The Fool comes out of the peacock to outside. When he turns around he doesn’t see the peacock feathers anymore. He is in a hot dry place. There are cypress trees around him and it is rocky. A hot wind blows through the small glen he is in. He sees a waterfall and a woman sitting. He approaches and sees that it is a black woman with a shield and holding an amaranth flower. The shield has an eagle on it. She has one foot on a moon. She is pregnant.
The breeze turns nice and cool. He can feel the spray from the waterfall drift over him and cooling him down. He feels tired, but a nice take a nap under a tree tired. He isn’t wary or sick. He is attracted to the woman, but only in a maternal way. She seems strong and nurturing.
She waves him to her feet and he sits and starters into her bright brown eyes. He smells the sweetness of the earth around them and the cooling water that flows behind her. The Fool is content. She offers him some peaches and nectarines, and he eats in ecstasy.
He spends his days with her and she takes her time tending to the earth. She digs her hands into the soil and roots around until she pulls out a plant or rock that now is just there. She is the mother of all the earth. She is Gaia.
She remembers the Fool from the beginning when he wandered the barren earth. He walked by the new man and they would create masks and statues worshipping him even though he didn’t do anything by wander. He was an observer of the world as it matured from infancy to its toddler self now. He remembered when his bones were carved with runes and wards that were to be used to help others, but the Fool forgot himself and thought of himself as a mere man.
The Fool bathed every day in the cool stream behind the cattails. He didn’t want the Empress to see him nude. He became bashful. He was usually very brazen, but he felt unworthy to be nude in front of the Empress.
He would try to help with her daily chores, but she was doing things beyond his capabilities. She was making Earth. Wherever she walked, flowers grew in her footsteps. When she raised her arms, trees came out fo the earth. Animals walked with her as if they were tamed and her pets, but she would shoo them off and they would return to the wilds. One night a lamb and a lion shared heat from the fire as she told them stories that made them all drowsy.
She shared how the earth is needed for people, animals, and plants to survive, but the earth really didn’t need them, but she loved all of them, so it wasn’t a problem. She taught him that it is better to adapt to your environment then trying to force the environment to adapt to you.
They spent time learning about plants and not just how they can help heal and provide nutrients, but how they can provide a message. Everything means something to when someone is looking, she said. She pointed to the field of amaranth and said that it was her immortality that they were signifying. They also signifying her unfading love.
When people make up their ideas of what the gods are and what they want, they always seem to be unaware of love being the most important value a god can have for her children. I am the Empress, she said, but my real name is Love. Love isn’t always nurturing and supportive, she continued, sometimes I have to make decisions that you won’t understand and think I have stopped loving you, but that is furthest from the truth.
The Fool, and only to his recollection, couldn’t remember being this loved. It made him feel whole. He was inspired to create and to help others. He wanted so much to show his love and devotion to the Empress. He felt like he could never do enough.
She said that the temples and the sacrifices were doing too much and were in the wrong direction. When communities got together to help the less fortunate, that is the worship she wants. Make food, shelter, and love accessible to everyone, then I will be pleased. I would tear down the gold spires and kick over the offering tables if I could, but I’m not an angry person. I am just Love.
She made a comment one day about how the Priestess was the one that summoned her here. She was here when they made the Fool. She even added to his creation. She was like a mother to him. She may even be his mother, but he couldn’t remember his childhood or growing up. She smiles and squints at him as if it is okay.
As the years turned into decades, or maybe this was all just minutes, the Fool felt like he should go. He felt cared for and loved. He was fed, washed, and sheltered. He felt whole again. His urge to wander was returning. She didn’t stop him, and in fact, she encouraged him to go on. His journey is long and this is still the beginning. This is still familiar and comfortable.
She hugged him and he felt like he was being enveloped by love and understanding. She kissed him on the cheek and he felt the wetness of her lips tingle into the darkest corners of his soul. She gave him a lock of her hair so that there was a part of her on him always.