An Unexpected Visitor at the Window – Mythic Storytelling

A first step into the new mythic storytelling path

This is the beginning of the return. A first step into the new mythic storytelling path. The moment when the descent into the inner lake begins to rise again, carrying with it the stories found in the depths. From here, the sanctuary opens a new layer, where stories begin to appear within its symbols, shaped by what was retrieved from the inner world. This is the first of those stories where a boy meets a mythic companion and goes on a symbolic journey of discovery to find the meaning behind his recurring dreams.

At the edge of a woodland forest, a young boy named Ajax lay awake in his bed. A faint draft slipped through the window frame, and every so often the timber gave a soft rattle, the kind that unsettles the quiet of a room. The night felt unusually alert, as if the darkness itself was listening. Ajax tried to settle, but a small tightness lingered in his chest, the kind that arrives before sleep and refuses to name itself. He had been having the same dream for weeks now, and as sleep finally drew him under, the nightmare returned once more.

In his dream, Ajax stood at the edge of a woodland clearing at dusk. The last of the light was slipping away, leaving the air with a hollow stillness. In the centre of the clearing stood an old tree, tall and broad, its branches reaching out over the fading light. Ajax did not want to move toward it, yet something in him kept drawing him closer. As he approached, the tree gave a low creak, a sound that seemed to come from deep within its trunk. The ground beneath his feet shifted slightly in a way he could not quite understand. Then he felt it, a presence behind him, distant but unmistakable. He turned, and a faceless shadow stood there, its edges contrasting against the fading light. Ajax tried to run, but his body held him still. He opened his mouth to call out, but no sound came. A sharp crack split the air above him. The tree shuddered, and its longest branch began to break. Just before it fell, the scene disappeared, returning him to blackness, with the same fear he could not stop, and the same meaning he could not yet see.

The next day his mother asked, “It happened again, didn’t it?”

Ajax stirred his porridge in slow circles. “Yeah,” he said, then shifted the conversation away from his nightmares. He did not like talking about them. He did not like thinking about them.

That evening in bed he heard a buzzing near his ears, the kind of sound that irritates even the calmest of us. Annoyed, Ajax muttered to himself about the mosquitos and smacked at one in front of him. The night was still and crisp, unlike the intruding wind from the night before. The moonlight was strong enough to show the trees at the edge of the forest. He was deep in his thoughts when he sensed something at his window, a dark shape at the corner of his eye. He felt scared to look, but curiosity drew him on. It was a lizard longer than his leg. He noticed the unusual patterns on its skin as the warm light from his bedside lamp fell across it. To his surprise, the lizard looked at him without concern, then climbed above the window and moved up the side of the house until it slipped out of sight. He found it strange, as every lizard he had seen before always ran the moment it noticed him.

Then he heard scratching and movement in the ceiling above. “How did the lizard get into the roof,” he wondered, staring upward. He did not have any nightmares that night, though he did not sleep much either, as the odd lizard rustled above him for most of the night, leaving him uneasy.

“It sounds like a young goanna, from the way you described the markings on its body. We have a lot of them in these woodlands,” his mum said.

His dad, still looking out the window toward his gardening tools, added, “I do not think a goanna can climb onto a roof, son. I’m not sure how it would get past the overhang.”

“No, it didn’t go on top of the roof,” Ajax said, his voice tightening. “It went inside the roof, above the ceiling in my bedroom. It was there all night making creaking noises with its movements.”

His father gave a small chuckle. “I don’t know, mate. It sounds unlikely. You might have been half asleep.”

Ajax gripped his spoon. “No. I was awake. Up for most of the night.”

A faint burnt smell drifted in from the kitchen. His mum hurried over to the toaster with a soft sigh. His dad stood, ready to return to his gardening project. He paused and said, “We have had mice in the ceiling before. You might have heard them. The goanna was probably trying to get to them but gave up. I will take a look in the roof.”

Later that night Ajax lay in bed thinking about his dad’s remarks. No mouse droppings, nothing in the ceiling at all. He let out a slow breath and stared up at the dark, feeling a small knot of frustration settle in his chest. Then the rustling returned above him, soft and steady in the roof. For a moment he almost pushed himself out of bed to prove his dad wrong, but the effort slipped away and he drifted into a calm sleep.

