taught me to read the currents, to never fear them. My mother always wanted more. She was never content with a fisherman’s bread. She chased bright halls, heavy tables, mirrors that made her larger. She swelled with vanity like a wineskin full of wind, and she left with those who love only themselves.”

So Marina had learned to dive — from her father, who gave her the sea as her school, and from her mother, who left her with absence and the need to swim in heavy waters early on, by herself.

As Hira listened, another presence appeared. From the muddy water, walking as if weightless, came the Shaman.

Her hair looked like roots, her skin like trunks, her eyes like old embers. But she wasn’t a stranger. Hira recognized her as part of herself. She was in her blood, in her breath, in the rhythm of her body — in desire, in the vibration before words.

The Shaman didn’t speak like someone giving instructions. She spoke while walking, as if her steps wrote poems in the air. Each gesture was an enigma. Each look a metaphor.

Her voice sounded like the call of a forgotten bird:

“Those who dive without knowing the weight of light go blind. Those who stretch out their arms before they stand, break. Open your eyes inside the mud, Hira. Let the sun cut through your clay. When your skin remembers brightness, your arms will be strong enough to hold others.”

And as she came, she fell silent. She walked on, like a poem fading, dissolving more into rhythm than into flesh.

Hira stayed between Marina and the Shaman. One showed the way across dimensions, the other reminded her of the roots burning within. And there, on the heavy surface of the mud, Hira understood.

Before saving anyone else, she would have to learn to breathe inside her own mire. The fine gold she searched for in others could only be found first in herself.

The mud, which once seemed a prison, revealed itself as a forge.

***