(continued from previous scroll)
The third morning broke with a haze of burnt orange over the rooftops of Babylon. Smoke from the early hearths clung low to the ground, curling like script over the sunbaked streets. The smell of hot bread mingled with damp stone and the metallic tang of the canal. Merchants were already lifting the wooden shutters of their stalls, and temple boys carried bronze bowls of oil up the temple steps to relight the sacred flames.
I walked more slowly than usual. Not from fatigue, but reflection.
The first two days had left me full—and unsettled. Daniel’s words had a way of unraveling things I thought I understood: names, loyalty, identity. It was not simply that he spoke with conviction. He seemed to have no need to defend it.
His peace was not passive.
It carried the weight of something larger than certainty.
The fig tree’s shadow still stretched long across the colonnade as I approached. Daniel sat waiting, hands clasped over his knees. Today he faced west, toward the Ziggurat of Etemenanki. It rose behind the palace like the spine of some buried god.
“Good morning,” I said, bowing.
Daniel nodded. “It is a day for remembering.”
“Then I am ready.”
He shifted slightly, as though gathering thoughts he had carried for many years.
“Tell me,” he said. “What is the purpose of a dream?”
I considered the question. “To reveal the future? Or perhaps to make sense of the past?”
“Sometimes.” He glanced toward the palace. “And sometimes a dream is given because a man believes he sees clearly while awake.”
I lowered my stylus.
“Nebuchadnezzar once had a dream that troubled him deeply. When he summoned the wise men of Babylon, he demanded more than an interpretation. He required them to tell him what he had dreamed.”
I stared at him. “Without telling them first?”
“Yes.”
“That is impossible.”
Daniel looked at me with recognition rather than amusement.
“That is what they told him.”
“And what did he do?”
“He ordered that the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.”
A chill passed through me despite the warmth already gathering beneath the colonnade.
“You were one of them.”
“I was.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked for time.”
Daniel’s gaze settled somewhere beyond me.
“That night, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and I sought mercy from the God of heaven. We asked that the mystery be revealed so that we would not perish with the rest of Babylon’s wise men.”
“And it was?”
Daniel nodded.
“In a vision of the night.”
For a moment he said nothing.
Then his voice changed—not dramatically, but enough that I knew he was no longer merely telling me what had happened.
He was remembering it.
“I saw what the king had seen. A great image stood before him, enormous and terrifying. Its head was of fine gold. Its chest and arms were silver. Its belly and thighs were bronze. Its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly clay.”
I tried to picture it.
“Then a stone appeared,” Daniel continued. “A stone cut without human hands. It struck the image at its feet.”
He brought one hand softly against the other.
“The iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold shattered together. They became like chaff on a threshing floor, and the wind carried them away until no trace remained.”
“And the stone?”
“It became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
I realized I had stopped writing.
“What did it mean?”
“The head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom of Babylon. After Babylon would arise another kingdom, inferior to it. Then a third. Then a fourth, strong as iron.”
He traced a line absently across his knee.
“But the feet were mixed—iron and clay. Strength joined to weakness. A kingdom divided, unable to hold together.”
“And the stone?”
Daniel looked directly at me.
“A kingdom established by the God of heaven.”
I waited.
“It will not be handed to another people,” he said. “It will break the kingdoms of men and bring them to an end.”
His voice lowered.
“And it will stand forever.”
The sounds of Babylon seemed suddenly louder beyond the colonnade—the wheels of carts, the calls of merchants, the clatter of bronze against stone.
I looked toward the palace.
“All of this,” I said, “ends?”
“All kingdoms end.”
“Even Babylon?”
Daniel’s expression held neither satisfaction nor sorrow.
“Especially those that believe they cannot.”
I sat in silence.
“And Nebuchadnezzar believed you?”
“He fell on his face before me. He said that my God was God of gods and Lord of kings, a revealer of mysteries.”
“And then he promoted you.”
“He placed me over the province of Babylon and over the wise men.”
I studied him.
“You stood before Nebuchadnezzar and told him what he had seen.”
“Yes.”
“Were you afraid?”
Daniel’s eyes drifted toward the palace.
“Of Nebuchadnezzar?”
He paused.
“Yes.”
I had not expected the answer.
Daniel looked back at me.
“But I had already spent the night before Someone greater.”
Neither of us spoke for a while.
The light had risen above the rooftops now. Bees drifted through the colonnade, and somewhere along the western street a vendor rang a small bell.
“Do you fear the stone?” I asked.
Daniel turned to me slowly.
“I revere what it represents.”
He reached into his satchel and drew out a small stone—round, plain, worn smooth by time.
He held it toward me.
“This is not the stone from the dream.”
I smiled despite myself.
“I had assumed not.”
The faintest smile touched his face.
“But it reminds me.”
I accepted it.
The stone was warm from his hand and heavier than it looked.
“Kingdoms rise,” Daniel said. “Kings boast. Cities build walls and temples and monuments so that men will remember their names.”
He tapped the stone with one finger.
“And still they become dust.”
I turned it over in my palm.
“What happens when the kingdom of the stone comes?”
Daniel was quiet for a moment.
“Everything men have built to make themselves eternal will discover that it is not.”
I looked again toward Etemenanki.
The tower no longer seemed quite as tall.
“What became of the other wise men?” I asked.
“Some lived. Some fled. Some waited until the danger had passed and returned as though nothing had happened.”
He gave a small shake of his head.
“Fear does strange things to the proud.”
“And to the humble?”
Daniel smiled.
“It teaches them to kneel.”
I lowered my eyes to the stone.
“Did you understand the vision fully when you first received it?”
“No.”
The answer came without hesitation.
I looked up.
Daniel’s expression had softened.
“Understanding grows,” he said. “Trust must sometimes come first.”
I started to return the stone, but he closed my fingers around it gently.
“Keep it.”
“For what?”
“To remember.”
I slipped it carefully into the fold of my robe.
The vendor’s bell rang again in the street beyond us. The court would soon be opening.
Daniel rose.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will speak of fire.”
I stood as well.
“Fire?”
“Of a king who demanded worship.”
His eyes held mine.
“And of standing when everyone else bows.”
I bowed to him.
Daniel returned the gesture.