In the first time, there was a place where two rivers met without meeting. They flowed parallel, sharing the same water, occupying the same channel, going in opposite directions. No one could say how. It was not a trick of current or slope. The water went both ways at once.
The people who lived near it learned to draw from it using both hands. The left hand took water going east. The right hand took water going west. Both cups held the same water. They did not find this troubling. It simply was.
A child asked: which way is the river going?
An elder said: yes.
The child thought about this for a while and then went to do other things. This was the correct response. The elders noticed and were not troubled either.
After many generations, the two flows separated. No one knew why. Perhaps the paradox had held itself together as long as it could. Perhaps something in the land shifted. The river went one way, south, which was the direction of the sea, and everyone agreed this was sensible.
But the people who remained near it noticed a hollowness in the ordinary river, and in the years that followed they found themselves using both hands to draw water even when only one was needed. They could not explain this habit. It had been theirs so long it felt like knowledge rather than memory.
The place where the paradox had been is marked now by a flat stone in the riverbed. The stone has no inscription. It was placed there by people who remembered and removed by people who did not and replaced by people who had only heard the story and were not sure what it meant but felt that the stone should be there.