He woke to birds beginning their morning songs and the golden light of the sun piercing through the trees in the distance. As he turned his head on the pillow to watch the morning unfold, the goanna appeared, moving down his window from above with slow deliberate steps before slipping away toward the woodland. Ajax watched it go and thought, what a cheeky thing, causing all this commotion.

After breakfast the boy sat with his mum on the sofa. She sipped her tea, paused, and said gently, “You know, Ajax, perhaps your goanna friend is looking out for you. I read once that the old people of this land believed goannas were protectors. Maybe it is here to help you rest. You have been having those nightmares for a while now, so something is on your mind.”

Ajax wanted to open up more to his mum that day, but he did not know how to begin, so he kept quiet. Later in the evening he lay in bed thinking about her words and his dad’s doubts. He looked toward the window, hoping for some sign of the goanna. The roof was silent. The yard was still. He let out a soft sigh. Now that he felt ready to meet it, the goanna was nowhere to be found. With that thought lingering, he drifted into sleep.

He woke in the middle of the night to bright moonlight filling his room. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the goanna on the floor in the centre of the room, watching him with a calm, curious stillness. It turned its head slightly, a small natural movement that felt like an invitation, then walked toward the gap in his sliding wardrobe and slipped through.

Ajax pushed himself upright, his heart beating faster in a way that echoed the dream. A soft golden light began to seep through the edges of the wardrobe door, lighting the inside with a quiet glow. He felt the same pull he had felt before, gentle but steady, drawing him forward. He hesitated at the edge of the bed, caught between caution and curiosity, then stepped toward the light one slow step at a time.

He slid the door open. The golden light was wrapped in a thick mist that moved as though stirred by a distant breeze. His desire to face whatever waited there rose above his reluctance, and he stepped into the mist. He walked through the shifting haze until it thinned before him. There, resting on a rock at the edge of a luminous forest, was the goanna. Its patterned skin now glowed with the same golden light, and Ajax stood amazed at the sight as its eyes warmed from black to a deep ember orange.

“Come and sit with me,” the voice said, calm and steady, carrying a depth that felt as though the warm glow of the whole forest was speaking to him. Ajax froze, staring at the goanna in disbelief. He took a cautious step forward, then another, until he stood beside the rock.

“Where are we?” he asked, glancing around the mist as though it might answer for him.

The goanna lifted its head. “We are in the realm before time, where dreams and thoughts meet before they take form in your world. It is where the meaning of things emerges.”

Ajax frowned slightly, shifting his weight. “I don’t really understand.”

The goanna turned its gaze toward him. “You do not need to understand, Ajax. Just meet what is here in the way you feel it.”

Ajax looked at the creature more closely, still unsure. “You are a strange goanna. How do you know my name?”

The goanna’s eyes softened. “I know your name because it has always been a part of you. I have known you since your first breath.”

Ajax stepped back a little, glancing around the thinning mist. “If you have been watching me, why do you keep going into the ceiling above my room and waking me up.”

He hesitated, then added with a small frown, “How do you even get in the roof anyway.”

The goanna rested its head on the rock for a moment, as though listening to something deeper than the question. “Roofs do not stop me, Ajax. I walk the quiet spaces between things. The places your thoughts go before you sleep. That is how I find you.”

Ajax blinked, unsure what to make of that. Something in him softened, though he did not know why. The goanna rose and looked toward a larger tree as the mist began to clear. “Walk with me to the pond,” it said, stepping down from the rock and moving toward the light that opened at the forest’s edge.

Ajax walked toward the large pond with careful steps. The stone around it was etched with markings that looked ancient, though they belonged to no time he knew. Their meaning hovered just out of reach, and he felt the weight of them without knowing why.

“Look into the water,” the goanna said, watching as Ajax knelt and leaned over the edge.

He saw his reflection, still and ordinary. “Nothing is happening,” he muttered, shifting with impatience.

“Stay with it,” the goanna replied, its voice steady.

Ajax braced himself. His reflection began to fade, the surface darkening until a shadow rose beneath it. It had no face, only a shape that felt too familiar. A cold shiver moved through him and he leaned back slightly from the water. “What is that?” he whispered, unable to look away.

“Your nightmare,” the goanna said, calm as ever.

The water shifted. The shadow dissolved into a golden meadow where small mice darted through tall grass, gathering tiny sparks of light. The shadow crept toward them, dimming the meadow as it passed. One by one, the mice were overtaken, their light swallowed.

