The Fool wandered on the road until he came to a pond. The sky was at twilight, so the night had fallen, but the western horizon still glowed green. He walked through lightning bugs that swarmed around the small body of water. Narcissus grew everywhere, and the purple flowers bowing in prayer almost vibrated from the light of the bugs.
A figure was standing half in the water and half out of the water. The figure had giant angel wings and a crown around its bald head. Their figure had a feminine shape, but a man’s breast. The Fool approached the angel.
The angel was pouring water between two chalices, from one chalice to the other, over and over. The angel looked up and spotted the Fool, smirked, and went back to pouring.
I am Temperance, the angel said in a deeper voice than the Fool expected. I have been made of weaker things and through hard change, I have been made strong. The Fool put his feet in the water and the coolness felt refreshing. I am the sum of all parts. I am what you create when you do alchemy. I was folded in the fires of hell and cooled by the vacuum of space, and I am what you get.
You avoid change, Temperance said to the Fool. You have avoided being stronger than you are now. The Fool stared down at his feet. They were disappearing into the muck at the bottom of the pond. He watched the ripples flow out from his pale skinny legs. He felt sad that he kept not living up to any of these people’s expectations.
That is why you are here, Temperance went on. You are being tempered here. We all must face challenges to grow. Strong relationships aren’t between the ones who avoid fights, but the ones who learn how to fight.
The water kept going back and forth, cup to cup.
I am like this water that goes back and forth from cup to cup. Fluid, Temperance said, to answer the Fool’s question.
The Fool stepped out of the pond and looked around. The firebugs were everywhere. He saw the lights reflect in the pond. He could also see the stars in the night sky reflected. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. Drops of water spilled from Temperance’s cups and kept the pond in a constant state of movement.
The Fool watched as the angel stopped their pouring and put one cup down and walked across the pond to the Fool and handed him the other cup. It was filled with wine the color of blood. I made this for you, said Temperance, to quench your thirst.
The Fool hadn’t noticed before, but realized that he was parched. He gulped the wine down, and it was a refreshing wine. He stood there on the banks of a pond with a transgendered angel standing before him in the pond itself. The angel brought their hand up and took the cup back and the Fool fell into the pond.
He didn’t hit the water, though. He just fell weightless into nothing. He was in an abyss. Fear clutched at his heart. He couldn’t see anything, hear anything, smell anything, taste anything, nor could he feel anything. There was no air on his skin. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing. All he had was his consciousness, which told him that he existed, but nothing else proved it to be so.
Once before time, there was nothing, Temperance’s voice said. The Fool was relieved by the voice. Then there was light.
A bright light exploded out of the nothingness, and the Fool was blinded, but at least it was something to see for a moment. The light was so bright he could see it through his closed eyelids, behind his hands.
This light shattered, the angel continued, and shards of light spread out all over the universe. The room got dark again and the Fool was suspended in space, with stars all around him.
These sparks are in man, in us, Temperance said, and it is our job to stoke that light in others when we see them.
How? the Fool asked.
Love, Temperance said.
The Fool was back in the abyss. He shouted, but he couldn’t hear it. He stayed in that abyss for a million years – or it was twenty minutes?
Temperance watched the Fool suspended in the abyss and scared out of his mind. They had put the Fool in that abyss many times before and the Fool reacted this same way every time: with fear.
Temperance was there when they had made the Fool. Poured molten metal all over the bones after the Hanged Man carved the runes. The Fool was to have been unbreakable. Only the one that can’t be named knows the expiration date of the Fool.