The goanna stepped closer and rested its head against Ajax’s foot. “The mice in this realm gather the dreams and ideas that appear in the meadow. They could not gather your nightmare, so the shadow turned them into the mice that trouble your ceiling. They gnaw and chew recklessly because they carry what they could not harvest. Your father would have been cross if I had not stepped in.”

Ajax sat quietly, his thoughts circling. “I think I understand. My bad dreams are troubling this place too. But why am I having them?”

The goanna moved closer and brushed its side against his leg. “Sit with me,” it said, settling beside him as he folded his legs beneath him. Its voice softened. “You have been missing someone.”

Something in the tone stirred a memory. A warmth he had not felt since last year. A way of speaking that belonged to someone he loved. Ajax blinked, his breath catching. “Grandma?” he whispered, not sure if he was asking or remembering.

The goanna did not answer the question directly. It only leaned into him, its presence steady and familiar. “I have been close to you,” it said, “close to the part of you that remembers her.”

Tears gathered in Ajax’s eyes. He placed a hand on the goanna’s back, feeling the quiet rise and fall of its breath. “I thought you were gone,” he murmured, not sure who he was speaking to.

“Some voices travel through many forms,” the goanna said. “Love finds its way to you however it can.”

“So when someone dies… they do not disappear?” Ajax asked. A deeper fear moved beneath the question, the same fear that sometimes woke him at night, a fear whose meaning he had not understood until now, the fear of losing the people he loved.

The goanna looked toward the pond, its voice calm. “Nothing disappears. It only moves from one place to another. A change in form, a change in view. The ones you love stay close in ways the eye cannot see.”

Ajax let out a long exhale, the tightness in his chest easing. He leaned gently against the goanna, and it stayed beside him without a word.

They sat together for a long while, the quiet settling around them like a soft veil. When Ajax finally spoke, his voice was small. “Are you always a goanna here?”

“I can take different forms in other places,” it said. “But here, and in your world, I am always a goanna so I can reach you.”

Ajax let the words settle. “Then why are you different in other realms?”

The goanna looked toward the golden trees, their shimmer resonating with the glow that moved softly under its scales. “Because each place asks for something different,” it said. “The form I take follows that need, what the realm understands, and what the heart remembers.”

Something warm moved through Ajax’s chest. He placed a hand on the goanna’s back, feeling the quiet strength beneath it. The golden patterns along its body glowed faintly under his touch, as though answering him. “Why do you glow here?” Ajax whispered.

The goanna’s breath moved slow and steady. “This realm shows things as they truly are,” it said. “The glow is the heart of this place, and it rises when you’re near.”

A deeper warmth now moved through his chest. “It feels like you have been on great adventures wherever you go,” he murmured.
“Could I come with you?”

The goanna leaned gently against him. “I walk many paths,” it said. “Some you cannot see yet.”
“There is much to do,” it continued softly. “And there will be a time when our paths meet again. But not now.”

Ajax lowered his gaze. “Why not?”

The goanna’s voice grew warm and steady. “Because your own adventure is waiting for you,” it said. “The one you are living. The one that calls you back.”

The light around them began to soften, the edges of the forest blurring as though the world were exhaling. Ajax felt the realm loosening its hold, the golden air thinning like mist at dawn. He turned to the goanna, wanting to speak, but the words caught in his throat. The goanna touched its forehead to his knee, a quiet farewell that needed no explanation. The forest dissolved. The pond faded. The warmth beside him drifted away like a breath returning to the sky.

Ajax woke in his bed with sunlight on his face and a calm he had not felt in months. The nightmare never returned. The goanna never came back, but he understood why.

He hugged his mum tightly that morning and told her he missed Grandma, and that he would be all right. The old fear of losing her and his dad was still there, but it no longer held him the same way. Something in him had eased.

Ajax now helped his dad in the garden more often, feeling a new steadiness in the soil beneath his feet.

He thought about telling them everything that had happened, but he stopped himself. Grown ups did not always understand these things, he reminded himself. Some truths were meant to be carried quietly inside.

Continue the journey:

Explore the Symbols of The Threshold Guardian, The Dream Maker, and The Shadow that shaped this piece

Visit the Inner Emotional Weather of Fear, Loneliness, and Love this story moves through

For greater depth read the Mythic Cosmology behind this story

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